As the original social science departments at the University (Sociology, Economics, Politics and Anthropology) developed they each appointed one or two faculty with an interest in what then was unproblematically defined as 'Third World issues'. Within the framework of a vibrant college system, which brought faculty together from different departments, they soon discovered a set of mutual interests. This was part of a more comprehensive process of jelling amongst complementary disciplinary interests, from which not only CDS emerged but the Canadian Studies and Social Theory programs also emerged.
The conception behind all these interdisciplinary programs was very similar. They would build upon departmental strengths in a complementary fashion, and in the case of CDS it was formalized in 1976 in the following manner:
a. the foundation course would be placed at the second year level. Students were expected to complete discipline-based first year courses before embarking on the program;
b. the other courses comprising the program were hosted within existing Departments, with a distinction drawn between those that were more central (core courses) and those that were less so (support courses);
c. students would be joint-majors. While it was expected that the other major would be in one of the social science departments, this was not a requirement;
d. faculty teaching on the foundation course were cross-appointed for specific periods from their home departments with the CDS program;
e. administratively, the program was independent of departments, and was formally governed by a committee made up of all those teaching courses in the program. It had access to the full range of support services, but these were provided by departments: secretary, library acquisitions, and a guest speaker budget.
Early Development: 1976-1983
The program established itself very quickly. It became known largely through word of mouth, especially within Canada World Youth (CWY). CWY was designed for students prior to entering university, and many wanted to pursue the interests stimulated by their experience abroad in an academic context. CDS therefore started to attract some very capable, highly motivated students from all parts of Canada. A second important source of recruitment was from other universities. As students completed their first year and found their intellectual interests focusing on international development issues, they often felt that they would be best served by transferring to Trent University.
Many students therefore started coming to the University specifically for the CDS program, often bringing considerable background and experience. It was that dynamic that shaped the programme in its early days, in four separate ways:
a. Creative tension between theoretical and practical learning. A creative tension between the academic analysis of international development issues and experiential learning emerged early in the program's development. The focus of the former on the theoretical, comparative and global dimensions of international development was seen as being both enriched and complemented by study in a so-called 'developing' country. Virtually all those who had contributed to the emergence of the CDS field at the University had 'been there', and it was felt important to provide students with a parallel opportunity. This would enable them to see at first hand the impact of grass-roots international development projects and engage in discussion with government and other officials responsible for shaping international development policy. This was the basis of both the short field trips organized during the February reading break and the full year abroad programs (YAPs) developed later in the evolution of the program. The latter in particular would have been quite impossible without a large cohort of academically strong and experienced students.
b. Development of a strong curriculum in international development studies across various departments at the University. Cross-listed core courses and at least one support course (Commonwealth Literature) attracted a visible and interesting group of CDS students that helped to strengthen the support for such courses in a variety of departments and programs at the University. The existence of such a constituency provided an incentive for curricular innovation in other programs. Environment and Development was the first such course to be mounted, and would be followed by parallel thematic courses on Women and Culture.
c. Strong reputation of CDS gradates both in graduate schools and in the professional field. It quickly emerged that CDS graduates moved smoothly into careers in the international development community (the Canadian International Development Agency [CIDA], Oxfam, etc), and into post-graduate programs, often with major scholarship support. CDS could therefore establish an identity, which served to differentiate it from other emerging international development studies programs. It could meet any expectation of pre-professional preparation with its distinctive combination of academic analysis and experiential learning.
d. Active involvement of CDS students in local community groups and activities promoting a global outlook. Peterborough has strong tradition of support for social justice groups (Jamaica Self-Help, Development and Peace, Oxfam and others). With the Kawartha World Issues Centre to initiate and coordinate international development education, students found some additional outlets for their energies and CDS was able to make its own contribution to community relations through weekend Symposia on Canada and the Challenge of International Development.
