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Environment, people and development

Our research is innovative, transdisciplinary and world-leading.

We focus on the interfaces between environment, people and development. Whether exploring the impact of climate change on the everyday lives of farmers in developing countries, investigating how institutions respond to disasters, or confronting the structural features of underdevelopment, our research addresses fundamental questions about contemporary problems across the world.

We are interested in processes of negotiation, power and politics as understood through economic, social and cultural experiences, and the associated ways in which people make decisions and create meaningful places to live. This has implications for contemporary global debates concerning social differentiation and inequality, ensuring that we have resilient and caring societies, adapting to climate change, and encouraging prosperity.

Our work builds on the long tradition of development research at the University. The Division draws together work from four schools and departments – Agriculture, Economics, Geography and Law – and supports many collaborative projects. With a focus on development issues at the local, national, regional, and international levels, our themes include migration and displacement, climate and disasters, environment and resource sustainability, rights and duties, and institutions and governance.

Upcoming events

See upcoming events within the Prosperity and Resilience theme

Watch a short film of academics from across the University discussing heritage in times of conflict

UN meeting on Prevention of Use of WMDs by Non-State Actors

Child waits at lake to fill up water jugs

Research highlights

The Global Development Division is home to many research projects aiming to tackle global challenges and support the delivery of the UN’s sustainable development goals. Some examples include:

Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA)

Smallholder farmers are key to food security in sub-Saharan Africa, where two thirds of the population depend on small-scale, rain-fed farming as their main source of food and income. But these farmers face high risks and difficult decisions when planning their activities because of highly variable climatic factors such as the amount of rainfall in a growing season, the timing of seasonal changes, and extreme conditions like dry spells and floods.

The PICSA approach links local climate, crop, livestock and livelihood information with participatory planning and decision-making tools for farmers. These tools help them decide the best farming and livelihood options for them, for example when to plant crops.

To date, PICSA has been implemented in 20 countries. More than 2,000 government and NGO extension workers and community volunteers have been trained in the PICSA approach. This includes more than 1,200 farmer promoters in Rwanda, over 350 government extension workers in Malawi, and 75 extension staff in Bangladesh.

Improving security of water supplies in Africa

Secure access by the rural poor to water in Africa is central to the achievement of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. More than 500 million Africans are dependent on groundwater.

With growing demand for its use, the resilience of aquifers in the face of climate, population growth, and changes in land-use is key to ensuring secure access to water. To address these challenges, the Walker Institute is leading the BRAVE project implementation in Ghana and Burkina Faso.

The programme communicates data provided by the Rainwatch platform and aims to help local communities prepare for the challenges related to climate and water in the coming months. A set of groundwater management tools is also being developed with local communities to address their information needs.

Working Better With Whitley

Since 2014, Dr Sally Lloyd-Evans (Geography) has been working alongside residents in the Whitley area of Reading to develop a collective now known as the Whitley Researchers. Armed with participatory research tools, the team is identifying needs within the community to help address issues of economic and social exclusion.

Over the past year they have been extending their work to include young people, parents and schools. In partnership with Reading Borough Council, this phase seeks to understand and highlight young people’s attitudes and aspirations to further education, transitions to work, and their future lives. The methods are fresh, innovative, and often unique. A group of 13-14 year-olds at the John Madejski Academy have become the Whitley Young Researchers who now devise their own research questions and approaches.

For example, they have devised a research tool they call the ‘Aspiration Game’. Based on the familiar board game ‘Snakes and Ladders’, the game facilitates conversation around the barriers and opportunities young people living in Whitley face. It’s already encouraging children as young as seven to think differently about the future.

Homo UNicus: The UN and the Gender Question

The UN Charter envisages a central role for women and requires gender parity across the UN. Those aims are crucial for the UN to have credibility in its work on gender across the world, and for its work, decisions and activities to have legitimacy.

Despite repeated acknowledgement of its gender problems and attempts to address the situation, little has changed at the UN over recent decades. Researchers from the Global Development division are exploring why gender parity remains an elusive goal, the effects of the UN remaining dominated by men in senior leadership roles, and how this can and should be addressed.

