SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Development Studies at Roskilde University 25 years

Short report by Staffan Lindberg, Dept. of Sociology, Lund University

On 19 September 2010, Roskilde International Development Studies celebrated 25 years of successful institutional building!
This is the biggest and most successful interdisciplinary development studies institution among the Nordic countries. After building up undergraduate studies from the mid-80s, a graduate school was started from the early 1990s and onwards. The most striking features, according to evaluations carried out, are its interdisciplinary character, wide network co-operation, innovative Intensive Researcher Training Courses and strong coordination of activities. I had the privilege of carrying out the latest evaluation in 2009 and summarised my findings in the following words:

‘Given its aims, preconditions and context it has now reached an almost optimal way of functioning in terms of its main goal, that is, to successfully train PhD candidates in research and writing skills around development issues in the developing countries, which encompass a broad agenda of social transformation studies in social, political and economic perspectives. The main reasons for this success are the autonomy of the School in terms of strong leadership, community building with an ideal size of the student group, material resources, institutional base and networks outside Roskilde University (RUC).’
For further reading, see the 2009 Evaluation of the Graduate School of International Development Studies, Roskilde University, written by Prof. Staffan Lindberg

Having produced more than 60 doctorates over a period of 18 years, Roskilde now has quite an international reputation!

True to this, for its Silver Jubilee, the school had invited distinguished senior scholars from Denmark and abroad to take stock of the discipline and its future. See the full programme for the day.

There is no room in this short presentation to go into the interesting richness of the lectures and the discussions that followed. However, the most important quality of the work at the school is its ability to walk on more than one leg at a time. Having taken off in the 80s based on a solid political economy perspective it has moved into other important aspects of development studies such as environment, political systems and democracy and cultural analysis. But it has no fallen prey to just one perspectives being dominant, like post-colonial studies taking it all over, but has rather been able to balance various perspectives. This strong feature was well reflected in the mix of speakers and comments at the seminar.

Preserving its chore interest around the experiences of the development of capitalism and democracy in varying ways, the obstacles not least cultural, the social dimensions, welfare and the situation of poor people, and the environment – I think the school stands well prepared for future changes of the context and focus of the discipline.