Dudley Seers (1920–1983) was a highly influential economist specialising in development economics. He was the founding Director of IDS from 1966 until 1972.

Dudley Seers’ academic work on development economics help shift early development thinking in the post-World War two period away from ideas of growth economics and towards greater concerns about social development. His work sought to produce a true political economy, linking theory to practice. Seers saw ideas as central to changing the world, but that institutions can serve to generate and carry forward these ideas. IDS is one such institution built on this vision.

He was key in steering IDS away from becoming a training institution for civil servants from newly independent countries or simply a university research department concerned with developing countries, and towards the path of ‘pragmatic radicalism’ – establishing and extending operational links with countries in all parts of the developing world.

In 1972 Dudley Seers took IDS into the complexities of the revolutionary politics of Chile under Allende. Under his leadership, IDS joined with ODEPLAN to organise an international consultation in Santiago in March 1972. This established a number of new links with Chile, as well as strengthening old ones. A year and a half later, after Allende’s fall, Dudley Seers devoted much of his time to helping political refugees from Chile get out to safety and find employment in other countries.

After his directorship ended in 1972, Seers continued on as a Fellow but always at the centre of new thinking, changing perspectives, taking new research initiatives, continuing to establish IDS as the institution we know today.

Dudley Seers academic contributions to development can largely be broken down into three broad themes, each of which he wrote extensively on: structuralism; national planning and statistics; and underdeveloped Europe.

Notable works that he published during his tenure at IDS include:

• (1966) Twenty Leading Questions on the Teaching of Economics in The Teaching of Development Economics
• (1967) The Limitations of the Special Case, in Martin and Knapp, Teaching of Development Economics
• (1969) ‘The Meaning of Development’, IDS Communication 44, Brighton: IDS
• (1969) The Meaning of Development. International Development Review 11(4):3-4.
• (1970) New Approaches Suggested by the Colombia Employment Program, International Labour Review
• (1971) Development in a Divided World
• (1972) What are We Trying to Measure? Journal of Development Economics

You can explore Seers’ published works in the Dudley Seers Archive, which forms part of the IDS Research Repository.

In the words of Sir Richard Jolly, who took over as IDS Director in 1972, ‘his pace never flagged over his entire professional life […] He died too early – but he has left his unique and indelible mark on development studies’.