State and market
This cluster provides a forum for discussion and developing collaborative research ideas on long-term approaches to the governance of development transitions.

We analyse the ethical implications of the competing frameworks, and promote progressive interactions between state, society and market actors and institutions.
We're currently working on a range of topics including:
- policy for livelihoods: urban and rural
- intersections between formal and informal economies, understandings and policy responses
- the state in the formation of global cities (state-led world city formation)
- the state in the transition to low-carbon economies
- private sector approaches to community concerns
- state reconstruction in post-conflict situations
- agriculture development led industrialisation: viable as a development strategy?
For more information, please contact Michael Walls or Alexandra Panman
Research projects

Somali politics, climate and society
The latest projects, outputs, election observation missions, news and podcasts from the research project.
28 Jan 2025

Refugees and the politics of urban space
A series of projects conducted within the DPU aim to shed light on how governments, host communities and aid agencies are challenged by myths of refugees as subjects and spaces.
13 Dec 2023

Crafting knowledge of sustainable urban economic development
The research brings the DPU’s work on peri-urban expansion in the global south into conversation with indigenous economics in the global north, shedding new light on urban economic development.
12 Dec 2022
News and Events
- Governmentality and urbanism: Reflections on five decades of change in China
- The DPU’s Alexandra Panman has been awarded a Bartlett Research Grant
- Book launch of 'The Value of a Whale On the Illusions of Green Capitalism'
- DPU hosts international workshop on collective property and urbanisation
- Is Wellbeing the Way Forward? Budgeting for a (Post)Pandemic World