This course aims to provide students with a grounding in international development concepts, theories and approaches. Students are equipped with the analytical and practical skills they need to engage critically in development issues and debates from an interdisciplinary perspective, and to work across broad areas of development policy, research and practice.

Development in Practice

This specialisation uses place and scale, and the relationships between human populations and their physical environments, as key frameworks for understanding the various dimensions of poverty, inequality and uneven development, as well as techniques and approaches for addressing these challenges. Units in this specialisation explore key contemporary development debates regarding the role of place, power, and practices in development approaches; the challenge of explosive global population growth; the development implications of ‘displaced peoples’; increasing socioeconomic polarisation within and between populations; the role of ecosystems and conflicts around natural resources that affect local and regional development; and the spatially and socially uneven development in the context of major resource extraction projects. This specialisation also introduces you to a suite of tools and frameworks employed by development practitioners at local and regional scales, such as participatory development and rural appraisals.

You'll be well positioned to pursue a career with aid agencies, government, non-government organisations, and international research institutions, such as the FAO and United Nations.