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.”
In Latin America, the problems linked to the control, ownership and exploitation of land have been at the bases of important mobilizations, and social movements have historically been the articulators of these struggles. In the 90s, the legal framework that regulated land tenure in Bolivia since the national revolution of 1952 was deeply modified. The symbolic and political value of land started to shift from a traditional classist-redistributive focus towards a growing emphasis on cultural and social dimensions. This reform led by the neoliberal governments in power triggered a process of social fragmentation and a series of conflicts among social movements. This trend continued also in the post-neoliberal era, with the election of the coca-growers leader Evo Morales as new Bolivian president, at the head of a social coalition mainly formed by rural-based movements. This paper argues that the recent wave of conflicts over land and resources among social organizations in Bolivia should be intended as a compelling empirical evidence of the problems related to misleading assumptions at the bases of neoliberal multiculturalism but also of plurinational land reforms. Namely, the fact that recognition holds a performative power, that identity should not be treated as an exogenous variables and that society is not a compact entity. Indeed, changes in the allocation of strategic resources inspired by the so-called politics of recognition triggered processes of political ethnicization and identitarian fragmentation, eventually contributing to fuel new types of conflicts over land between (pre-existent or brand new) indigenous groups and peasant unions.