Executive Master in Development Policy

Our lecturers

Study with renowned professors from leading Universities and Key Experts…

The high quality of the programme rests above all on its participating faculty. Ceris has developed an extensive network of contacts with renowned scholars drawn from leading academic and research institutions and with key experts from international organisations. This pooling of resources provides a high-profile professorial corps which few institutions could provide on their own. Every year, the programme is supported by thirty experts from such academic institutions as the University of Oxford (London), School of Oriental and African Studies – SOAS (University of London), Erasmus University (Rotterdam), International Institute of Social Studies – ISS (Den Haag), Transnational Institute (Amsterdam), Manchester Metropolitan University, University of Limerick, University of London City, University of East Anglia, University of Birmingham, University of Goettingen, Royal Holloway (University of London), the London School of Economics and Political Science – LSE (University of London), Free University of Amterdam, Royal Museum for Central Africa (Tervuren), Royal African Society – RAS (London),  American Universities such as Harvard, Princeton and College of William and Mary.

Richard Caplan is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Centre for International Studies. He is also an Official Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford University. His principal research interests are concerned with international organisations and conflict management, with a particular focus on peacekeeping and ‘post-conflict’ peace- and state-building. He is the author and editor of several books, among them Europe’s New Nationalism: States and Minorities in Conflict (Oxford University Press, 1996); A New Trusteeship? The International Administration of War-torn Territories (IISS/Routledge, 2002); Europe and the Recognition of New States in Yugoslavia (Cambridge University Press, 2005); International Governance of War-torn Territories: Rule and Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, 2005); and Exit Strategies and State Building (Oxford University Press, 2012). Professor Caplan has served as a Specialist-Advisor to the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs in the UK House of Commons; a Research Associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS); and New York Director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR). He has also served as a consultant to the UN Peacebuilding Support Office (PBSO) and to various national governments. [read more]

Professor Laura Hammond is Pro-Director of Research and Knowledge Exchange and Professor of Development Studies at SOAS. She has been conducting research on conflict, food security, refugees, migration and diasporas in and from the Horn of Africa since the early 1990s. She lived in Ethiopia from 1993-2000, conducting research and working for the UN Emergencies Unit for Ethiopia (the precursor to UNOCHA). Among her research activities, she is PI of the Impact Acceleration Account on Migration, Displacement, Minorities and Marginalisation. She is also Co-Director of the Work Package on Poverty and Inequalities for the Migration for Development and Equality (MIDEQ) Research Hub on South-South Migration. She is Team Leader of the EU Trust Fund’s Research and Evidence Facility on migration and conflict in the Horn of Africa, and Team Leader of the London International Development Centre’s Migration Leadership Team. She has done consultancy for a wide range of development and humanitarian organisations, including UNDP, USAID, Oxfam, Medécins Sans Frontières, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the World Food Programme. [read more]

Alfredo Saad-Filho is Professor of Political Economy and International Development in the Department of International Development at King’s college, London. Previously, he was Professor of Political Economy at School of Oriental & African Studies – SOAS, University of London; Chair of the SOAS Department of Development Studies (2006-10); Head of SOAS Doctoral School (2018-19); and Senior Economic Affairs Officer at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (2011-12). Alfredo was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Medal from the Federal University of Goiás, Brazil in 2014 and the SOAS Director’s Teaching Prize in 2016. He has degrees in Economics from the University of Brasília (Brazil) and SOAS University of London and has taught in universities and research institutions in Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mozambique, Switzerland and the UK.  His academic publications include nine authored or edited books, 70 journal articles and 50 book chapters, as well as 30 reports and other contributions for the United Nations and other international agencies (UNCTAD, UNDP, UN-ESCWA, and UN-DESA). His work has been published in 15 languages and presented over 200 academic events in 30 countries. These writings range across critiques of the (Post-)Washington consensus; IMF and WB policies and pro-poor policy alternatives. [read more]

Nikita Sud is Professor of the Politics of Development at the University of Oxford. She is Governing Body Fellow and Vicegerent of Wolfson College, and a faculty member of the Oxford Department of International Development. She is an inter-disciplinary scholar, educated at the Universities of Delhi and Oxford. Nikita’s research centres on the making of the state, space, and nature in the Global South, with a particular focus on Asia. Her current research investigates nature in green energy transitions in South, South East and East Asia. Alongside publications in Geography, Environment, Development Studies, and Agrarian Studies journals, this research is encapsulated in the monograph “The Making of Land and The Making of India” (Oxford University Press, 2021). Previously, she has written on the Indian state, in particular, its engagement with development as an idea and in practice; its interaction with minorities based on gender, caste and religion; and the reinvention rather than recession of this entity under economic liberalisation. This long-term research resulted in her 2012 book, “Liberalization, Hindu Nationalism and the State: A Biography of Gujarat“, which was widely reviewed. [read more]

