What the programme entails
The MA in Development Studies is a one-year, 60-EC programme that combines 40 EC of coursework with a 20 EC thesis, completed within 12 months.
Your academic year is divided into four 10-week blocks. Each block includes eight weeks of classes, followed by a week of exams and assignments, and a final week dedicated to extracurricular activities.
You’ll start the programme with three core courses:
- An introduction to the field of Development Studies
- A course on Grand Challenges and Societal Transformations
- A methodology course exploring research design, epistemology, and the role of the researcher
In the second and third blocks, you’ll choose from a range of elective and research methodology courses, allowing you to tailor your studies to your own interests and apply your learning to real-world cases of development and social change.
Diagnostic tests
In the first weeks, all students take:
- An English academic writing test
- A numeracy and quantitative skills test
These help you identify areas for academic support.
| Period | Block / Activity | Credits (EC) | Duration | Courses |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 – 4 Sep | Intro Week | _ | 1 week | Orientation & introduction |
| 7 Sep – 13 Nov | Block 1 | 15 EC | 10 weeks | General Course 1, General Course 2, Doing Development Research |
| 16 Nov – 20 Dec | Block 2 (part 1) | 15 EC | 5 weeks | Elective Course 1, Elective Course 2 |
| 21 Dec – 3 Jan Winter Break –2 weeks | ||||
| 4 Jan – 5 Feb | Block 2 (part 2) | _ | 5 weeks | Continuation: Elective Course 1, Elective Course 2 Methods Course |
| 8 Feb – 16 Apr | Block 3 | 15 EC | 10 weeks | Elective Course 3, Elective Course 4 |
| 19 Apr – End Aug | Block 4 | 15 EC | 10 weeks | Start Thesis, Thesis Writing, Thesis Defence |
| Graduation ceremony | ||||
General courses
Period: Block 1
Course Leader: Andrew Fischer
Modes of Assesment: Assignment (25%), Written exam (75%)
This compulsory course introduces students to the core histories, theories, and debates that shape the field of development studies. It examines development as a process of modern social and structural transformation, particularly in the Global South and in the context of decolonisation. The course helps students understand how different theoretical, disciplinary, and policy perspectives relate to one another, building a shared vocabulary and analytical foundation for further study. Through thematic sessions, students explore major schools of thought and their evolution over time-connecting historical debates to contemporary development challenges. Topics include the origins of capitalism, modernisation, agrarian and industrial transitions, population change, state formation, institutions and governance, as well as issues such as neoliberalism, financial crises, poverty and inequality, globalisation, human rights, gender, and climate change. By the end of the course, students gain the critical skills, contextual grounding, and interdisciplinary fluency needed to engage with development studies at an MA level.
Period: Block 1
Course Leader: Julien-François Gerber
Modes of Assesment: Video presentations (20%), Final essays (80%)
This compulsory course builds on the first general course by shifting from the history and theories of development to its major critiques and emerging alternatives. Students explore a range of contemporary global challenges—economic, political, ecological, cultural, and epistemological—and learn to critically reflect on how these shape development practice today. Across ten lectures and eight interactive workshops, the course pairs key “grand challenges” with possible alternative approaches, such as inequality vs. community economies, unsustainability vs. degrowth, coloniality vs. decoloniality, and forced migration vs. mobility justice. Each session offers a concise state-of-the-art overview along with potential building blocks for more just, sustainable, and plural futures. Overall, the course equips students with critical lenses, conceptual tools, and reflective spaces to rethink development beyond mainstream models and imagine transformative pathways forward.
Electives
Period: Block 2
Course Leader: Tsegaye Moreda
Modes of Assesment: Take home essay (30%), Essay (60%), Group assignment (10%)
This elective explores the interconnections between agriculture, food systems, rural transformations, and global capitalism, with attention to their links to urban, industrial, and international dynamics. Students critically engage with competing theoretical approaches to the political economy of social change, examining how class, gender, and other axes of difference shape land, labour, migration, climate change, and food systems. The course emphasizes both mainstream and alternative institutional responses, from climate-smart agriculture to food sovereignty and agroecology, while also analysing the political agency of state and non-state actors, including social movements. Rooted in Critical Agrarian Studies and scholar-activism, the course equips students with conceptual tools to interpret—and contribute to transforming—the global agrarian and food systems.