Consolidation: 1983-1990
A process of consolidation commenced around 1983. It involved three interrelated features:
a. The Trent International Programme (TIP). TIP was formed in 1983. This opened up entirely new avenues of recruitment: very capable Canadians, mainly from Pearson College, and students from developing countries supported by CIDA scholarships. It also served to raise the international profile of the University and provided an administrative framework for further initiatives from which INSTRUCT (see Appendix XX) eventually emerged.
b. Administration. Consolidation involved moving from shorter to longer terms for the Chair of the Program. It was initially expected that David Morrison would serve in this capacity but after one year he became Dean. The vacuum was then filled by John Hillman, who served for eight consecutive years. One result of Morrison's move was a greater appreciation in the senior administration of the overall importance of interdisciplinary studies within the University, and of CDS in particular.
c. Staffing. Two modifications were made to the pattern of staffing arrangements. A regular appointment was created which served the needs of two academic units (Daniel Powell, .7 CDS and .3 Anthropology). This became the standard form (with occasional variation in the fractions) for all subsequent new appointments. A second modification was the secondment of Pradeep Bandyopadhyay from Sociology on a full time basis. With these additional resources, further augmented by the partial secondment of Chris Huxley (also from Sociology), the programme could build on the foundations laid in the first phase. The implications of these staffing changes for the development of both the curriculum and the Ecuador YAP, which was established in the late 1980s and became a central distinguishing feature of CDS in Canada, are noted in separate sections. The Salisbury review of 1988 confirmed the overall direction taken by the program and recommended that it be strengthened with the introduction of a first year course.
Transformation: 1990-1996
The program underwent an important transformation as a result of the introduction of a first year course. The introduction of the CD 100 course, 'Human inequality in global perspective', solved two important problems. First, it strengthened the foundation provided for students planning to spend their third year abroad on the Ecuador YAP. Second, it enabled students coming to the University specifically for CDS to see a that it was a comprehensive program that would begin to meet their needs as soon as they arrived. CD 100 had a core series of lectures with a supplementary set of tutorials and workshops. Enrollment levels were sufficiently large that these could only be handled with three types of staff: faculty with ongoing lecture responsibilities on the course, faculty in the role of workshop and tutorial leaders, and teaching assistants. The inherent difficulty in organizing such a course and maintaining faculty enthusiasm was compounded by the need to make temporary arrangements to cover leaves and sabbaticals. It took some time to develop a formula that met these various constraints.
With a large first year course the overall enrollments assigned to CDS doubled, and two new permanent appointments were authorized by the University administration. Jacqueline Solway (.7 CDS/.3 Anthropology) and Winnie Lem (.7 CDS/.3 Women's Studies) joined the programme in 1991. They were part of a new generation of appointments at the University, many of whom brought several complementary interests, especially in the Departments of Economics, History, Environmental and Resource Studies (ERS) and Politics. The intellectual density of the programme increased considerably at this time, and the overall professional standing of the faculty was a source of considerable pride. Neither of the two new CDS appointments had any direct previous association with the program, so it could therefore be enriched with fresh perspectives, independent of those shared by the founding generation. At the same time one member of that generation, Bandyopadhyay, became more sceptical about the implications of international development studies and transferred back to Sociology in 1997.
This period was largely shaped under the Chairship of Powell, and the programme was now granted its own secretarial administrator. The Ecuador YAP began to be offered annually and the Department of Native Studies adopted the model for a YAP it organized in Thailand. Morrison left the senior administration and became Director of TIP and INSTRUCT. TIP was not only renewed under his leadership, but it served as an important base for several other initiatives including a more comprehensive programme of study abroad (TISEP) and an academic program in international studies. In this way, CDS became an integral part of a wide range of international activities available to students at the University that, during this period, served to significantly differentiate the University from other universities in the country.
Consolidation and Transition: 1996 to 2001
The evolution of the CDS program in the late 1990s was characterized by several features. The first was that the patterns that had stabilized in the early 1990s continued. The logic of the curriculum remained centered on the first year survey course, a second year theory and methods course, third year area, thematic, and experiential courses and opportunities, and a fourth year set of honours seminars. The latter provided a capping CDS year that enabled students to integrate theory, method, and empirical material. The second was the creation of the Ghana YAP in 1997, which is chronicled in Section 8. Thirdly, two fresh appointments were authorized in this period, Jennifer Clapp (.5 CDS/.5 ERS) in 1997 and Derek Hall (.7 CDS/.3 POST) in 2001. They both served to strengthen not only the CDS program but also contributed to a concentration of faculty at the University with expertise in international political economy. Finally, a generational transition occurred. Solway assumed the Chairship in 2000 and in the light of his impending retirement Hillman transferred to Sociology in 2001.
In light of these features, during the late 1990s CDS sought to enhance its autonomy from other academic units in the University. While the program deeply valued its linkages with other programs and departments and recognized that its emergence had been as a result of cross-disciplinary interest and good will, it became apparent that there were some courses or themes that were either being taught outside the program or were not being taught at all and that these courses and themes might be more effectively taught by a CDS faculty member who had a clear understanding how any course fit within and fed into the wider CDS curriculum. Therefore, the CDS program sought to ‘domesticate’ courses and introduce new ones. Moreover, the program expanded opportunities for students to engage in experiential and practical educational options by incorporating a Trent Centre for Community Based Education (TCCBE) course that allowed students to undertake research for a community organization for university credit. The view here was that a University-supported internship program would enable students to gain practical experience while grounding it in an academic framework. Such a program, it was believed, would especially benefit students not wishing to devote an entire academic year to one of the two YAP options.
Despite the addition of Clapp and Hall in the late 1990s CDS remained diminished in overall faculty numbers compared to 1991, when Solway and Lem came into the program; as has been noted, some faculty moved internally within the University and others became primarily involved in administration. With an increase in student numbers already evident and a recognition that this would be amplified with the double cohort in 2003, and with a number of retirements on the horizon, it was apparent that CDS needed a number of new faculty appointments to sustain the program’s quality.
By 2001, when CDS celebrated its 25th anniversary as an academic program at the University, it was a mature program. The 25th anniversary Symposium, held in October 2001, provided an opportunity for reflection on current issues in the field. One means to mark this transition was with a fresh name. On October 31 2001 the program approved the adoption of a new name, International Development Studies (IDS). With the recognition that students were looking increasingly for international programs, that they want international on their transcripts, and that the internet was now their main source of university information, it was believed that students might overlook or misconstrue the character of CDS. The rapid increase in IDS programs in Canada during the very late 1990s and early 2000s made this concern more acute. The new name did not however signal a change or different direction in the program, in that the comparative perspective remained integral to the vision of the now-IDS program.
Maturity: 2001 - 2013
In 2001-2, with a faculty complement consisting of Solway (1 IDS during her Chairship), Lem (.7 IDS/ .3 WMST), Powell (.7 IDS/.3 ANTH), Morrison (seconded from TIP), Clapp (.5 IDS/.5 ERST) and Hall (.7IDS/.3POST), IDS underwent a review with Professor Myron Frankman of McGill University as external assessor. The review encouraged IDS to continue to develop its curriculum, continue to offer opportunities that combine experiential and academic learning, and to continue to enhance the student experience. As is outlined in Section 1.5, many initiatives occurred after the review, such as curriculum development and reform, enhanced student faculty-activities, and the further development of experiential learning opportunities.
Since 2001 IDS has flourished despite an overall decline in faculty numbers, which will be discussed below. As enrolments were continuing to rise the Dean provided IDS with a new tenure-track hire for 2003. Christiaan Beyers began as a full IDS appointment in 2003 and brought new expertise, especially in the Andean region, and in theory. Moreover, Eric Helleiner, Tier 2 Canada Research Chair (CRC) in International Political Economy joined IDS in 2003, moving from Political Studies. It had already been the case that CRC-sponsored activities, including workshops, guest speakers, and the like, had enriched the intellectual life of IDS for faculty and students; Helleiner's transfer indicated that it would continue to do so. With the faculty renewal achieved by the arrivals of Clapp, Hall, Beyers and Helleiner between 1997 and 2003, IDS was in a position address many of the issues that arose from the 2001 review.
Therefore, in 2003-4 the IDS program underwent a major curriculum review. With an increased number of dedicated IDS faculty, a growing number of full and joint majors, a required core first and second year course in place and therefore a sound and comprehensive curricular basis upon which to build other courses, IDS was in a position to consolidate its curriculum and provide it with even greater coherence. The new curriculum, approved by the Undergraduate Studies Committee in the spring of 2004 and put into effect in the fall of 2005, relied much more heavily upon courses taught by IDS core faculty and therefore that built upon IDS 100Y, 'Human inequality in global perspective', and IDS 200Y, 'Development analysis'. The program eliminated the category of support courses because they were seen as no longer necessary to fulfil degree requirements, given the increase in IDS courses. Course were divided into four categories, the first two categories distinguishing between courses that built solidly upon IDS 100Y and 200Y (Category A) and Category B that consists of cross-listed courses whose content are based less on IDS foundation courses. Category C includes independent study courses (honours thesis and reading courses) and Category D includes TCCBE courses. Section 4 below provides more details on the IDS curriculum.
With Helleiner, who had an economics background, on board, IDS was able to ‘domesticate’ an economics offering and launch IDS 310Y, ‘International development studies in an economic context’. This course was designed to be more relevant to IDS majors, to draw upon the foundation built in IDS 100Y and 200Y, and to feed into upper level courses. IDS 310Y was required of all single majors, and with it now offering a customized economics background to IDS majors the Department eliminated the requirement that students take first year macroeconomic and microeconomic courses, although students were still recommended to take these, and third year cross-listed IDS and Economics courses were put in Category B.
Although not formally part of the curriculum, in 2005 the program sent its first Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC) Canada Corps student, funded by CIDA and now called Students for Development (SfD), abroad to work in northern Ghana over the summer, in partnership with a local organization. IDS played a pivotal role, in conjunction with TIP, with SfD at the University, with 7 students between 2007 - 12 gaining paid summer internships to Bangladesh and Viet Nam. The program was important as it enabled students to gain hands-on experience in the development process, but the federal government eliminated SfD in its most recent budget.
A powerful revival of IDS student life began in 2002-3 as a new cohort of exceptional and eager students moved through IDS. The old student association had languished by 2000. In 2002-3 the students created a new association, the Students Association in International Development (SAID), that initiated numerous activities including workshops, guest speakers, film nights, open mikes and faculty-student meet and greets. Members of SAID, along with faculty support, gave birth to InSight, the first undergraduate international development studies association in Canada. In 2004 they met at the annual meetings in Winnipeg of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, in conjunction with the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development, and continued to do so until 2010. Building upon InSight IDS students from the University took the lead role in launching Undercurrent, the first peer reviewed undergraduate journal in international development studies in North America or Western Europe. The boards, staff and participants of InSight and Undercurrent now include students and faculty from across Canada but the IDS program has always been very proud of the enormous work, imagination and professionalism of our students in founding these important initiatives.
IDS students, along with strong support from Clapp, were instrumental in founding the student run Seasoned Spoon cafe that started by selling soup a few days a week in 2002 and is now a full-fledged and very successful ‘natural food’ restaurant located in the University's Champlain College. Students can take a TCCBE course in conjunction with the ‘Spoon’. The Spoon engages in community outreach, education and a number of projects that enhance life at the University and within the wider community. On any given day, one can find IDS students and faculty eating and interacting at the Spoon, and many IDS students work there as volunteer or paid staff.
In 2005-6 IDS went through a period of significant upheaval prompted by unfortunate developments in a cognate department. In 2005 Clapp, who had assumed the Chairship in 2004, left to take a Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) Chair at the University of Waterloo. Solway resumed as acting Chair in fall 2005, and Lem became Chair in January 2006. Helliener also left in 2005 for a CIGI Chair at Waterloo, and Hall left in 2006 to take a position at Wilfred Laurier University. It should also be noted that in 2005, when Helleiner left, the University redirected his junior CRC position to Gender Studies. In 2011 the junior CRC was again rethought. While it remains in Gender Studies an international component was added to its mandate. A new candidate with interests in both gender and international development is to begin 2013, pending SHHRC approval of the CRC application, although they will be housed in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies.
IDS was offered two new tenure-track positions to be taken up in 2006. Professor Haroon Akram-Lodhi and Professor Paul Shaffer, both heterodox development economists, were hired, Akram-Lodhi as a full professor and Shaffer as an assistant professor. Both brought years of experience in academia as well as development work. Their presence brought new expertise, new energy, and both had a strong desire to engage with students in and outside the classroom. They have done much to reinvigorate IDS in light of losing three valued faculty members. Moreover, with the retirements of Daniel Powell, David Morrison, who had returned to full-time IDS teaching, and Chris Huxley between 2006 and 2008 the program was significantly understaffed relative to the early 2000s, with 4.7 full time faculty members running the entire unit, including the Ghana and Ecuador YAPs.
As Chair, Lem worked to have the status of the IDS program changed to that of a department, in recognition of the program's maturity, core faculty and core curriculum. IDS became a Department in 2007. Although this changed little of the reality facing IDS on the ground, it did provide an important signal to others, including prospective students, that IDS was a coherent unit and not a program cobbled together with unevenly-related courses from other programs and departments.
In 2009 Akram-Lodhi became Chair. Under his direction the Department has weathered a series of resource cuts, but in 2011 the situation stabilized for the first time in more than half a decade. In 2011 the Dean offered a tenure-track position to be shared with Politics. Professor Hasmet M. Uluorta began in 2012 as .7 Politics and .3 IDS. In 2012 Professor Feyzi Baban of the Politics department moved full-time into the IDS department and Professor Colleen O'Manique applied to the Dean to transfer her 0.3 appointment in Politics to the Department commencing in July 2013. With the addition of Uluorta, Baban and O'Manique IDS looks forward to a period of growth and curricular development. Nonetheless, the Department continues to be understaffed relative to where it was in 2005, because retired faculty have not been replaced. This reflects years in which the university experienced financial hardship and very few new appointments were authorized. In this light, the fact that the Department was able to maintain its excellence in teaching, research and service was an accomplishment in and of itself: in 2010 Shaffer won the University’s Symons award for excellence in teaching and in 2012 Solway won the Distinguished Research Award. Moreover, various faculty have received Merit Awards for outstanding performance in research, teaching and service.
Despite the decline in faculty complement student engagement remains high. For the past 5 years SAID has sponsored, with faculty support, a Community Movements Conference in the winter term on themes such as ‘Food Sovereignty and the Changing face of Agriculture’, ‘Canada and its Place in the World’ and ‘Perspectives on Land: A critical discussion on the role of land in a development context, both globally and locally’. These weekend conferences, held in conjunction with other student groups and organizations and some off campus community organizations, have been extremely successful, attracting speakers and participants, including alumni, and praise from across Canada and beyond. Like Undercurrent and InSight, the Community Movement Conference demonstrates the remarkable leadership of our students and their profound achievements. So too does the fact that IDS students have organized around University cuts to academic staffing. They protested, mounted petitions, were interviewed on television, and more, to fight funding rollbacks in 2010 and 2011. In one instance they were instrumental in IDS being granted an extra teaching stipend.