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele is a Scientific adviser to the United Nations conferences on climate issues,  he is a Belgian scientist specializing in modeling climate and the climate effects of human activities. He is a Professor at the UCL (Université Catholique de Louvain-La-Neuve) where he teaches climatology and environmental sciences and directs the Master programme in Science and Management of the Environment. He was also Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – IPCC during the 5th cycle of evaluation, from September 2008 to October 2015 and he is a member of the Belgian Federal Council for Sustainable Development. He received several prizes: “Energy and environment award” by the International Polar Foundation, the “Francqui Chair” from the ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles). Recent publications : “Meeting report of the IPCC Expert Meeting on Communication”. Geneva: World Meteorological Organization, IPCC, 2016, “Comparison of one-moment and two-moment bulk microphysics for high-resolution climate simulations of intense precipitation” : Atmos. Research, 2014, “Une vie au cœur des turbulences climatiques” [in French], Bruxelles, De Boeck supérieur, 2015. [read more]

Mr. John Sauven is the executive director at Greenpeace UK. he joined the organisation in the early 1990 and became involved in the campaigns to ban underground nuclear testing in the Pacific and in the campaigns against Trident in the UK. Mr. John Sauven contributed to the development of Greenpeace’s “Greenfreeze” campaign for better standards in refrigeration to protect the ozone layer. He also contributed to the promotion of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) as part of Greenpeace’s forest campaign meant to support the buying of legal and sustainable timber and paper. Sauven was the leader of the global campaign to stop the expansion of soya in the Amazon rainforest, leading to a historic victory when a moratorium was agreed on further deforestation by the large multinational corporations like Cargill. He is also a regular contributor to The Guardian in the UK. Currently he is helping to strategise action-led, non-violent initiatives to save the North Pole from Big Oil. Mr. John Sauven advocates urgent action to protect the area of sea ice around the North Pole, which is currently not national territory, by designating the area a ‘global commons’, collectively owned by humanity under the auspices of the United Nations.” In specialising on solutions and working with business. [read more]

Professor David Sogge works as an independent scholar based in Amsterdam, where he is affiliated with the Transnational Institute, on whose Board he served. He was also associated with the Norwegian think-tank on peace-making, NOREF. His professional activities since 1970, under assignments related to foreign aid, took him to Vietnam, Eastern Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union, although most of his work centred on southern Africa, especially Angola and Mozambique. Among his books are Compassion and Calculation. The Business of Private Foreign Aid; Mozambique: Perspectives on Aid and the Civil Sector; and Give and Take. What’s the Matter with Foreign Aid. He has contributed chapters to Introduction to International Development Studies (Oxford University Press), The Oxford Encyclopaedia of the Modern World, and the Handbook on the Economics of Foreign Aid. Today he serves as a guest lecturer in development studies at the University of Amsterdam and the Free University of Brussels, as well as at academic encounters elsewhere, particularly in Brazil. Trained at Harvard College, David earned his graduate degrees from Princeton University and the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, today part of Erasmus University, Rotterdam.  [read more]

Professor Theodore Trefon is the Director of the Belgian Reference Centre for Expertise for Central Africa (E-CA — CRE-AC) and heads the Contemporary History Section of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium. He teaches at ERAIFT “Ecole Régionale Post-Universitaire d’Aménagement et de Gestion Intégrés des Forêts et Territoires tropicaux” at the University of Kinshasa. His area of expertise covers DR Congo and he focuses on the issues of state-society relations, forest-city links, urban anthropology and environmental governance. He is also a Research Coordinator for the Forest-City Interface dimension of APFT. Among his published books we cite: Goma : Stories of Strength and Sorrow from Eastern Congo, (Zed Books, 2018), Theodore Trefon and Noël Kabuyaya; Congo Masquerade. The Political Culture of Aid inefficiency and Reform Failure, African Arguments (Zed Books, 2011), Theodore Trefon; Reinventing Order in the Congo. How people respond to state failure in Kinshasa, (Zed Books, 2004), Theodore Trefon and Parcours administratifs dans un Etat en faillite: Récits de Lubumbashi (RDC), Les Cahiers de l’Institut Africain/L’Harmattan (with B. Ngoy). [read more]