Period: Block 2
Course Leader: Binyam Afewerk Demena
Modes of Assesment: Policy negotiation game (30%), Take home assignment (50%), Critical article reviews and presentation (20%)
This elective provides an in-depth study of Global Development Economics, focusing on the role of trade, investment, remittances, and development finance in shaping development processes. Students will critically engage with key theories and empirical tools to analyse the links between growth, inequality, and poverty, as well as the impact of institutions and reforms on long-term development. Combining theoretical foundations with practical applications, the course equips students with the skills to conduct evidence-based policy analysis and extend insights to emerging global challenges.
Period: Block 2
Course Leader: Sreerekha Sathi
Modes of Assesment: Reflection paper (35%), Group work (15%), Final paper (50%)
This elective examines feminist theories, epistemologies, and methodologies in the context of gender and development, with a strong emphasis on intersectional and Global South perspectives. Students will critically analyze feminist debates on institutions such as family, labor, markets, and the state, while exploring themes of sexuality, masculinities, reproductive justice, care economies, and the impact of globalization and neoliberalism. The course highlights both historical and contemporary feminist movements, including challenges posed by NGO-isation and anti-gender politics, equipping students to apply feminist perspectives strategically in research and practice.
Period: Block 2
Course Leader: Arjun S. Bedi
Modes of Assesment: Invigilated in-class exam (100%)
This course examines the micro-level foundations of economic development, focusing on how households, firms, and institutions interact to shape growth, inequality, and human development. Drawing on neoclassical, institutional, and behavioural/experimental economics, students will learn to critically analyze how incentives and institutions drive or constrain development processes. The course covers household decision-making on production, consumption, and technology adoption; the opportunities and constraints faced by small and micro firms; the microeconomics of labour and human capital; and the role of institutions in shaping economic behaviour. By combining theoretical models with empirical applications, the course equips students with analytical tools to assess the complexities of development at the micro level and to evaluate policies that address poverty, vulnerability, and inequality.
Period: Block 2
Course Leader: Sunil Tankha
Modes of Assesment: Final paper (85%), Presentations (15%)
This course introduces students to the dynamics of public policy-making as a contested, multi-actor process shaped by competing ideas, interests, and resources. Students will learn to identify and assess policy problems, critically analyse policy documents and proposals, and develop alternative arguments, scenarios, and strategies. The course covers key methods of policy analysis, including stakeholder, argumentation, logical framework, and multi-criteria analysis, as well as creative approaches such as scenario building. By linking theory to practice, it equips students with the skills to engage effectively in the formulation and implementation of policies while understanding the broader political and social processes that shape them.
Period: Block 2
Course Leader: Daphina Misiedjan
Modes of Assesment: Assignment (30%), Essay (70%)
This course examines the role of law in advancing and obstructing human rights, with a focus on how legal systems both enable and limit protection for marginalized communities. Students will critically analyze the functions of law and legal procedures at national, regional, and global levels, while exploring the roles of governments and civil society actors in shaping human rights outcomes. Themes include technology, children’s rights, climate change, and conflict, with practical components such as UN simulations and debates. Designed for students with or without a legal background, the course equips participants with a critical understanding of the potentials and constraints of law in the realization of human rights across diverse contexts.
Period: Block 2
Course Leader: Murat Arsel
Modes of Assesment: In-class presentation (20%), Final essay (80%)
This course explores the tensions between capitalism, nature, and global development through the lens of political ecology. Students will critically examine how development policies reproduce conflicts between sustainability and socioeconomic growth, and how extractive industries disproportionately affect marginalized communities. Drawing on political ecology, ecological economics, and political economy, the course addresses themes such as climate change, resource extraction, and ecological limits. Emphasis is placed on the role of the state, the resistance of local communities, and alternative visions for just, equitable, and sustainable development.
