Development Studies (Research)

The information provided on this page was correct at the time of publication (November 2024). For complete and up-to-date information about this course, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas.

The two-year MPhil in Development Studies will provide you with a rigorous and critical introduction to development as a process of managed and unmanaged change in societies in the Global South. Our students go on to careers in development policy or practice or for further study in the field.

Course objectives
The course will introduce you to development studies as an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary subject. It covers the intellectual history of development, the paradigm shifts and internal conflicts within the discipline and the contemporary relevance of research to development policy and practice.

Course structure
The course comprises five elements: foundation courses, research methods, the core course, the thesis and two option courses.

In the first year, you will study two out of three foundation courses:

Economics
History and Politics
Social Anthropology

If you have no previous training in economics you must take this as one of your foundation courses; otherwise you must take the other two.

You will learn about research methods for the social sciences, comprising sessions on research design and qualitative and quantitative methods. Thesis workshops offer preparation for your research. Additional sessions will be held on aspects of fieldwork ethics and safety, library resources and software and computerised databases.

The core course, also taken in the first year, is an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary course with two component modules:

Theories of Development
Key Themes in Development

You will spend the summer following your first year working on a thesis. You will choose the topic, with the guidance of your supervisor, and, in most cases, spend some of the summer doing research and gathering data.

In the second year, you will take your chosen option courses and continue work on your thesis. More information can be found in the course handbook on the department's course page.