Professor Anastasia Nesvetailova is Head of Macroeconomics and Political Development Department, UNCTAD, Geneva and Professor of International Political Economy at City University of London. She was Director of City Political Economy Research Centre – CITYPERC. Anastasia is a research specialist in International Political Economy. Her areas of interest cover finance and financial crises, globalisation and governance and her current research focuses on the themes of global financial fragility and crises, the formation of financial and monetary policies, and the process of capitalist evolution in Russia and other FSU countries. She is a former lecturer at the Centre for Global Political Economy of the University of Sussex. Professor Nesvetailova is the author of Fragile Finance: “Debt, Speculation and Crisis in the Age of Global Credit” (Palgrave, 2007) and “Financial Alchemy in Crisis: The Great Liquidity Illusion” (Pluto, 2010). She is a co-editor of “Global Finance in the New Century” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), “International Political Economy: A Reader” (Sage, 2007). Her latest book (January 2020): Sabotage: The Hidden Nature of Finance” or “Sabotage: The Business of Finance“, edited with Ronen Palan. [read more]

Daniel Large is professor at Central European University (CEU). Before joining SPP, Dr. Large was research director of the Africa-Asia Centre, Royal African Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He has been a research associate with the South African Institute of International Affairs, a visiting researcher at the Danish Institute of International Studies, a visiting lecturer at the Centre Européen de Recherches Internationales et Stratégiques (CERIS), Brussels, and project director of the Rift Valley institute’s digital Sudan Open Archive.  He has also worked for or consulted with a variety of international organizations. Dr. Large is a currently a Fellow of the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS-CARI), and a Fellow of the Rift Valley Institute. His research interests include the politics of development, security and intervention; China and India’s relations with Africa; African politics and international politics (particularly east and north Africa); and the politics of the global South. At SPP, Dr. Large teaches the core course Introduction to Global Governance and Public Policy and elective courses covering the politics of the global South. He is also the Public Policy Track Representative in CEU’s Doctoral School of Political Science, Public Policy and International Relations. [read more]

Thierry Vircoulon is a graduate of the National School of Administration (Ecole Nationale d’administration – ENA), the Institute for Political Studies in Paris and the Sorbonne University in Political Science. For 20 years, his work has focused on conflicts, security and governance issues in Africa. Most of his work is focusing on governance, security sector reform and the linkage between conflicts and natural resources. He has been part of several international groups of thematic experts (UNODC, OECD and UA/EU) and he is the author and co-author of several books on South Africa and Democratic Republic of Congo. He is presently senior consultant for the think tank International Crisis Group, he is coordinating the Observatory for Central and Southern Africa for the Paris based think tank IFRI (French Institute for International Affairs) and he is an expert of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime (South Africa). Thierry Vircoulon has taught a Master’s course on security issues in Sub-Saharan Africa at the Institute for Political Studies (Sciences-Po). He has worked for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the European Commission on the African continent, particularly in South Africa, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. [read more]

Admasu Shiferaw is Assistant Professor of Economics and Africana Studies at The College of William and Mary, USA.  Admasu Shiferaw joined the College of William and Mary in the Fall of 2011 as a faculty member of the Economics Department and the Africana Studies program. Before that Admasu has been a research fellow at the Courant Research Center, University of Goettingen, Germany; and a lecturer at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research interests are in development economics, industry dynamics and international competitiveness. His recent research includes firm level analysis of productivity, investment and employment dynamics in Sub-Saharan Africa. Admasu enjoys teaching development economics, African economic development, and econometrics. Admasu received his undergraduate degree from Alemaya University, Ethiopia and his M.A and Ph.D in Development Economics from the International Institute of Social Studies-ISS Den Haag of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands. [read more]

Professor Ronen Palan (BSc. Econ, LSE, PhD LSE) joined City University London in September 2012. Prior to this he has been a professor of IPE at the University of Birmingham and Sussex University, and a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He was a founding editor of the Review of International Political Economy (RIPE) and member of the Fellow and Promotion Committee at the Institute of Development Studies, Brighton. Professor’s Palan’s work lies at the intersection between international relations, political economy, political theory, sociology and human geography. He wrote a number of books and numerous articles, book chapters and encyclopaedia entries on the subject of Offshore and Tax havens, state theory and international political economic theory. His work has been translated to Chinese, simple and complex characters, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, Russian, Italian, Azeri and Czech. He is a visiting professor at several Universities including the Central European University-Budapest, Hebrew University-Jerusalem, York University-Toronto, CERIS-ULB Diplomatic  School of Brussels and Centre pour la Recherche Economique et ses applications-CEPREMAP-Paris. [read more]

Andrew Martin Fischer is Professor of Inequality, Social Protection and Development at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, part of Erasmus University Rotterdam. He is also the Scientific Director of CERES, The Dutch Research School for International Development; co-editor of the journal “Development and Change”; and founding editor of the Oxford University Press book series “Critical Frontiers of International Development Studies”. His latest book, “Poverty as Ideology” (Zed, 2018), was awarded the International Studies in Poverty Prize by the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) and Zed Books and, as part of the award, is now fully open access. Trained in demography and development economics, Fischer works extensively on poverty, inequality, social policy, and international development. He earned his Ph.D. in Development Studies from the London School of Economics (LSE) for his research on China’s regional development strategies in western China and their impact on ethnic minorities, principally Tibetans, but also Uyghurs and other minorities. He is currently focusing on the role of redistribution in development at local, regional and global scales and its interaction with finance and production, while simultaneously maintaining his ongoing research on western China. [read more]

