The department is a lively community that is recognised internationally as one of the top centres for research and teaching in development studies.

Our courses offer excellent training for a career in international development or for advanced study, and attract students of the highest calibre from across the world.
“I had waited for 10 years before my dream to study in Oxford became a reality and the experience was truly beyond expectation”
Our students are taught to develop as critical and independent thinkers and when they leave us they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to bring about real change.
“My time at Oxford strengthened my critical analysis and provided me with a unique interdisciplinary grounding in history, politics and economics that has equipped me well in dealing with public policy issues and program development strategy.”
Our courses offer excellent training for a career in international development or for advanced study, and attract students of the highest calibre from across the world.
“I had waited for 10 years before my dream to study in Oxford became a reality and the experience was truly beyond expectation”
Our courses offer excellent training for a career in international development or for advanced study, and attract students of the highest calibre from across the world.
“I had waited for 10 years before my dream to study in Oxford became a reality and the experience was truly beyond expectation”
Our students are taught to develop as critical and independent thinkers and when they leave us they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to bring about real change.
“My time at Oxford strengthened my critical analysis and provided me with a unique interdisciplinary grounding in history, politics and economics that has equipped me well in dealing with public policy issues and program development strategy.”
Our students are taught to develop as critical and independent thinkers and when they leave us they are equipped with the knowledge and skills they need to bring about real change.
“My time at Oxford strengthened my critical analysis and provided me with a unique interdisciplinary grounding in history, politics and economics that has equipped me well in dealing with public policy issues and program development strategy.”
Globalization is a pervasive influence on industrialization in the developing world. As the embodiment of technological progress and more open markets, it offers huge productive benefits to developing countries. However, its effects are very uneven. It is driving a growing wedge between the (relatively few) successful countries and the (large mass of) others. The wedge is not a temporary one, a 'J-curve' that will reverse itself if countries persist with liberalization. It reflects underlying structural factors that are very difficult to alter in the short to medium term. Because of cumulativeness in these structural factors, divergences are likely to carry on growing unless measures are undertaken to reverse them. Development policy has to address these growing structural gaps and to reverse or relax the stringent rules of the game that constrain the use of (previously successful) industrial policy. Such successful industrial policies have taken many different forms and countries have to choose combinations that suit the demands of current globalization.