How Bath’s Centre for Development Studies is leading international impact
As emerging economies reshape power dynamics and demand greater agency, academics at Bath are rethinking what development means in a multipolar world.
Centre for Development Studies
We advance interdisciplinary research on global challenges for a just and sustainable world. Our work links policy, practice, and activism.
What is the Centre for Development Studies (CDS)?
Who we are: We’re a collection of interdisciplinary researchers addressing challenges of economic transformations and social justice.
What we do: Our work takes on the interconnected but differentiated challenges faced by global societies in the 21st century. We focus on resources and the environment, labour, inequality, and conflict in a changing global order.
Why we matter: We have a 50-year legacy of linking local and global insights to actions that help to deliver a more just and sustainable world. Our research generates progressive ideas on the political economy of resources and food, environment and sustainability governance, labour, poverty and inequalities, and conflict and humanitarianism.
Read more about CDS
Our research themes
Our interdisciplinary research spans a number of international development topics.
We explore crises in aid, supply chains, employment and social protection, governance, power, and collective action.
Some of our key areas are:
- resources, energy and food
- just transitions and environmental governance
- labour and Inequalities
- conflict and humanitarianism
CDS Research spotlight
Find out about our research and its impact in key areas.
Report highlights systemic challenges of child protection for refugee children living in Middle East
The study, authored by our Centre for Development Studies, drew on children and caregivers’ experiences of neglect in Jordan and the Gaza Strip, Palestine.
University of Bath film, ‘Cobalt Rush’, screened at United Nations
Award-winning documentary shown at UN event to expose the ‘invisible’ working conditions in the multi-billion dollar cobalt industry.
News
Our upcoming events and recent output.
Film on famine, conflict and survival in Sudan to be screened in Bath
Free Festival of Social Science event will feature a documentary filmed in the Nuba Mountains and a panel discussion.
Famine Studies Conference 2026
We are glad to announce a Famine Studies Conference that will be hosted online by the University of Bath and Wageningen University in December 2026.
Can a basic income keep rainforests standing? University of Bath researchers are finding out
Researchers partner with climate change charity Cool Earth in world-first basic income pilot for indigenous people
Global crises, development and development studies: still relevant after all these years
CDS symposium questions the relevance of development studies in the present day
ECR project on 'The Everyday Politics of Famine'
A comparative ethnographic research project in Sudan, Somalia and South Sudan to explore why famine continues and the everyday realities of famine.
Prof Roy Maconachie and Dr Pankhuri Agarwal Discuss Deadly Tobacco Industry in New Podcast
Louis Laurence speaks with Prof Roy Maconachie and Dr Pankhuri Agarwal about the experiences of farmers who produce tobacco in often exploitative conditions
Outputs
Find a complete list of and read our CDS research outputs.
Centre for Development Studies Blog
Read about the work of our researchers in our blog series.
Bath Papers in International Development
The Bath Papers in International Development is a series of papers published by CDS.
Centre for Development Studies Report Series
The Centre for Development Studies Report Series is a series of papers published by CDS.
The BRID Fund
Bath Research in International Development (BRID).
Bath Research in International Development (BRID) Fund
The BRID Fund is designed to help students and researchers engage with international development policy and practice.
BRID Doctoral Funding
10 awards available for doctoral students to access up to £2000 to cover fieldwork or conference costs.
Events
Find out more about our upcoming events.
Famine Studies Conference 2026
2 Dec 2026 9.00am
Online
Explore how famines, past and present, are caused and shaped by politics at this conference, co-hosted by the University of Bath and Wageningen University.
Work with us
We welcome collaboration with researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and partners across different sectors, in areas like:
- joint research on funded projects
- policy advocacy
- master’s student placements within organisations
- co-designing curricula for remote teaching
- visiting opportunities
If you want to work with us, contact us at: cds@bath.ac.uk
About us
We bring together staff, students, and associates who share a commitment to understanding development - defined as both a human aspiration and a historical process - operating across multiple levels and disciplines.
We are part of the Department of Social & Policy Sciences at Bath.
Contact us
Get in touch to find out more about our research.