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The Centre for Global Development was established in 1984 as an interdisciplinary network, integrating research and expertise across the University of Leeds, addressing the transformation of human societies in response to critical global challenges such as poverty, inequality and climate change.

We are now a hub for research and engagement on the politics of global development, rooted in the School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS).  We form one of the central pillars of our School's aim to address the politics of global challenges.  We engage with critical understandings of past, present and future global transformations from the local to the global scale.  Intellectually we are unified by a commitment to analysing how politics and power produce and perpetuate multiple intersecting inequalities, as well as exploring  ideas and practices of ‘just’ transformations in human societies.

This work is rooted in critical development studies and the political economy of development.  We are no longer specifically focused on ‘developing’ countries or the ‘Global South’:  the interconnected challenges of poverty, inequality and climate change demand global understandings.

CGD has a long history of interdisciplinarity and membership is open across the University of Leeds.  Our core membership is in POLIS  in the social sciences and in critical development studies, but the nature of development studies means that we rarely work in isolation.  We actively seek collaboration between the natural and physical sciences, engineering, medical sciences and the humanities. Our researchers are actively involved in collaborations and partnerships with external agencies such as the UN, national governments, NGOs and civil society organisations.