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Exploring critical issues in international development and sustainability: the Sociology of Development and Change Group
As the Sociology of Development and Change (SDC) Group, we are committed to addressing the pressing challenges in international development and sustainability. With global inequalities deepening and the vision of sustainable development yet to be fully realized, our work is more critical than ever. Our research examines the evolving landscape of development practices, probing how they respond to natural and human-made crises, conflicts, and disasters.
What We Do
Our focus areas include:
- Investigating development dynamics: We explore how development practices interact with crises, conflicts, and environmental challenges.
- Tackling environmental issues: Our research addresses critical concerns such as biodiversity conservation, climate change, and energy transitions.
- Interdisciplinary connections: We bridge development studies, political ecology, crisis and disaster studies with innovative discussions in geography, anthropology, politics, and sociology.
Our Approach
We employ a critical-constructive methodology, collaborating closely with academic, policy, and societal networks to discover equitable, sustainable, and peaceful solutions to global challenges. Our research is dedicated to:
- Understanding inequality: We study how structures and practices of inequality evolve, particularly during times of crisis.
- Challenging injustices: Our work critically examines how inequalities shape the lived experiences of people worldwide.
- Exploring diverse responses: We investigate how different social groups develop strategies to cope with and resist inequalities.
Our Research Themes
- Politics of Nature: Critical in development is how people relate to the rest of nature. Development processes have drastically changed ecosystems, biodiversity, waterways and landscapes around the world, but natural environments also shape how we practice and think about development. This also means that nature is always political: how we understand nature, use or conserve it, depends on power relations that are connected to knowledge, information and heritage.
- Disaster and Conflict in Times of Crisis: Disasters, conflicts and other crises represent major challenges to peoples’ lives and livelihoods. While their ‘shock value’ routinely occupies news headlines, their embeddedness in longstanding patterns of social change, marginalisation, and reorganisation, requires much deeper analysis and context which we are committed to contribute to.
- Inequality and Social-Environmental Justice: Our world is extremely unequal, more so than it has ever been before. Many privileged people see the world as a place of unlimited connection and possibility, making use of myriad national and international opportunities for work, leisure, and (tourist and other) interactions with nature and other people. The majority of the world’s population, however, lives in a world of strict borders, boundaries and a deep lack of possibilities.
Interested in learning more? Visit our research page to explore each of our research themes in detail.
At SDC, we are dedicated to enhancing quality of life through transformative research that aims to reduce global inequalities. Join us in advancing development practices that promote justice, equity, and sustainability.