Faculty of the Rural Development, Environment, and Population Studies are involved in many group and individual research projects in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the transition economies (see CESTRAD) of Eastern and Central Europe. On-going research activities cluster around the following thematic areas:

• Rural Development: land policies and social justice; the effect of economic crisis on rural livelihoods; processes of agrarian transition; the development of development and anthropological theory

• Environment and Resource Management: modernization and sustainable development; participation in natural resource management; water governance and the politics of scarcity; the distributional impact of subsidies.

• Population, Poverty and Social Development: social protection and socio-economic security; poverty analysis and poverty reduction strategies; migration and rural labor markets; children and development; aging and pension policies; education policy; reproductive health; AIDS and health provisioning

These projects benefit from research funding from a diverse array of organizations including, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, UNDP, bilateral donor agencies, the World Bank, and PLAN International.