The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has launched a comprehensive publication to commemorate the first three decades of the Trade and Development Report (TDR), UNCTAD’s flagship periodical. As the UN’s foremost development thinktank, UNCTAD has sought to redefine the international development paradigm by producing critical cutting-edge research on various aspects of development from the perspective of the Global South and developing countries. Trade and Development Report, 1981-2011: Three decades of thinking development intends to illustrate how ideas, opinions and proposals expressed in the TDR, as well as the analytical approaches used, differed from the ‘mainstream’ paradigm of North-dominated development thinking, and how such approaches evolved in response to new challenges arising from development in the world economy.