Globalisation, Transnationalism and Development
Research programme director:
Prof. Valentina Mazzucato
Programme profile
The Globalisation, Transnationalism and Development (GTD) research programme brings together pre-existing research and stimulates new initiatives within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences where the Global South is a focal point. The Global South refers to developing countries as well as recently emerging economic powers such as Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC). The GTD’s research approach centres on the concept of transnationalism which focuses on the linkages between the Global South and the rest of the world as well as within the Global South. A transnational perspective, as applied in the GTD programme, looks at the micro- and meso-scale with a focus on individuals, networks, communities and civil society organisations and how they enact, practice and give shape to linkages across nation states. Linkages can take the form of material flows of people, goods or money and immaterial flows such as ideas and norms. A commonality is that research is strongly grounded in empirical, primary data collection work ranging from anthropological qualitative fieldwork to sociological quantitative surveys. A characteristic of this group, setting it apart from other globalisation and development research groups in the Netherlands, is its track record in interdisciplinary research using mixed methods and multi-sited research designs.
The GTD focuses on two main areas of research. The first area of concentration is transnational migration. Research projects investigate linkages that are created between places and phenomena in migrant sending and receiving countries. The specific geographic areas include migration between Africa and Europe as well as within African countries. Currently new initiatives are being undertaken to expand to African migration between Africa and China. This research aims to re-frame migration research that is usually conducted within a nation-state framework and does so by focusing on the everyday lived experiences of migrants and their families and network members in their origin countries as well as elsewhere. A second area of focus is on transnational cultures of development. Projects study new actors influencing the way development is thought about and conducted. Examples include the role of civil society institutions and their use of transnational platforms to influence development outcomes locally and the role of emerging economies in setting development agendas and providing role models for policy makers and elites in the Global South.
You can access the website of the programme here.