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Empirical analysis examines the evolution of development studies in Europe, revealing shifts in academic focus.
Development studies (DS) are traditionally organised in schools of thought that evolve historically in line with economic, social, political (and even climate) global events. These different approaches to DS coexist, both politically and in academia. The objective of this paper is to understand the current configuration of European DS by scrutinising the schools of thought within them, their prevalence and evolution. Through content analysis, we categorise the academic contributions presented at the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI)’s general conferences based on Sumner’s theoretical proposal of DS ‘constellations’. Critical development views have crowded out classical DS, and aid-dependent studies are the most relevant in absolute terms.
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O’Shea et al. (2026) studied this question.
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