Global Development and Social Justice Research programme
As a leader in the field of development studies, the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) finds responses to today’s global problems. Issues such as poverty, inequality, migration, conflict and ecology are important in the ISS research agenda.
Our Global Development and Social Justice research programme takes a critical approach to policy responses that are formulated to social, economic and political issues. The critical attitude is the result of a deeply felt need to analyse the way in which power differences among groups of people result in policies and practices that are highly beneficial to the powerful and detrimental to the powerless.
Academic Teams
Our research is organized into Academic Teams. These form the intellectual homes of ISS academics and PhD researchers.
The thematic focus of the Academic Teams will foster and showcase the role of ISS in specific broader academic discourses on for example development economics, political ecology, social justice and climate.
Focus on challenges around water, agriculture and food
Teaching, research and publications by the Agrifood, Water and Technologies Academic Team.
Water, Securitization Anxieties and Border Imaginaries
How do ordinary people caught up in situations where water-bodies and border imaginaries are fiercely contested, make sense of their environment and exert agency to navigate and reimagine alternatives at the margins of securitized borders and accelerated environmental change?
Research highlights
Professor Linnet Taylor new Chair in Global Digital Politics at ISS
Leading a team working on the PublicLab: Improving governance of digital experiments project
ISS PhD programme
A creative environment for PhD research into positive social change, global justice and equity
Latest publications by ISS researches
A round-up of latest publications by ISS faculty and PhD researchers
How ISS research makes a difference
Collaborations
Networks, conferences and other research collaborations
Links to teaching
ISS PhD, MA and online programmes
Research values
ISS is committed to a more just social order at a global scale. We combine rigorous academic research with high societal relevance that has the potential to drive action and contribute to change:
- Critical - we use a critical approach and analyze how power relations have produced policies and practices that are highly beneficial to the powerful and detrimental to the powerless
- Participatory - we produce knowledge with stakeholders, rather than only for them and seek to produce knowledge in ways that engage those most affected
- Societally relevant - we work in partnership with others, including NGOs, social movements, and other local, national and global networks and benchmark our research with the needs of society
- Embracing the global North and South - we expect research findings from both areas to inform one another
- Bridging theory and practice - we aim to take our knowledge out into wider world in different ways
- Linking with teaching - we seek to bring the research we undertake into the classroom to inform, challenge and inspire our students