Professor Murat Arsel is Lecturer in Environment and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam. His research interests lie broadly in the areas of political economy and social theory, particularly regarding the interface between capitalism and nature-society relationships in rapidly developing societies. In this perspective, his work focuses on natural resource management and sustainable rural development in rapidly industrializing nations in the Middle East (especially Turkey) and Central Asia. Murat Arsel is the author of Water, Environmental Security and Sustainable Rural Development: Conflict and Cooperation in Central Eurasia (Routledge, 2009), Environmentalism in Turkey: Between Democracy and Development? (Ashgate, 2005), Reflexive developmentalism? Toward an environmental critique of modernization (Adaman & Arsel, 2005). The demise of the Yasuni-ITT initiative (Murat Arsel & Lorenzo Pelligrini, November 5, 2013)[read more]

Professor Gilbert Achcar is a Lebanese academic and writer. He is a Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London. His research interests cover the Near East and North Africa, the foreign policy of the United States, globalization, Islam, and Islamic fundamentalism. He is also a Fellow at the International Institute for Research and Education. Born in Senegal, Achcar was raised in Lebanon, where he obtained degrees in philosophy and the social sciences at Lebanese University and was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Group. He took up residence in France in 1983, and completed his doctorate in social history and international relations at the University of Paris VIII, where in 1991 he began teaching political science, sociology, and international relations. In 2003 he took up a research position at the Marc Bloch Centre in Berlin, which he maintained until he assumed a professorship at SOAS. His many books, published in a total of 15 languages, include: The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder (2002, 2006); Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, co-authored with Noam Chomsky (2007, 2008); The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (2010); Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism (2013); The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising (2013) [read more]

Adel El Gammal is secretary general of the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA), professor of Energy Geopolitics at the Free University of Brussels (U.L.B.) and fellow expert at Veblen Institute for Economic Reforms. He is a recognized international expert in the fields of geopolitics of energy, energy policy and clean energy transition, in Europe and in the context on international climate negotiations. Adel regularly speaks and writes in national and international media and is a regularly invited keynote speaker at leading international energy conferences. He authored several reference studies on the Clean Energy Transition and leads EERA advisory activities to the European Commission pertaining to its Climate/Energy strategy and more recently to EU’s response to the energy crisis. Beyond its geopolitical and techno-economic aspects, he focuses on the societal dimension of the energy transition and to the compatibility of our growth model with the planetary boundaries. Adel holds a master’s degree in engineering from Ecole Polytechnique de Bruxelles (U.L.B), graduated in Business Administration from Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (U.L.B.) and INSEAD (France) and later specialized in environment management (U.L.B.) [read more]

Dr. Hassan Hakimian is Professor of Economics and Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Department (MESD) at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (Hamad Bin Khalifa University ). During 2010-19, he was Director of the London Middle East Institute (LMEI) and Reader in the Economics Department at SOAS University of London. Prior to that, he was an Associate Dean at Cass Business School, London, where he was responsible for Executive MBA Programs and set up pioneering EMBA programs in Shanghai and Dubai. His research focuses on MENA economies, specifically labor markets, economic sanctions, inclusive growth and the economics of Arab uprisings. He is the author of “Labour Transfer and Economic Development” (1990), co-editor of “The State and Global Change” (2000 with Ziba Moshaver), “Trade Policy and Economic Integration in MENA” (2003 with Jeff Nugent), “Iran and the Global Economy: Petro Populism, Islam and Economic Sanctions” (2014 with Parvin Alizadeh) and “Environmental Challenges in the MENAS Region” (2019 with Hamid Pouran). Dr. Hakimian is a Founding Member and a past President of the International Iranian Economic Association (IIEA), a Research Fellow and Chair of the Advisory Committee of the Economic Research Forum (ERF) in Cairo.  [read more]

Professor Neil Robinson is a Senior lecturer in Politics at the University of Limerick, where he is the course Director of the Bachelor in Politics and International Relations. He is a specialist in the fields of Russian and post-communist politics, particularly the political economy of post-communism and post-communist state building. He is the author of Ideology and the collapse of the Soviet system. He is equally the editor or co-editor of Institutions and political change in Russia, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), Reforging the weakest link: global political economy and post-Soviet change in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), (Aidan Hehir) State-building. Theory and practice, (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), and (with Todd Landman), The Sage handbook of comparative politics, (London: Sage, 2009). M. Robinson taught previously at the Universities of York and Essex. He is the author of articles in several journals including Soviet Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Political Studies, The Journal of Communist Studies and Transitional Politics, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Demokratizatsiay, Review of International Political Economy. [read more]

