Research groups

The Global Development Institute is driven by the desire to advance social justice by conducting world-class, interdisciplinary research that achieves real impact.

Research at the Global Development Institute is focussed around our research groups. Within each group you’ll find our latest research projects, publications, activities as well as profiles of the academics involved.

Teenager using his phone at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Kaduna, Nigeria

Digital development

GDI has the specialist research of the Centre for Digital Development alongside research projects examining digital development issues.
Mexican airport

Migration, refugees and asylum

The contemporary world is characterised by a high degree of mobility, making people on the move important political and developmental actors.
Photo shot from above of Adum, Kumasi, Ghana

Global urban futures

Our research works to understand urban globalisation and its impacts.
shot from behind of a Becak; Indonesia’s traditional rickshaw cycle taken in Bandung City, Indonesia

Growth and distribution

We push forward the frontiers of research about the interactions of growth and distribution.
This picture was taken during the Nigerian 2019 General Elections. A voter checks for her name on the voter's list.

Politics, governance and management

Building more effective and inclusive institutions and political systems that are capable of delivering development.
Container ship

Global production networks, trade and labour

The organisation of global production is undergoing significant evolution, under the influence of rising powers and more polycentric trade patterns and new technologies.
Group of workers in tea field

Resources, environment and development

Our research looks at climate change, natural resource management, agricultural production systems and conservation.

GDI research groups have some common themes. Understanding and addressing poverty and inequality remains a key focus; and we lead The University of Manchester’s Global Inequalities Research Beacon.

Many of our research projects address environmental and natural resource concerns; and many recognise (both directly and indirectly) the centrality of politics and power to development outcomes and engage with the imperatives of political change and policy and programme reform.

Finally our research groups are sensitive to the importance of context, recognising that while we live in a globalizing world, the impacts of globalization are varied, uneven and should not be taken for granted.

Beyond GDI, The University of Manchester itself provides a first class base for inter-disciplinary partnerships. We work closely with the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, the Manchester Urban Institute, the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, and with many individual academics within the University from Engineering, Geography, Education, Economics, Politics, and Medicine amongst others.