International Development Research Group

Development Studies, and the field of development, is transforming rapidly as conventional understandings of development and geographical boundaries are challenged. In the International Development Research Group (IDRG) we use an empirically based, multidisciplinary approach to grapple with these changes in order to generate new understandings and explanations and advance critical development theory. The research group is rooted in the International Development Studies Program at Roskilde University that was established in 1985. It is the oldest and one of the largest programs of its kind in Scandinavia. IDRG scholars investigate development trends, challenges and achievements in relation to local, national and global inequalities. Emphasizing fieldwork, IDRG draws upon and develops contextual analysis and grounded theorization.

IDRG scholars have expertise in anthropology, area studies, cultural studies, development economics, gender studies, geography, history, international political economy, political science and sociology. Our research currently deals with issues ranging from resource contestations, to global aid flows and neo- and postcolonialism. Much of this work, while still drawing on local and national dynamics, is also concerned with global entanglements. This includes a focus on the proliferation of new actors and technologies in development and the manner in which they impact traditional power hierarchies and reconstitute North-South relations. Further, we prioritize understanding the agents and institutions that can challenge existing hegemonic norms and orders as well as deep-seated inequalities of power, ethnicity, race, gender and class. Projects involving IDRG researchers have been funded by, among others, the Danish Council for Independent Research, Danida, Horizon 2020, the Dutch Research Council, the Carlsberg Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Our current research foci are as follows:

• Policies and practices of international aid flows
• Natural resources, climate change, sustainable development, resource conflicts and environmental politics
• Poverty, economic development and industrial policy
• Dynamic local, national and transnational configurations of state, conflict and citizenship
• Social movements, civil society and radicalism
• Labor markets, informal worker organizations and social protection
• Processes of economic redistribution and global flows
• Human security and humanitarianism
• The complex interrelationships between local actors and global discourses
• Health and the politics of food and nutrition
• Remapping gendered and racial identities
• Impacts of migration and diasporas on the political, economic, social and cultural dynamics of both sending and receiving societies
• Policies and practices in rural and urban development, informality and illegal trade
• South-South development and new actors in development