We're a young and innovative development studies department. Our research agenda challenges conventional views on international development, engaging with global political economy and regional, localised knowledge. Our department focuses especially on middle-income economies in the Global South to explore how development processes and policies create inequalities at multiple scales, with attention to politics and power.
Our research expertise
Our research draws from a wide range of the social, political and economic sciences and humanities, with expertise and insight from their work in different parts of the world. We go beyond multi or interdisciplinarity to debate, challenge and expand disciplinary boundaries through our various critiques of disciplinary mainstream norms.
We research inequality in dynamic, middle-income contexts through deep engagements with both global political economy and regional and localized knowledge. We explore challenges and contradictions related to structural transformation at global and national levels, including uneven development, poverty, and geographical, class, racial, and gender inequalities.
Our research work has received financial support from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Medical Research Council (MRC), Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme Trust, British Academy, various United Nations agencies, and other funders.
We also have strong regional expertise and collaborations in Asia, Latin America, Middle East, and Africa.
Recent publications
- Dispossession, Refugees, and Migrant Labour in the Middle East and Palestine, by Dr Rafeef Ziadah and others (2025)
- Importing export zones: Processes and impacts of replicating a Chinese model of urbanisation in rural south India, by Dr Charlotte Goodburn and Jan Knoerich (2025)
- Motivational Investments and Financial Incentives, by Prof Zaki Wahhaj (2025)
- No Development (Economics or Studies) Without Decolonisation, by Dr Devika Dutt (2025)
- Re-framing popular governance in Brazil: Re-insurgent and entrepreneurial arrangements in the urban peripheries, by Dr Aiko Ikemura Amaral and others (2025)
- What challenges for global development research are posed by a more decolonial approach? Colonial genealogies and responses, by Prof Laura Camfield (2025)
- ‘Threatening Dystopias’: Taking an agrarian view of climate adaptation in the Sundarbans, by Dr Nithya Natarajan (2025)
- A Chip War Made in Germany? US Techno‐Dependencies, China Chokepoints, and the German Semiconductor Industry, by Dr Sean Kenji Starrs and others (2024)
- Africa's global infrastructures: south-south transformations in practice, by Dr Barnaby Dye and others (2024)
- Amman: An Incubator City, by Dr Mayssoun Sukarieh (2024)
- An mRNA technology transfer programme and economic sustainability in health care, by Dr Devika Dutt and others (2024)
- A progressive excess profit tax for the European Union, by Dr Ben Tippet and others (2024)
- Climate coercion and resistance, by Dr Ambarish Karamchedu (2024)
- Conceptualising Chinese transnational infrastructure projects in Europe and beyond, by Dr Florian Schaefer and others (2024)
- Conflict Abroad and Political Trust at Home: Evidence from a Natural Experiment, by Dr Margaryta Klymak and others (2024)
- Debris. Autoethnography, Feminist Epistemology, Ethics, and Sexual Violence, by Prof Jelke Boesten and others (2024)
See a full list of our publications