Period: Block 3
Course Leader: Rodrigo Mena
Modes of Assesment: Assignments: Poster fair (15%), Mid-term assignment (35%), Final exam (50%)
This course explores the interconnections between climate crises, disasters, and humanitarian action, and their wide-ranging effects on societies. Students examine how responses are shaped by local realities, political economies, and global agendas, and how crises intersect with conflict, migration, and essential services. Key themes include disaster risk reduction, climate adaptation, humanitarian governance, and the need to localize and decolonize responses. Drawing on case studies from diverse regions, the course highlights community voices and agency while equipping students with critical and practical tools to engage with humanitarian and climate challenges.
Period: Block 3
Course Leader: Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits
Modes of Assesment: 24-hour Take home exam (50%), Final essay or development of a Peace action plan - with prior approval (50%)
This course introduces critical perspectives on violent conflict and peace governance, examining how violence is produced and reproduced through colonial legacies, inequalities, polarization, and new forms such as cognitive warfare. Students engage with key debates in conflict and peace studies, apply conflict analysis tools to real-world cases, and explore the limits of current peace frameworks. Emphasis is placed on developing future-oriented and collaborative approaches to peacebuilding, equipping students to act as transformative agents in diverse conflict settings.
Period: Block 3
Course Leader: Marijn Faling
Modes of Assesment: Group presentations (20%), drafting a Terms of reference (80%)
This course equips students with theoretical and practical skills in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of policies, programmes, and projects. The theory–practice stream covers the politics, roles, and uses of evaluation while introducing tools such as logframes, indicators, and results chains. The methodology stream focuses on quantitative impact evaluation, including experimental and non-experimental methods for assessing policy interventions. Guest lectures and a study visit to the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs provide applied insights, preparing students to design and critically assess evaluations within the broader policy process.
Period: Block 3
Course Leader: Arul Chib
Modes of Assesment: Individual assignment on AI-assisted literature review (30%), Group hackathon (20%), Individual research paper (50%)
This course explores the impact of digital technologies on development, focusing on both opportunities and challenges for marginalized groups. It examines how tools such as AI, blockchain, social media, and platform capitalism can generate bias, discrimination, surveillance, and misinformation, while also enabling new forms of resistance and appropriation. Students critically assess interventionist approaches to technology in development, highlighting user agency and resilience. The course culminates in a case study and hackathon, where students analyze emerging technologies and propose innovative solutions.
Period: Block 3
Course Leader: Karim Knio
Modes of Assesment: Essay (100%)
This course examines the rise and evolution of neoliberalism as the dominant framework shaping global political and economic life. Students engage with competing definitions of neoliberalism, from orthodox perspectives denying its existence to heterodox accounts treating it as a hegemonic discourse and practice. The course traces policy shifts from the structural adjustment and Washington Consensus era to the Post-Washington Consensus focus on governance and poverty reduction, while critically assessing the ideological, economic, and institutional forces driving these reforms. It concludes by debating whether neoliberalism remains alive today or has transformed in nature.
Period: Block 3
Course Leader: Georgina M. Gómez
Modes of Assesment: Groupwork presentation (20%), Reflection paper (80%)
This course examines development at the meso level, focusing on networks, organizations, and partnerships between state and non-state actors. Students explore how entrepreneurs, businesses, public agencies, local organizations, and donors interact to shape institutional fields and drive social and economic change. Topics include social entrepreneurship, innovation, social finance, impact investment, solidarity and informal economies, sustainable tourism, value chains, philanthropy, the commons, and alternative exchange systems. The course equips students with both theoretical insights and practical tools to analyze and design collaborative development initiatives.
