The Law, Development & Conflict Research Group (LDC) brings together researchers from diverse critical traditions to explore the dynamic relationships between national and international law, Third World development and civil and military conflicts in the Third World. LDC engages all critical traditions including Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), Marxist, Critical Legal Studies (CLS) in Legal Studies, Critical, Marxist, post-Marxist, Structural, post-structural and heterodox approaches to Development Studies and critical Conflict Studies, Social Movement Studies, Surveillance Studies, Decolonial Studies and other related fields.

Since the end of the Cold War, and especially since the events of “9/11”, international law, international institutions, development policies and civil and military conflicts in the Third World appear tangled and interconnected in complex ways. The work of UN Trust Funds and international humanitarian NGOs, the switch from peacekeeping to peacebuilding in international relations, the development and uses of laws on humanitarian interventions, the politics of human rights and protection of minorities, resource conflicts that are often the result of resource intensive development models, generate civil and political conflicts in the Third World that feed into wider regional and global geopolitical and corporate interests. Economic interests of powerful global actors impact upon local class, community, gender, ethnic, religious, environmental and other social relations producing conflicts within and between states. Disciplinary divisions disconnect economic and political dimensions of development and conflicts in the Third World. Geopolitical and corporate interests intervene, fan and fuel civil and political conflicts often using developmental and humanitarian imperatives as their rationale. The legal frameworks, the disciplinary and theoretical approaches and mechanics of policy development processes in producing and sustaining such conflicts are not well understood.

The Law, Development & Conflict Research Group at the University of Westminster seeks to probe the disconnections and entanglements of law, development and conflicts in the Third World from interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives. The LDC Group provides a forum for conversation, collaboration, and cooperation between scholars, activists, legal practitioners, and wider communities to develop research activities that advance understanding and appreciation of the complexities in the interplay of law, development policies and conflicts in the Third World. The Group seeks to reach out to wider research communities, development NGOs and global justice movements. Affiliation to the LDC Group is open to scholars, legal professionals, NGOs, activists and community organizations that are interested in work of the group.