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.”
This study examines the capabilities of self-determination movements in Somalia after the collapse of a central state to explain the variable capacities of groups to provide stable orders and understand why leaders of these movements choose particular strategies. The primary factors shaping these strategies and capabilities include (1) the nature and longevity of prewar local elite relations with the central authority of the collapsing state, (2) the social organization of prewar and wartime informal economies in localities, (3) the capacity of local authorities to control, and in some cases, resist efforts of outsiders to mediate conflict, and (4) the capacity of local authorities to regulate commercial transactions with the rest of the world. This study shows that some movements of self-determination in post state collapse environments like Somalia are capable of creating stable polities, but that this accomplishment rests on using social control over wealth and commerce to keep resources to discipline agents who otherwise have an incentive to engage in predation or disrupt this political consolidation.