Period: Block 3
Course Leader: Zeynep Kaşlı
Modes of Assesment: Reflection paper (25%), Discussion role (5%), Tech hackathon (10%), and Final essay (60%)
This course examines the migration–development nexus, asking who can move, at what cost, and how globalization and governance shape people’s (im)mobilities. It explores migration as privilege, livelihood strategy, or misfortune, with triggers ranging from conflict and environmental change to technological shifts. Emphasizing perspectives from the Global South, the course analyzes implications such as remittances, transnational ties, and transformations in gender and generational relations. Taking a mobility-centered approach, it highlights how social constructs like gender, race, ethnicity, and class shape migration experiences and the capacities of migrants and non-migrants to challenge structural constraints.
Period: Block 3
Course Leader: Wil Hout
Modes of Assesment: Take home exam (85%), Presentation (15%)
This course examines the origins, evolution, and contemporary challenges of liberal internationalism and its role in shaping global development. Students will analyze how liberal ideas, norms, and institutions have structured the post–Second World War order, while exploring critiques from across the ideological spectrum. Special attention is given to the impact of the 2008 financial crisis, the rise of emerging powers, nationalist and anti-globalization movements, and the war in Ukraine. The course also considers the relationship between liberal internationalism and neoliberalism, equipping students to critically evaluate both the resilience and limitations of the liberal world order.
Period: Block 3
Course Leader: Matthias Rieger
Modes of Assesment: Group assignments (20%), Final invigilated exam (80%)
This course introduces behavioral perspectives in development studies, exploring how human decision-making shapes policy design, participation, and social change. Students will examine behavioral foundations, biases, and anomalies, as well as experimental methods for measuring and testing interventions. Applications include environmental policy, technology, health, and social protection, with attention to both the potential and limits of behavioral approaches. Open to all tracks, the course combines theoretical insights with practical applications, encouraging interdisciplinary dialogue and critical reflection on the use of behavioral techniques in development.
Thesis: Your Opportunity to specialize
The thesis is the final and most significant part of the MA in Development Studies. At the start of the programme, you’ll receive a list of thesis topics available for the academic year.
During the Thesis Market in Block 1, you’ll have the chance to meet staff, explore topics, and discuss related coursework to help shape your research direction.
You can choose between theory-oriented and practice-oriented theses:
- A theory-oriented thesis emphasizes critical engagement with academic literature and conceptual analysis.
- A practice-oriented thesis integrates the same theoretical and analytical components with practical experience, such as a practice-oriented assignment commissioned by a development practitioner organization.
This final project allows you to apply your knowledge, develop independent research skills, and make a meaningful contribution to the field of development studies.
Some examples of topics:
- Queer Feminist Approaches to Conflict and Peace
- The Global South in the Changing International Order
- The Emerging Platform Economy: Transforming or reinforcing inequalities in the world of work?
- Evaluating School Feeding Programs– a quantitative analysis
- The future of international cooperation to address global challenges – with a practical component at the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs
Extracurricular activities
At the end of Blocks 1, 2, and 3, you’ll enjoy a week designed to relax, recharge, and broaden your horizons.
Take part in study trips to international organisations based in The Hague, join seminars and debates, and participate in skills workshops that help you connect your studies to real-world practice and professional development.
Period: Block 2
Course Leader: Gerard McCarthy
Modes of Assesment: Mid-term exam (30%), Individual mapping exercise (70%)
This course explores social protection systems through a life course perspective, analyzing how demographic shifts, crises, and inequalities shape and are shaped by welfare policies and practices. Students will engage with key concepts and tools to critically assess the logics, consequences, and politics of social protection, examining both state and non-state interventions. The course highlights how inter- and intragenerational inequalities manifest in areas such as health, education, labour protections, and old-age care, and how these intersect with axes of marginalization including migration, disability, ethnicity, religion, and sexuality. Emphasis is placed on understanding how social protection can both alleviate and reinforce vulnerabilities, while considering the role of non-state actors in complementing or contesting state-led interventions.