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Claire Hedges
Manager, Centre for the Study of Global Development, The OU

The Open University Centre for the Study of Global Development

The Open University, the world’s first successful open and distance teaching university, was established in 1969 to promote social justice by making education accessible to all. It is the UK’s largest university, with over 170,000 students.

The Centre for the Study of Global Development creates a unified space for multi- and interdisciplinary research within the Faculty of Wellbeing Education and Language Studies. The core objective of research from the Centre is to advance aspects of the sustainable development goals within and across all countries that relate to poverty, health, wellbeing, education, decent jobs, and employment, while also critiquing globalised development agendas and exploring and showcasing localised conceptualisations of and approaches to development. The Centre believes that it is important to tackle challenges of development through an interdisciplinary lens, and that by working across disciplines a better understanding of development problems can lead to sustainable solutions. To achieve this goal, the Centre works with scholars from different social science and geographic backgrounds to research problems of development to achieve progress for poor and marginalised groups in society.