CITD was born as an independent centre in the School of International Studies in JNU in July 2005. However, we have been in existence for more than half a century as a group popularly known as the International Trade and Development (ITD) division. Initially, it was a part of the erstwhile Indian School of International Studies, which integrated with the newly established Jawaharlal Nehru University in the early 1970s as the School of International Studies.

Over the last 50 years, ITD has created a niche for itself in the teaching and research in international economics and development. The first head of ITD was the renowned economist, the late Professor A K Dasgupta. He was succeeded by our distinguished colleague Professor Ashok Guha, who was the guiding force of ITD since 1963 until his retirement recently. The list of former teachers includes B.S. Minhas, Subimal Mukherji, Partha Dasgupta and others. Stalwarts like John Hicks, James Meade and Robert Baldwin have visited the division to deliver lecture-series.

Initially ITD was primarily a research department, running very successful MPhil and PhD programmes for several decades. Our research students are well established in the academic world, in India and abroad and holding positions of great responsibility in the Government and in international organisations.

In 1995, we introduced a new and unique MA programme in Economics (with specialisation in the world economy), keeping in mind the changing economic environment of India and its integration with the world economy. The course has been designed with a clear emphasis on emerging global issues like trade, technology, development, environment, natural resources, finance, banking, law and economic regulation. This MA programme has proved to be highly successful, and one of the most popular MA economics programmes in the country. In less than a decade, MA's from our department have already started establishing themselves as successful economists in the academic and the corporate world.

CITD is perhaps the only economics department in the country focusing exclusively on the international economy as its thrust area of teaching and research, specialising in areas like Trade, Investment, Technology, Environment, Natural Resources, Finance, Poverty, Inequality, and Social Sectors.

We have a team of nine faculty members plus several distinguished visiting faculty. They have been educated at universities like Oxford, Cornell, Columbia, Southern Methodist, UC Santa Cruz, ISI Delhi etc.and other well known universities. They are actively engaged in research in their respective areas and have important research publications in national and international journals and volumes.