COURSE CURRICULUM

The Global Development degree is an interdisciplinary program designed to equip students with a critical understanding of the world’s most urgent challenges, including poverty, inequality, climate change, food security, and conflict. In the first year, students explore key questions around global living standards, sustainability, and democracy, while learning about the roles of institutions, power structures, and social movements in shaping development. Core modules introduce important theoretical frameworks and encourage students to analyse complex global issues from political, economic, social, and cultural perspectives.In the second year, students build on this foundation by studying the politics of development in greater depth, and engaging with diverse regional and thematic modules. Compulsory modules such as Media, Communication and Social Change and Culture and Power explore how ideas and information influence behaviour, identity, and power relations in development contexts. Students are encouraged to think critically about whose voices are heard in global development, and how development policies and interventions are shaped.The third year offers a transformative opportunity to gain practical experience through a 9–12 month work placement with a development organisation. This placement enables students to apply their academic learning in real-world settings, develop key professional skills, and gain insight into career paths within the development field.In the final year, students have the flexibility to choose from a wide range of specialised modules that reflect contemporary global challenges, such as war, humanitarian crises, and peacebuilding. Students also have the option to undertake a dissertation, allowing for independent research into a development topic of personal interest.