The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is supported by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the United Nations.

Listening Zones of NGOs

The Listening Zones project, led by researchers from the University of Reading together with the University of Portsmouth and international NGO INRTRAC, has been exploring the role that languages and cultural knowledge play in the policies and practices of development NGOs. It focuses on languages and power relations in the development process as well as language policies, language provision and best practice for communicating with key audiences and partners. Read this blog post to learn about their recent findings.

Governing inclusive green growth

The Governing Inclusive Green Growth project (GIGGA), lead by Professor Chuks Okereke, Professor of Environment and Development, assessed the key challenges with Green growth in Africa, and seeks to help countries put green initiatives at the centre of their development.

It does this by laying the foundations for a robust assessment and understanding of the dynamics of green growth governance in Africa and the implications for sustainable economic transformation in the continent. It is a multidisciplinary network that includes four UK Universities, African think tanks, civil society organisations and government departments.

In a recent report, the research team assessed more than 950 academic literature papers and 500 high-profile economic activities in Africa, particularly in Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and South Africa, in order to develop a research agenda on governing inclusive green growth in Africa and to inform future ESRC and Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) funding activity. The GIGGA Network project was profiled as part of Green Great Britain Week in 15 October 2018, as a new initiative that seeks to highlight opportunities presented by clean growth and to allow the UK government to support climate action.

See more research highlights

Meet Our Staff

Staff conducting research into Global Development spans four of the University’s schools and departments:

Agriculture, Policy and Development
Economics
Geography
Law

Dr Andrew Ainslie, Lecturer (Agriculture, Policy and Development)

Dr Alex Arnall, Associate Professor (Agriculture, Policy and Development) and Research Division Leader

Dr Sarah Cardey, Associate Professor (Agriculture, Policy and Development)

Dr Graham Clarkson, Senior Research Fellow (Agriculture, Policy and Development)

Dr Jo Davies, Lecturer (Agriculture, Policy and Development)

Professor Peter Dorward (Agriculture, Policy and Development)

Dr Sylvie Dubuc, Lecturer (Human Geography)

Dr Ruth Evans, Associate Professor (Human Geography)

Professor Eleanor Fisher (Agriculture, Policy and Development)

Professor Rosa Freedman, (School of Law)

Dr Hilary Geoghegan, Associate Professor (Human Geography)

Professor Michael Goodman, (Human Geography)

Dr Thomas Grisaffi, Lecturer (Human Geography)

Dr Neha Hui, Postdoctoral Fellow (Economics)

Professor Uma Kambhampati, (Economics)

Dr Sally Lloyd-Evans, Associate Professor (Human Geography)

Dr Stefania Lovo, Lecturer (Economics)

Professor Avril Maddrell (Human Geography)

Dr Filippo Menga, Lecturer (Human Geography)

Dr Steve Musson, Head of Department of Geography and Environmental Science

Dr Henny Osbahr, Associate Professor (Agriculture, Policy and Development)

Dr Thi Anh Tho Pham, Lecturer (Economics)

Dr Sam Poskitt, Postdoctoral Research Assistant (Agriculture, Policy and Development

Dr Samantha Rawlings, Lecturer (Economics)

Dr Freddy van Hulst, Postdoctoral Research Assistant (Agriculture, Policy and Development)

See our staff

Study Opportunities

Undertaking postgraduate studies in Global Development brings significant opportunities for rich intellectual endeavour and transdisciplinary study.

The Global Development Division cuts across several departments offering doctoral students in affiliated schools the opportunity to benefit from supervision and support from across the Division and to find a home within more than one school within the University, if they so desire. Opportunities for global development doctoral research are available in the four schools from which Division members are drawn.

Postgraduate Studies

Contact us

For specific enquiries, please contact:

Dr Alex Arnall

Research Division Lead

Email: a.h.arnall@reading.ac.uk

Telephone: +44 (0)118 378 8369

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