Unit of Assessment 22
Anthropology and Development Studies

Our Global Development Research Division is committed to producing socially engaged research to address the multi-scaled and multi-causal development challenges that confront contemporary societies in both the Majority and Minority worlds. It draws together researchers from international development, agriculture and rural development, human and development geography, development economics and human rights to build on our strong, existing intellectual roots and consolidate multi- and trans-disciplinary research on global development.

• Ranked 9th in UK by Grade Point Average (research quality).
• Ranked 4th for impact.
• 91% of our research overall rated 4* (world-leading) and 3* (internationally excellent).
• 100% of our research impact is rated 4* (outstanding) and 3* (with considerable significance).

We work on four distinctive and inter-related research strands:

• Livelihoods, land and agriculture: Our research critically analyses the relationships between the growing and eating of food, processes of food security across diverse geographical contexts and scales, and climate and environmental dynamics. Areas of strength include evidence-based planning and decision-making by smallholder farmers; local environmental and social governance; and analysis of conflict and contestation over livelihoods at the local, city and national scales.
• Politics of environmental governance: We analyse multi-scaled environmental politics through a comprehensive, inclusive and global accounting of environmental governance across low-, middle- and high-income countries. Active areas of research include climate change politics, water resource governance and local-scale politics and practices of climate change mitigation, resilience and adaptation.
• Gender, care and wellbeing: Our work examines everyday gender relations, human rights, questions of work and care for others. We work on a number of topics at the household scale, including differential family strategies to social mobility, the cultural factors and gendered attitudes that influence work and education choices, and gendered and intergenerational dynamics in land access and inheritance.
• Empowerment and participation: Our research produces on-the-ground impacts through co-produced research processes and methodological innovation. Empowering and participatory research is core to our approach and we are a centre of excellence for participatory research theory, practice, innovation and communication.

Staff and doctoral students

We submitted 19 staff in UOA22, including 7 Professors, 5 Associate Professors, 5 Lecturers and 2 Research Fellows; overall 16% are ECRs.

Over the assessment period for REF2021, 70 students were awarded their doctorate. We typically have about 45 doctoral students at any one time; in 2019/20 they came from 30 different countries.

Research projects and partnerships

• Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA), a participatory approach for climate services and agricultural extension in Africa
• NERC Community for Engaging Environments, working with UK communities to develop meaningful engagement with environmental science
• Transnational Families in Europe, investigating the relationships between care, inequalities and wellbeing among different generations of transnational families
• Everyday life, environmental change and small island states, explores how daily changes in the physical environment intersect and connect with people's everyday lives, routines and practices in the Maldives
• Deathscapes and Diversity in Multicultural England and Wales, investigates the politics and practices of migrant and minority cemetery and crematoria provision
• Whitley Researchers, involves local residents in conducting their own research, voicing their own needs and devising solutions to local issues.

Sector recognition

Selected examples of national and international recognition between 2014 and 2020:

• Member of the UN Secretary-General's Civil Society Advisory Board (Professor Rosa Freedman, 2019 to present)
• Specialist Adviser to the International Development Select Committee (Professor Rosa Freedman, 2019 to present)
• Secretary to the Development Studies Association; Member of DSA Council (Professor Uma Kambhampati, 2019 to present)

Examples of the impact our research has had at local, national and global levels.