Asiya Islam

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation. This course is available on the Global MSc in Management, Global MSc in Management (CEMS MIM), Global MSc in Management (MBA Exchange), MSc in Development Management (Political Economy), MSc in Development Management (Political Economy) (LSE and Sciences Po), MSc in Development Studies, MSc in Gender, MSc in Gender (Research), MSc in Gender (Rights and Human Rights), MSc in Gender (Sexuality), MSc in Gender, Media and Culture, MSc in Gender, Peace and Security, MSc in Gender, Policy and Inequalities, MSc in Health and International Development, MSc in Human Geography and Urban Studies (Research), MSc in Human Rights, MSc in Human Rights and Politics and MSc in Political Science (Global Politics). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

Students should apply by 10am UK time on Friday 25 September 2026. Offers will be made after 10am on this date and will continue until all places are filled.

Priority is given to home department students and those from the Department of International Development, followed by those who have the course listed in their programme regulations who apply in the first 24-hours (by 10:00am, Friday 25 September 2026), space permitting. Please note the timing of your request within the first 24-hours will not impact chances of being accepted onto the course. Requests received after this timeframe, or outside option requests, will be allocated randomly if space remains.

Please do not email the Course Convenor with personal expressions of interest as these are not required and do not influence who is offered a place. Contact gender@lse.ac.uk with any queries.

The course engages with feminist perspectives on transnational development agendas. It begins by exploring the relationship between gender, development, and globalisation, and introducing decolonial feminist approaches to understanding this relationship. The course then delves into specific development arenas such as reproductive and sexual rights, anti-trafficking and sex work, environmental disasters, land rights and food justice, and urban and technological transformations. Throughout, the course critically reflects, using decolonial feminist approaches, on the underlying logics and genealogies, institutional structures, and governance mechanisms involved in transnational development agendas. In paying attention to how feminist scholars and activists envision social change, the course also explores counter-hegemonic movements and feminist struggles over recognition, redistribution and representation.

15 hours of seminars and 15 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

This course provides students with expert teaching from faculty in the LSE Departments of Gender Studies and International Development.

One essay of 1500 words to be handed in midway through the WT.

Benería, L., Berik, G. and Floro, M. (2017) Gender, development, and globalization : economics as if all people mattered. Second edition / Lourdes Benería, Günseli Berik, and Maria S. Floro. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Bhattacharyya, G., 2018. Rethinking racial capitalism: Questions of reproduction and survival. Rowman & Littlefield.

Fletcher, A.J. and Kubik, W., 2017. Women in Agriculture Worldwide. Routledge.

Gago, V. (2017). Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies. Duke University Press.

Sanchez-Ante, G., Cebral-Loureda, M. and Rincón-Flores, E.G. (2023) What AI Can Do. CRC Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1201/b23345.

Hoang, K. K. 2022. Spiderweb capitalism: how global elites exploit frontier markets. Princeton University Press.

Kocabıçak, E., 2022. The political economy of patriarchy in the global South. Routledge.

Marchand, M.H. and Runyan, A.S. eds., 2010. Gender and global restructuring: Sightings, sites and resistances. Routledge.

Merry, S. E. 2014.  The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking. University of Chicago Press.

Mies, M. (1986). Patriarchy and Accumulation on a Worldscale: Women in the International Division of Labour. Zed books.

Rai, S.M. and Waylen, G. eds., 2014. New frontiers in feminist political economy. London: Routledge.

Roy, A., & Ong, A. (Eds). (2011). Worlding Cities: Asian Experiments and the Art of being Global. Blackwell Publishing.

Srnicek, N. (2018). Platform capitalism. Polity.

Tripp, A.M, Casimiro, I., Kwesiga, J. and Mungwa A. (eds.) 2009. African Women's Movements: Transforming Political Landscapes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Essay (100%, 3000 words).