Rico Isaacs is a Professor of International Politics. He joined Lincoln in September 2019 having previously worked at Oxford Brookes University. His research interests lay at the intersection of authoritarianism, nationalism and populism with a specific focus on the post-communist space, especially Central Asia. Specifically, his research concerns three areas: the formal and informal institutional basis of support for authoritarian rule; the construction and contestation of nation-building policies and discourses; and the relationship between populism and ecological crisis. He is the author Political Opposition in Authoritarianism (Palgrave 2022), Film and Identity in Kazakhstan (Bloomsbury 2018) and Party System Formation in Kazakhstan: Between Formal and Informal Politics (Routledge 2011), as well as authoring several edited volumes, an introduction to Politics textbook and numerous journal articles. He is also currently serving as editor of the leading peer-reviewed journal within the field of Central Asian Studies, Central Asian Survey. Rico regularly undertakes consultancy for public and private bodies with regards to politics and contemporary developments in Central Asia. [read more]

Her Excellency Ambassador Janet Rogan has recently taken up the position of CEO of the Royal African Society (RAS), based in London, which has a partnership with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). In March 2021, H.E. Ms. Janet Rogan was appointed as Regional Ambassador for the Middle East and Africa. She is an accomplished UK and UN diplomat with over 35 years of experience in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans and China. She was the UK’s climate ambassador for Africa and the Middle East, bringing a strong focus on implementation on the ground. She has wide policy, sustainable development, climate and humanitarian credentials and works extensively with governments, private sector and investors, civil society and youth. She joined the FCO (now FCDO) in 1986. She has worked with NATO (as UK Political Adviser) and the United Nations (as a UN Resident Coordinator). She has wide policy, development and humanitarian experience across post-conflict and fragile states, and in bringing the principles of the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 and the global Climate Change Agreements together for wider strategic goals, including COP26.

Dr. Stefano Pagliari‘s research concentrates on the field of international political economy, and in particular on the political economy of financial regulation. He has written on a number of issues related to the politics of the international monetary and financial system, such as financial industry lobbying, regulatory capture, EU-US financial diplomacy, and international financial institutions. His work has appeared in a number of peer-reviewed journals including International Organization, Review of International Political Economy, New Political Economy, Journal of European Integration. Before joining City University London in July 2013, Dr Pagliari was a Fellow in International Political Economy in the International Relations Department at the London School of Economics & Political Science – LSE, as well as a Visiting Scholar at Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University. Dr. Stefano Pagliari has authored and edited a number of books, including “Governing the World’s Biggest Market: The Politics of Derivatives Regulation After the 2008 Crisis”, Oxford University Press (2018), “Making Good Financial Regulation. Towards a Policy Response to Regulatory Capture”, London: International Centre for Financial Regulation (2012) and “Global Finance in Crisis. The Politics of International Regulatory Change”, Routledge (2010). [read more]

Professor Riccardo Petrella is the Initiator and former president of the Lisbon Group,  is an Italian political analyst and economist. Honorary professor at the Catholic University of Louvain-La-Neuve and at the Europa College Bruges, he has taught in many universities around the world. Mr. Petrella worked for the European Commission as supervisor of the FAST-programme (Forecasting and Assessment in Science and Technology)He was a senior researcher in the International Council of Social Sciences in Paris (France) and also a fellow of the Ford Foundation. Before that he was secretary-general of the Italian committee for the development of social sciences and director of the European Center for Research in Social Sciences of UNESCO in Vienna. In the 90s he published a trilogy, the last book being Water Manifesto, that defends the universal rights to access water sources. Professor Petrella is the director of the “Institut Européen de Recherche sur la Politique de l’Eau-IERPE“. He was nominated doctor honoris causa at the University of Umeå, University of Roskilde, Catholic University Brussels, the University of Mons, the Polytechnical Institute of Grenoble and the University of Québec in Montréal. [read more]

Johannes Pronk is a familiar name in Dutch politics as well as in UN circles. He studied Economics at the Rotterdam School of Economics obtaining a Master of Economics degree and worked as a researcher at his alma mater and the Economics Institute from July 1960 until May 1971 and was also was active as a political activist in the New Left movement. A politician and diplomat, Jan Pronk has served four terms as a Minister in the Dutch government, particularly in the field of Development Cooperation before turning towards the international scene and the United Nations. With a previous experience in the international organization in 1985 when he held the position of Assistant UN Secretary General, he was named in 2002 UN Special envoy to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Tokyo. Two years later UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed him as the first UN Special Representative for Sudan. He holds at this time the position of Professor of Theory and Practice of International Development at the International Institute of Social The Hague. Mr Jan Pronk teaches at CERIS since 2009 as part of the Executive Master in Governance & Development Policy. [read more]

