East Asian Development and the Global Economy (Taught)

Delve into an advanced, critical exploration of East Asia’s transformation and its role in twenty-first-century world affairs. Examine how political, economic and social change across the region intersects with and reshapes global structures, uncovering the opportunities, challenges and strategic questions this interaction creates for governments, firms, and communities.

East Asia is now central to debates about the future of global capitalism. Core teaching grounds you in the region’s historical and contemporary trajectories, enabling you to trace the forces that propelled rapid industrialisation, technological leadership and shifting patterns of welfare and inequality.

Engage with competing explanations of East Asian success and interrogate claims that global capitalism is entering a period of deepening crisis, using the region as a lens through which to test and refine wider theories of international political economy.

Focus on power relations to reveal how trade, finance, and investment flows knit East Asian economies together and connect them to other parts of the world. Explore emerging hierarchies within the region, changing relationships between East Asia and the Global North and South, and the strategic calculations that shape regional and international institutions.

Challenge commonly held Eurocentric assumptions about what development is and how it can be achieved, cultivating an informed, critical stance on policy debates that influence billions of lives.

Be inspired by internationally recognised scholars whose research animates seminar discussions and supervises individual enquiry. Lively classroom debate within a diverse postgraduate cohort equips you to articulate your own authentic scholarly voice while honing the analytical skills valued by governmental, inter-governmental and non-governmental organisations engaged with East Asia.

Write a dissertation through which you design and manage a substantial research project, apply theoretical frameworks to empirical evidence, and present findings to the highest academic standard.

Graduate with a nuanced grasp of East Asia’s development experience, a rigorous command of international political economy, and the capacity to apply your knowledge to political, social and environmental challenges both within the region and across the world.