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.”
We live in a world characterized by multiple, overlapping and plural normative orders embracing formal and informal legal regimes, customs and practices. Legal protections for equality and protections against discrimination are found in a plurality of legal instruments, including international, regional, national, state and municipal human rights documents and institutional codes of conduct. Moreover, formal equality rights operate in social and cultural contexts that are deeply influenced by the customs, norms and social practices of everyday life. In assessing how law may be used to reduce group-based inequalities, therefore, it is critical to examine the interaction between different sources of formal human rights protection and diverse, overlapping and coexisting social and cultural orders – or regimes of informal law. Such an exploration provides important insights into systemic, structural and social obstacles to effective enforcement of formal anti-discrimination and equality rights protections – obstacles institutionalized and embedded in both official and unofficial law and custom. Moreover, an appreciation of the intersections and interactions between a plurality of legal orders (both formal and informal) illuminates how strategic reliance on different sources of protection may advance the effective enjoyment of the right to equality. In this paper, I highlight how the plurality of law affects equality rights in institutional, community and global contexts.