Richard E. Baldwin is a professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, where he has been researching globalization and trade for the past 30 years. He is also ex-President of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and Editor-in-Chief of VoxEU, which he founded in June 2007. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was twice elected as a Member of the Council of the European Economic Association. He received a master’s degree from LSE in 1981. He completed his PhD at MIT in 1986 under the guidance of Paul Krugman, with whom he has coauthored half a dozen articles. He received honorary doctorates from the Turku School of Economics (Finland), University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) and Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP). He was Associate Professor (1989–1991) and Assistant Professor (1986–1989) at Columbia University Business School. In 1990–1991 he followed trade matters for the President’s Council of Economic Advisors in the Bush White House. He worked as an Associate Economic Affairs Officer for UNCTAD in the early 1980s. He has also been a visiting research professor at MIT (2003), Oxford (2012-2015), and is still an Associate Member of Nuffield College at Oxford University. [read more]

Professor Amelia Hadfield joined the University of Surrey in January 2019 as Head of the Department of Politics, and Chair in European and International Affairs. Previously she worked as Director of the Centre for European Studies (CEFEUS), a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at Canterbury Christ Church Uni (2013-2018), after positions in Brussels at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels and the Institute for European Studies, where she directed the Euromaster degree, as well as the Educational Development (EDU). Amelia is a long-standing Jean Monnet Chair in European Foreign Affairs, allowing her to successfully obtain Erasmus+ funding for the University of Surrey’s Centre for Britain and Europe (based in the Department of Politics), establishing it in 2020 as a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. Amelia’s researching, teaching, consulting & postgrad supervising covers a wide range of areas on EU foreign and security policy, as well as new forms of EU-UK relations. These include Common Foreign and Security Policy, Common Security and Defence Policy, EU-US and EU-Canada relations, EU-Russia relations, EU Neighbourhood Policy, EU Development policy (with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa), as well as Arctic & northern governance issues. [read more]

Dr Luca Tardelli is Assistant Professorial Lecturer in International Relations. His research focuses on international security, military intervention, and US foreign policy. His research draws primarily on both Realism and Political Sociology to study the practice of military intervention, particularly how elite politics and elite relations shape US decisions to intervene in civil wars and revolutions. Luca has taught various undergraduate and postgraduate courses on International Relations, International Security, American Grand Strategy, and the Middle East both at the LSE and at the University of Westminster. From 2013 to 2018, he was the Course Convener and Tutor of the executive MSc International Strategy and Diplomacy at LSE. Prior to joining the Department, Luca worked at the Middle East Division of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, jointly for the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) and the Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF), and at LSE IDEAS. Luca holds a PhD in International Relations from LSE. He graduated in International Relations from the University of Bologna (Forli Campus) and holds a MA in War Studies from King’s College London. [read more]

Professor Dr. Howard Nicholas is a Sri Lankan economist and social scientist, Senior Lecturer in Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of the Erasmus University of Rotterdam. His areas of interest are non-neoclassical economics, capacity building for economics related policy and business decision making. He has a wide range of experience and exposure in teaching around the world mainly on Financial Economics. His in depth knowledge and understanding of Global Macro Economic Environment and its impact on the world economy has led to contribute towards the development of the economy. Dr.Howard Nicholas leverage his knowledge in the area of financial markets and he has a tremendous ability on forecasting the financial markets.He mainly involves consultation in the areas of Macroeconomics, Financial Markets, forecasting the financial markets and the financial economics. Dr.Howard contributes all the key functions and the service delivery aspects of EIA. Professor Howard Nicholas publishes also in Development and Change, the revue of the ISS and is a contributor to several national and international journals, his comments concerning mainly the status and future evolutions of the Sri Lankan economy. [read more]

Mehdi Shafaeddin was professor at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, until 2011. he is a PhD in Economic Development at Oxford, he is currently a private consultant in trade and industrial policies, industrial capacity building and management of competitiveness. He worked for many years at the UNCTAD holding positions such as acting chief of the Macroeconomics and Development Policy Branch and of the Globalisation and Development Strategy Division. His academic career includes a Professorship at Webster University, Geneva where he taught International Trade and Finance, Economic Development, Industrial Economics, Managerial Economics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, at both graduate and undergraduate levels. He was also a trainer of High Government Officials in the area of Trade, Globalisation, Industrialization and Development Policies at the Turin Centre, Italy, and in Bangkok, Santiago, Beirut, Cairo, Beijing, Prague, Hanoi, Tehran and Geneva. M. Shafaeddin is a former consultant at the Ministry of Agriculture of Iran. He edited the UNCTAD Bulletin for two years and was a member of the Editorial Board of Trade and Development, an UNCTAD Review. He is the author of many articles and books. [read more]

