The Ghent Centre for Global Studies is one of 5 research consortia in the Social Sciences and the Humanities, launched at Ghent University in 2013. This interdisciplinary research centre unites geographers, social and political scientists, economists, lawyers, educationalists, historians and philosophers – a total of 11 research groups from 6 different faculties – around the critical study of global processes. In keeping with the spatial turn in the Social Sciences and the Humanities, the centre aims to question the boundaries and scales of space and place, focusing on the co-construction of the local and the global, with special attention to the historical and ethical dimensions of economic, political, social and cultural globalisation, and to (local) agency in global processes and globe-making projects.

One of the partners studying international development cooperation at GCSS is the Centre for EU Studies (CEUS). Established in 2005, the CEUS has developed a distinctive expertise in EU development policies, covering a wide spectrum of topics including aid effectiveness, climate mainstreaming, policy coherence for development, the social and development dimension of trade (e.g. labour standards, fair trade), global health and the securitization of development policies.