Departmental website: lse.ac.uk/internationalDevelopment|
Number of graduate students (full-time equivalent)
Taught: 214
Research: 31
Number of faculty (full-time equivalent): 21
RAE: 60% of the Department's research was rated world leading or internationally excellent
Location: Connaught House
About the Department
The Department of International Development was established in 1990 to promote interdisciplinary graduate teaching and research on processes of social, political and economic development and change. The Department is dedicated to understanding problems of poverty and late development within local communities, national political and economic systems and in the international system.
All faculty members are associated with top ranked departments in the 2008 HEFCE Research Assessment Exercise. Members of the Department have considerable experience of living and working in the developing world and most have engaged in policy relevant research and consultancy work with international development agencies or non-governmental organisations.
Students in our MSc and research programmes come from all over the world and have found employment in a wide variety of government, non-government, academic and private sector organisations working in the developing world.
There are four clusters of interdisciplinary research expertise within Department of International Development:
-
Complex Emergencies and Humanitarian Responses
-
Development Management
-
Governance
-
Political Economy
Staff and their academic interests
-
Professor Tim Allen: Complex emergencies; ethnic conflict; media and war; forced migration; health and healing; development/aid agencies; ethics of aid; East Africa; HIV/AIDS, neglected tropical diseases, the International Criminal Court, and humanitarianism.
-
Dr Mayling Birney: Comparative politics and political economy; authoritarian politics; institutional development and democratisation; governance and rule of law; decentralisation; state-society relations; China.
-
Professor Stuart Corbridge: Development theory; history of development studies; political economy of development in India; civil and political society in India; right to information; accountability and governance; political ecology.
-
Professor Tim Dyson: Fertility and mortality trends – determinants and consequences; changes in population size, and age and sex composition; world food prospects; famine demography; population and development interactions; the demography of the Indian subcontinent, past, present and future; causes and consequences of climate change; mortality trends in Iraq.
-
Dr Jean-Paul Faguet: Political economy and development economics; institutional economics; comparative politics; public economics; violence and development; governance and decentralisation; foreign aid effectiveness and institutional reform; economics and politics of Latin America; 'Q2' methods of social research.
-
Tasha Fairfield: Democracy and inequality; taxation; development; business politics; Latin America.
-
Dr Tim Forsyth: Environment and development; environmental governance; science and technology studies; climate change policy; community forestry; civil society and public-private collaboration; South and Southeast Asia.
-
Dr Stuart Gordon: Securitisation of humanitarian and development
assistance; stabilisation and stability operations; complex emergencies; humanitarianism; health and conflict; disaster preparedness/recovery; Afghanistan; civilian status in conflict.
-
Dr Lloyd Gruber: Globalisation, inequality, and redistribution; international and comparative political economy; global governance; regional integration; institutional design; US foreign economic policy.
-
Dr Nilima Gulrajani: Organisational dynamics and international development; performance management and aid effectiveness; comparative public administration and development policy making.
-
Professor Jude Howell: Politics of civil society and international development; security, civil society and aid post-9/11 (Afghanistan, Kenya, India, US and UK); comparative politics; governance and civil society in China; labour organising and trades unions in China and India; female political participation in China.
-
Professor Mary Kaldor: New wars; human security; global civil society; oil wars; Balkans, Caucasus, Iraq and Afghanistan.
-
Professor David Keen: Famine; civil war; human rights; Sudan; Sierra Leone; 'war on terror'; ex-combatants; peace.
-
Dr Shirin Madon: IS in developing countries; e-government and telecentre projects for development; integrated health information systems in developing countries.
-
Dr Kate Meagher: Informal economies, social networks, informal institutions; internal associations and political voice; vigilantism and organised crime; rural social and economic change, non-form activities; new religious movements; Nigeria, West Africa; East Africa, Southern Africa.
-
Professor Thandika Mkandawire: Development theory; social policy and development, political economy of development in Africa; democracy, governance and economic policy.
-
Professor James Putzel: Politics of development; crisis states and state building; agrarian institutions and change; political dimensions of the HIV/AIDS epidemic; Southeast Asia, especially the Philippines; Central and East Africa.
-
Rajesh Venugopal: Ethnic conflict, development/aid; South Asia; nationalism; post-conflict reconstruction; liberal peace-building; state-businenss relations; non-traditional donors.
-
Dr Sandra Sequeira: Corruption; infrastructure; experimental economics; private sector development; corporate social responsibility.
-
Dr Kenneth Shadlen: Political economy of development; international and regional trade and investment; intellectual property; international debt; international institutions; Latin America.
-
Professor Robert Wade: Globalisation; economic growth and world income distribution; multilateral regimes for trade and finance; multilateral organisations, especially World Bank and WTO; capital markets and financial crises; east Asia; politics of environmental protection; how economists think.
-
Dr Diana Weinhold: growth, trade and FDI; land use, environment and development; applied econometrics.
Opportunities for research
The Department of International Development has established a vibrant research students' programme with students employing a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to research across Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and internationally. The Department hosts ESRC graduate and Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE) studentships and current students have secured scholarships from a wide variety of sources.
Prospective students should have a strong academic record and graduate training or work experience demonstrating a high standard of achievement. This includes grounding in one of the social science disciplines and languages necessary for the proposed research.
During the first year, students acquire further methodological training, language skills, and background knowledge of specific topics related to their research by following graduate courses at the Department or in the School. Students who have not taken their MSc in the Department may be required to study, and to qualify in, courses from the Department of International Development's MSc programmes. All students work closely with a faculty supervisor to develop a detailed proposal for their dissertation project, which is examined at the end of the academic year. By the end of the second year, MPhil students will have completed their research and written up their dissertation, while students working on a PhD will have completed all research. By the end of the third year, PhD students should have completed their dissertation or be near to completion.
Students participate together with faculty in regular research seminars where ongoing work is presented and debated.
Research students have linked their projects to work with the UN Development Programme, the World Bank and other bilateral and multilateral development agencies, as well as with leading non-governmental organisations.
Taught programmes
In addition to the programmes listed above, the Department contributes to: