Susan Murphy

Dr Susan Murphy

  • Research Team
  • Associate Professor in Development Practice/Principal Investigator
  • Trinity College Dublin
  • Ireland

I am the Associate Professor of Development Practice and Director of Research at the School of Natural Sciences (Discipline of Geography), Fellow of Trinity College Dublin, the Principal Investigator of GEOFORMATIONS and the Climate Justice and Development Research Group.  My research interests are in development governance, ethics, policy, and practice. I explore how development governance systems are designed, planned, implemented, monitored, evaluated, and overseen within the climate-development nexus. Using relational theory and assemblage thinking, I trace how responsibility and accountability for outputs, outcomes, and impacts are attributed and allocated, to whom, and for what reasons. This requires consideration of who and what is included in these activities, as well as who and what is excluded. Together with a fantastic research team of MSc, PhD, and Postdoctoral scholars, we explore whose voices are heard and whose are not, what forms of knowledge influence decision-making processes, and why. Fundamentally, I am interested in critically interrogating power dynamics in development governance practices and how power is or could be balanced across the range of agents, agencies, and communities affected by development activities.

As a collaborative, engaged researcher, I engage in transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary research with expert practitioners, organisations and researchers. As part of my work, I hold several external roles, including Chair of Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Audit Committee; Chair of the Development Studies Association of Ireland; Member of the EUROMEMO Group; and Member of the European Association of Development Institutes (EADI) Executive Committee. Previously, I served as the Chair of the Board of Trustees, Oxfam Ireland; Member of the Board of Supervisors, Oxfam International; British International Studies Association (BISA) Ethics and World Politics Working Group Co-convenor; Scientific Committee Member, UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network International Conference on Sustainable Development.

Published Articles

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  1. Geopolitics 2025
    A New Brussels Consensus? Qatargate and the (Re)articulation of EU International Development Cooperation Governance
    Dr Susan Murphy, Cian McMahon
    As the polycrisis of the current conjuncture interacts and unfolds across sites and scales, the core democratic institutions of the European Union experienced their own localised crises of confidence and legitimacy with the eruption of Qatargate, a bribery and corruption scandal involving cash transfers through fake non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to European Parliamentarians, in December 2022. We examine the longer-term geo-historical context within which this crisis is embedded and undertake a critical policy analysis of EU policies and parliamentary deliberations on development cooperation and NGO accountability and transparency. We find evidence of a distinct drift over time from universal to EU values and interests with a deepening role for the EU/state in controlling NGO relationships.
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  2. Turkish Journal of International Development (TUJID) 2025
    Assemblage Thinking and Methodological Reorientation in Development Studies
    Maeve McGandy, Dr Susan Murphy, Ruby Paterson
    In the context of interconnected crises and shifting geopolitical dynamics, the imperative to reimagine how development is practiced and studied has grown increasingly urgent. This paper advances a methodological intervention in development research by drawing on insights from multi-sited empirical work that examines development governance through the lens of assemblage thinking. Using illustrative cases from studies from Ukraine and Costa Rica, we demonstrate how assemblage approaches can illuminate development governance as a dynamic, relational, and multi-scalar field of practice. Assemblage thinking pushes analysis beyond fixed spatial, temporal, and institutional frameworks, offering a productive lens through which to examine the entangled, emergent, and contested nature of development governance.
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  3. The European Journal of Development Research 2026
    Localisation and Locally Led Development in the Post-consensus Era: Transformation, Stagnation, or Annihilation?
    Dr Susan Murphy, Maeve McGandy
    As the polycrisis of global ecological, political, economic and societal breakdown interacts and unfolds across sites and scales, the need to reform and reorient the international development cooperation regime is urgent. Locally led development (LLD) emerged as a panacea for development ineffectiveness across successive policy paradigms from the Washington Consensus to the Wall Street Consensus. To address these questions, this paper critically analyses the policies and practices of thirty-two institutional donors to assess the extent to which localisation and LLD are recognised and operationalised, enabled and constrained in practice. We offer insights on the current conjuncture and the potentialities within LLD to catalyse disruptive rather than destructive forces and transform development in a post-consensus era.
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