Professor Joao Guimaraes is Senior Lecturer in Regional Planning at the Institute of Social Studies (The Hague), he is a Social and Regional Policy Expert. He is co-author of Buenas prácticas en la cooperación para el desarrollo. Rendición de cuentas y transparencia (Los Libros de La Catarata, 2008), Por Fin, La Pobreza? Informe de País – Nicaragua (Research Report for the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, 2008) and ‘Las Estrategias de Reducción de la Pobreza: Un Apunte Crítico’, in E. Echart, L. Miguel Puerto and J. Angel Sotillo (eds) Globalización, Pobreza y Desarrollo: Los Retos de la Cooperación Internacional, (Los Libros de La Catarata, 2005, pp.313-332), etc. He is a visiting teacher at the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand. [read more]

Dr. Alexander Fischer is a Lecturer at SOAS : “My research focuses on the role of discretion and procedure in Indian trials under antiterrorism legislation. What is the role and input of a variety of actors in framing an issue asa matter of criminal law or a matter of national security? What are the effects, from a legal point of view? How is the stage set early on for a trial to follow a very distinct procedural path? ” Book Review: Daniel P. Marston & Chandar S. Sundaram (Eds), A Military History of India and SouthAsia: From the East India Company to the Nuclear Era South Asia Research November 2012 32:283-285. Centre for Policy Research (New Delhi, India). [read more]

Professor Mattheuw McCartney is Lecturer in Oxford University and Director of South Asian Strudies, Associate Professor in the Political Economy and Human Development of India. Professor Mattheuw McCartney is Lecturer in Economics with reference to South Asia at the School of Oriental and African Studies-SOAS, University of London. His areas of expertise are microeconomics the Economic Development of South Asia and the comparative Economic Development of Asia and Africa. His research centers on the state, planning and late industrialization, as well as the economic development and political economy of development in South Asia and comparative economic development. He is the author of two monographs and several academic articles and chapters in books.: ‘Episodes of Liberalisation’ or ‘The Logic of Capital’: The Genesis of Liberalisation in India, (Working Paper, School of Oriental and African Studies, 2004), Export Promotion, the Fallacy of Composition and Declining Terms of Trade (or the Moors’ Last Sigh). [read more]

Professor Robert Falkner is a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the LSE. He also holds the position of Convenor of the LSE Summer School and is an associate of the LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. His areas of interest cover international political economy, with special emphasis on global environmental politics, multinational corporations, risk regulation and global governance. He is the author of Business Power and Conflict in International Environmental Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), as well as many academic articles and other publications. Professor Falkner was the coordinator of the international research project on the transatlantic dimensions of nanomaterials regulation that issued the report: Securing the Promise of Nanotechnologies: Towards Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation (2009). He currently serves in the editorial committee of the European Journal of International Relations, were previously he held the position of associate editor. He is also a member of the editorial board of Global Policy. [read more]

Professor Stéphanie Blankenburg works at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London as Lecturer in International Political Economy. She specializes in growth theory, the role of institutions in growth and economic development, the contemporary dynamics of the international economy and the history of economic analysis and methodology. Her published books and articles include Neoliberalismus: Der theoretische Entwurf, der Gegner und die praktische Verwirklichung (with H. Schui, VSA, 2002), “Den Bullen reiten? – Möglichkeiten zur wirtschaftlichen Bändigung, in: H. Fürderer, E. Kaiser, I. Pflügl and R. Widowitsch (eds), Trotz Gegenwind, (OGB Verlag, 2005, pp. 67-97), “Neoliberalismus: Ökonomische Theorie, Gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeit und der Dritte Weg” in: R. Faber (ed..), Neoliberalismus in Gegenwart und Geschichte (Verlag Königsberg, 2000). [read more]

Bichara Khader is Professor Emeritus at the Catholic University of Louvain and Founder of the Study and Research Centre on the Contemporary Arab World (GERMAC). He has been member of the Group of High Experts on European Foreign Policy and Common Security (European Commission) and Member of the Group of Wisemen on cultural dialogue in the Mediterranean (European Presidency). Currently he is visiting professor in various Arab and European universities. He has published almost 30 books on the Arab World, the Euro-Arab, Euro-Mediterranean and the Euro-Palestinian relations. “Le Grand Maghreb et l’Europe, Enjeux et perspectives”, Publisud-Quorum, Paris, 1992; “Conflits et processus de paix au Proche-Orient”, Academia-Bruylant, Louvain-la-Neuve, 1996; “Le partenariat euro-méditerranéen, après la Conférence de Barcelone”, L’Harmattan, Paris, 1997; “Le partenariat euro-méditerranéen vu du Sud”, L’Harmattan, Paris, 2001; “Les migrations dans les rapports euro-arabes et euro-méditerranéens”, L’Harmattan, 2011; “Le printemps arabe : un premier bilan”, Sylleps, 2012. [read more]

