News

Development Studies PhD student Promise Ejiofor has won the Conflict Research Society's 2025 Cedric Smith Prize for his paper 'Gendercide and Terrorism Studies'. Promise's research explores incidents of gendercide against men and boys in Africa's Lake Chad region, arguing that the concept of gendercide should be expanded beyond its current focus on…

Dr Ilias Alami, in collaboration with Dr Jess DiCarlo, Prof Seth Schindler, and Dr Steve Rolf, has published a new essay in the 2025 State of Power report of the Transnational Institute. The essay examinesthe US-China battle for control of global networks. In this Second Cold War, geopolitical competition is no longer a fight over territory but rat…

Development Studies MPhil Director Dr Jostein Hauge has recently made several media appearances to discuss recent developments in trade and international economics. Firstly, Dr Hauge appeared on the Cyrus Janssen YouTube channel to discuss China’s economic transformation and the US-China trade war.This discussion can be seen here: https://youtu.be/…

Dr. Yunan Xu, in collaboration with Chunyu Wang, Jingzhong Ye, Sai Sam Kham, Doi Ra, Jennifer C. Franco, and Saturnino M. Borras Jr., has published a new article titled "Migrant Labour Flows and Interconnected Agrarian Transformations in Southern China"in Agriculture and Human Values.The study examines how two key land-related labour flows—rural-to…

Congratulations to Luiz Fernando Toledo, the joint-fourth most awarded journalist in Brazil in 2024. Luiz Fernando Toledo is a Development Studies research assistant working on the project ‘The Prison Consensus: Incarceration, Investment and Inequality in Brazil’, with Professor Graham Denyer Willis, Dr Pedro Mendes Loureiro and Dr Bruna Angotti.

Dr Ekin Kurtic has co-edited a new book titled 'Material Politics in Turkey: Infrastructure, Science, and Expertise'. This book explores the role of material entities and processes in shaping political lives in Turkey. The unifying thread of its chapters is to challenge the rendering of the material world as a mere background to or object in politi…

Dr. Yunan Xu has recently published an article in collaboration with Prof. Yiyuan Chen, titled " The agrochemical complex of China" in the Journal of Peasant Studies. This article provides an overview of existing studies and the historical development trajectories of China’s agrochemical industry.The authors propose a new framework that integrates …

Development Studies academic Dr Jostein Hauge has been cited by name in the Guardian's 19th of January editorial on development. Titled 'The Guardian view on development’s paradox: the rich benefit more than the poor', this editorial references Dr Hauge's book The Future of the Factory to discuss issues of market access and ecology. Building on Dr …

Development Studies PhD Student Baptiste Albertone has published a new article in the Review of International Political Economy. The article is titled Lost principles of a ‘sustainable developmentalism’, and it covers the 70s and 80s critical turn in developmental thinking. Albertone argues that the eco-development concept of this time form the fou…

Dr Jostein Hauge's article 'The free trade myth: how the US manipulates global markets for economic supremacy' has now been read 250,0000 times. This makes it 2023's most read piece published by a University of Cambridge academic on theconversation.com. The article has been read across Indonesia, the Philippines, the USA, Vietnam and Brazil and rep…

Collaborating with Rebecca Tapscott, Development Studies PhD student Daniel Rincon-Machon has published a new article on ethics in social science research. The article has been published by the Journal of Peace Research. See below for Daniel's short description of his work.Social scientists conducting research with people (so-called, "human subject…

Dr Ilias Alami's newest book, The Spectre of State Capitalism, has just been published by Oxford University Press. Co-written with Prof. Adam D. Dixon, Dr Alami's new book provides a comprehensive study of the material, discursive, and ideological dimensions of the ongoing reconfiguration of the state's role as promoter, supervisor, shareholder-inv…

We're happy to announce that Dr Marthe Achtnich has won the BISA Susan Strange Best Book Prize for Mobility Economies in Europe’s Borderlands: Migrants’ Journeys through Libya and the Mediterranean. The Susan Strange Best Book Prize is awarded annually for an outstanding book published in any field of International Studies.The judging panel release…

Ana Rojo Fierro is an incoming PhD candidate for our 2024-25 academic year. Gates Cambridge has awarded her a full-cost scholarship on the grounds of 'outstanding intellectual ability'."I was born and raised in Mexico, a country with boundless cultural and natural richness, but which has been disrupted by almost two decades of conflict. To understa…

The shortlist for this year's Susan Strange Best Book Prize includes Dr Marthe Achtnich's new book Mobility Economies in Europe’s Borderlands: Migrants’ Journeys through Libya and the Mediterranean. The Susan Strange Best Book Prize is awarded for an outstanding book published in any field of International Studies. The winner of the prize will be a…