The Department's intellectual life continues to be rich and stimulating. In addition to the extraordinary activities initiated by our students, in 2006 Lem as Chair introduced a series of lunchtime talks, ‘Transdisciplinary Research-in-Progress’ (TRIPS), in which faculty from across the University present their current ongoing research to an interdisciplinary audience. TRIPS occurs on average three times during the winter term. These have been extremely lively and well attended. Moreover, following a very generous endowment by Professor David Morrison and his partner, Professor Alena Heitlinger of the Sociology Department, the Department has managed the annual David Morrison Lecture in International Development. The first speaker, internationally renowned scholar Professor James Scott of Yale University, was followed by many other distinguished scholars including Diane Elson, Henry Bernstein, Raj Patel and this year Naila Kabeer, Professor of Development Studies in the University of London at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
The founding ideas, tensions and mandates of IDS remain the guiding principles of the Department and can be seen as central to the manner in which the program has evolved and matured. The creative tension between theoretical and practical learning continues to inform the Department's critical approach to international development studies. The Department continues to attract excellent and motivated students who come from across Canada and internationally to the University specifically to study IDS. Many have gone into careers such as law, journalism, academia, medicine, civil service, international development management, and other professions, in which they draw upon their background in critical international development studies. The Department continues to be rigorously interdisciplinary, although with the growth of the Department, the growth of IDS departments globally, and thus an emerging canon, the Department relies less upon other departments of the University than in its early years. Having said that, the Department's engagement with other departments remains vibrant, with the new Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems major providing evidence of the wide extent of intra-University collaboration undertaken by IDS, while the University's IDS students continue to be actively involved both within the University and within the wider Peterborough community.
Focus and mission of the program
The focus and mission of the Department can be summarized by its official mission statement, adopted in 2010:
'The mission of the Department is to provide students with an outstanding interdisciplinary education in the field of international development studies. The Department of International Development Studies prepares students to make significant contributions toward analyzing, understanding and acting in a world of increasing complexity through the delivery of an academically rigorous curriculum that is focused on questions of global significance. In so doing, the Department facilitates the ability of the global citizens within the Trent University international development studies community to make critical, socially engaged and valued contributions to our local communities, to Canada, and to the world.'
In this, the Department is consistent with the vision of the University, approved by Senate in April 2010:
We create vibrant, engaged and sustainable communities of learning, teaching and research committed to free inquiry and expression.
We encourage the dynamic interplay of research, teaching and learning, which enhance and energize each other in the classroom and beyond.
We strive to make valued and socially responsible contributions to our local communities, to Canada, and to the world.
We support a diversity of faculty, staff and students who share a commitment to the learning experience and are responsive to its challenges.
We foster an environment where Indigenous knowledges are respected and recognized as valid means by which to understand the world.
We offer an enriched learning environment that encourages a passion for knowledge, the exploration of the creative links between fields of study and a critical engagement with the world.
We create opportunities for students, staff and faculty to flourish and develop as individuals and as global citizens.
We affirm our commitment to excellence, to innovation and to leadership in research, academic programmes and community partnerships.
We commit to building an inclusive intellectual and social community that values the collaboration of all of its individual members
The Department, in accordance with the University’s Strategic Plan, seeks to develop a learning environment that is welcoming, creates a sense of belonging, and provides opportunities for engagement for all students. It attempts to offer a variety of disciplinary approaches, subject topics, geographic regions, and time periods. We also try to accommodate students of different learning styles in our course design. The overarching way in which the Department does this is laid out in its 2010 Unit Plan:
'The Department achieves this mission by integrating in-class learning with experiential learning offered through its unique Year Abroad Programs and its project evaluation course. The Department's courses are offered by scholars who are engaged in active research agendas and so effectively communicate the relationship between theory, practice and experience. Cumulatively, the Department provides a dynamic cognitive environment that is rooted in the experiences of the communities in which the members of the Department live and work as well as the communities in which students encounter learning, providing a context that enhances and energizes a vibrant and diverse educational community.'
The Unit Plan, which is attached as Appendix XX, also lays out the goals of the Department to 2014, when the University will celebrate its 50th anniversary:
'The objective of the Department for the period up to 2014 is to sustain excellence in teaching and research and to maintain the Department's ability to attract outstanding students by continuing to innovate in its scholarly, rigorous program. The Department will enhance its position and reputation while adapting to the fiscal realities facing the University.'