David Cobham is Professor of Economics. His main research area has been UK monetary policy, but he also has substantial research interests in European monetary integration, central bank independence, financial systems and Middle Eastern economies.Most recently he has worked on the issue iof monetary policy and asset prices, on the Bank of England’s reaction function, and on quantitative easing. He is an active member of the committee of the Money, Macro and Finance Research Group, and Associate Editor of the Review of Middle East Economics and Finance. He has been Houblon-Norman Research Fellow at the Bank of England in 1987, and again in 2001. He was a member of the organising committee of a Norges Bank conference on Inflation Targeting Twenty Years On (June 2009), and member of the organising committee of a conference on ‘The Euro Area and the Financial Crisis’ , hosted by the National Bank of Slovakia (September 2010). More recently he organised a conference on ‘Monetary policy before, during and after the crisis’ in September 2011. [read more]

Professor Mushtaq Husain Khan is Senior Lecturer in Economics and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London and a member of the Centre of South and South East Asian Studies. His main areas of interest are institutional economics, the economics of rent-seeking, corruption and clientelism, industrial policy and state intervention in developing countries. His work focuses on the South and South East Asian economic development and in particular the development of India. Among his published work, Professor Mushtaq Khan is the author of Rents, Rent-Seeking and Economic Development: Theory and Evidence in Asia. (ed with Jomo, K.S., Cambridge University Press 2000), and State Formation in Palestine: Viability and Governance during a Social Transformation (with George Giacaman and Inge Amundsen, Routledge, 2004), as well as several academic articles and chapter contributions in books: ‘Good Governance and Growth in Africa: What can we learn from Tanzania?’ (with Hazel Gray), in Vishnu Padayachee (ed.) The Political Economy of Africa, (Routledge 2010), ‘The Political Economy of Industrial Policy in Asia and Latin America’ (with Stephanie Blankenburg). [read more]

Professor John Toburn is Reader Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow at the University of East Anglia, UK. His main research area is economics and he specializes in trade policy and export promotion, foreign investment, industrial development and sectoral studies, particularly in South East and East Asia. He is a former Professor of Development Economics at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. He was a Visiting Professor at several Universities including Kobe University in Japan and Soochow University in Taiwan. Professor Thoburn is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, and is one of the participants to the panel of subject specialists for the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications. Selected Publications: “Challenges to the Cambodian garment industry in the global garment value chain”, in the European Journal of Development Research (2010), The impact of world recession on the textile and garment industries of Asia, Working Paper (2009), “Globalisation and restructuring in the textiles sector on households in Vietnam: impacts on households”, Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy (2007), “Globalisation and Poverty in Vietnam: [editorial] introduction and overview”, Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy (2004). [read more]

Professor Juan Grigera teach at the Institute of the Americas in the London University College. He was a British Academy Postdoctoral which was based at the UCL Institute of Americas. He completed a PhD from the University of Buenos Aires with support from CONICET (Argentina), after being awarded an MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics. Currently he is also an active member of the editorial board of Historical Materialism (London) and Cuadernos de Economía Crítica (Argentina). His latest research project is entitled Bringing the global market back in. Industrialising and exporting commodities: Argentina and Brazil (1950-2010) and proposes an in-depth comparative study of the long-term economic performance of Brazil and Argentina after 1950s. This research concerns both the comparative assessment of the economic dynamics of two key countries of Latin America and the theoretical modes in which they have been approached. [read more]

Professor Jane Harrigan is a lecturer of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, she is also a member of the SOAS Food Studies Center. Her geographical area of expertise is the Middle East and consequently she teaches Economic Development of the Modern Middle East and Applied Economics of the Middle East. Her authored books are: Aid and Power in the Arab World: The IMF and World Bank Policy-Based Lending in the Middle East and North Africa (with Hamed El-Said, Palgrave Macmillan 2009), Economic Liberalisation, Social Capital and Islamic Welfare Provision. (with Hamed El-Said, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) , From Dictatorship to Democracy. Economic Policy in Malawi 1964-2000 (Ashgate, 2001), and Aid and Power: The World Bank and Policy-Based Lending. (co-author, Routledge, 1995). She has also published more than a few articles in journals such as Development Viewpoint, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, Development Policy Review, The Middle East Journal, etc … [read more]

Our courses

Executive Master in Development Policy

Executive Master in International Politics

Our Tailor-made Intensive Courses