The International Gender Studies Centre (IGS), formerly the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women (CCCRW), was founded as a research unit in Queen Elizabeth House (QEH) with a remit to advance research on gender, culture and development. Members were particularly encouraged to focus on research that encourages more effective policies for the full integration of women in all spheres of local and international development. Although many members and former members have specialized in social anthropology, the Centre evolved into a multi-disciplinary research unit with backgrounds in subjects such as human geography, history, literature and law.

The Centre began in 1973 as an informal group of women researchers and graduate students of Social Anthropology. These women convened weekly seminars that took a cross-cultural perspective in discussing the challenges and issues facing women worldwide. This was the first regular series of academic seminars at the University specifically devoted to women's studies. The first seminar was held in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology (ISCA), on Banbury Road, but soon moved to QEH at 20-21 St Giles.

In October 1983 the seminar group was officially recognized by the Director of QEH and established as the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women (CCCRW), forming one of several research centres that made up part of QEH. The Centre's members comprised a Director and a number of Research Associates and were existing members of QEH. New members had to be conducting research in line with the interests of QEH already and be approved by QEH's Affiliations Committee. Research Associate status was renewed every two years. As a centre of QEH, the CCCRW participated in departmental meetings of, and in other events organized by, the House. It was also subject to reviews and monitoring by QEH and thus had to produce reports and other self-documentation for the House, as well as profiles of the Centre and its members as part of reports created by QEH for the University.

The day-to-day business of the Centre was conducted by the CCCRW Director (the first being Shirley Ardener, a Social Anthropologist) and by a part-time administrator. The Director and Research Associates also met twice a term to make policy decisions and discuss possible new members and Visiting Fellows (academics who came to Oxford from other parts of the UK or from overseas to pursue research or study as part of QEH's Visiting Fellowship Programme and had CCCRW as their main link whilst at the House).

The Centre had no endowment to help to offset its running costs but QEH provided it with two rooms and some other minor facilities, including the free use of a telephone by CCCRW members. Members of, and individuals connected with, the CCCRW could also apply for QEH Common Room status, which allowed them to make use of the House's common room and dining facilities. When the University took over responsibility for QEH in 1986, facilities, such as the telephone, were no longer offered without charge and the CCCRW was increasingly forced to look at ways to raise funds.

In 1992, the 'Friends of the CCCRW' was formed to help provide the Centre with some financial security. This body evolved from the initial actions of Alison Smith, Deborah Kirkwood and other founding members of the CCCRW who solicited contributions to a small fund to support the Centre. Individuals paid a membership fee, either an annual sum (£10) to be included in the 'Friends' network, or a one-off payment (of £100) to have their name included in the 'Circle' of 'Friends'. In return, Friends received a biennial newsletter and a discount on works published through the Centre. A committee was established, and met at intervals, to administer the Friends of the CCCRW. The CCCRW was entitled, on occasion, to apply to the committee for the Friends of the CCCRW for small grants to support members or finance Visiting Fellows.

In 1995, the CCCRW created an Outreach Council, comprising individuals with 'influential' contacts who acted as fundraisers on the Centre's behalf. In the following years the Centre sought and won international representatives and, in 1996, had an invitation accepted by Aung San Suu Kyi to become the patron of the Centre (a position she held until the Centre's closure). By developing networks of contacts, the CCCRW hoped to both publicise its work and encourage links with other bodies and research activities.

In 1983, one of the CCCRW's first acts was to establish a Commemorative Fund in order to finance a series of annual named 'Commemorative Lectures'. These lectures honoured, in turn, the anthropologists Audrey Richards, Phyllis Kaberry and Barbara E Ward and donations to the Fund came largely from the friends and family of the commemorands and from members of the Association of Social Anthropologists. The Commemorative Lectures were given by a single academic, by invitation from the Centre.

Other core activities of the CCCRW, from its inception, included the organisation of weekly research seminars as part of a termly seminar series. The Centre also organized various lectures relating to different aspects of gender, development and culture, as well as holding annual workshops based on different research topics each year.

By being part of QEH, the CCCRW was also able to run a Visiting Fellowship Programme. The programme, first begun in 1983, provided opportunities for those external academics and scholars wishing to take advantage of Oxford's facilities outside the formal degree-awarding structure. Fellows came from many different countries and at varying stages of their academic careers. To become Visiting Fellows of the CCCRW, individuals submitted applications to the Centre, who, after assessing these applications, passed them onto QEH's Affiliations Committee for approval. Two types of Visiting Fellowships existed; Visiting Research Fellowships, given to senior academics coming to Oxford to pursue research and Visiting Study Fellowships, a status held by those linked to a QEH centre responsible for these Fellows' supervision and educational programme. Visiting Fellows were able stay for as little as a month or up to a year depending on individual needs. They attended seminars, lectures and workshops within both the Centre, QEH, and other University departments and followed individual research or study programmes, which were developed in consultation with an academic advisor appointed by the Centre. These advisors, or tutors, were required to submit a tutor's report on individual Fellows, who, in turn, completed a Fellow's report at the end of their stay. This Visiting Fellowship Programme, as described above, continued as part of the activities of the Centre until its closure.

The Visiting Fellow Programme formed one of the Centre's schemes to establish a network of contacts with academic institutions and bodies around the world, something that was regarded as important by members of the Centre since its establishment. In 1997, the Centre administered a Chair and network in Gender, Culture and Development as part of the United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) University Twinning and Networking Programme (UNITWIN) with participatory institutions from Cameroon, Zambia, Tanzania and Holland. Although the Chair was short-lived, it did initiate formal links between the CCCRW and universities in several African countries. These links were funded by the British Council.

The CCCRW also participated in the 'British Council's Higher Education Links Scheme', (which encouraged Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the UK to create links with disadvantaged foreign universities and other HEIs by identifying areas of mutual interest and research), to form links with other overseas HEIs, including institutions in Asia and South America. The Centre was also represented at international conferences and workshops and collaborated, or was approached to collaborate, in various projects on issues of gender and development, including television/film ventures and a proposed Summer School.

Members of the Centre, and the CCCRW itself, were active in writing and editing a range of publications on gender and development issued by various publishers. In 1983, members of the CCCRW began a series on cross-cultural perspectives on women with Berg Publications, which was generally based on papers delivered at seminars and lectures organized by the Centre and on work done at many of the CCCRW's workshops. CCCRW members assumed editorial responsibility for this series and, on occasion, outside scholars approached the CCCRW with either proposals for publications or applying to have their works published by Berg.

Since 1989, the Centre also played a part in University teaching: members supervised postgraduate and doctoral students as well as acting as assessors and external examiners. Various CCCRW members co-ordinated the gender option course for the Archaeology and Anthropology degree and for studies at ISCA. In 1996, the CCCRW took the decision to draw up a gender option for QEH's newly established MPhil in Development Studies, so as to try and ensure the inclusion of gender in the degree and to strengthen the Centre's role in QEH. The gender option was eventually introduced in the course in 2000. CCCRW Members continued to teach this option and also taught gender options for the MSt in Women's Studies and other University courses.

In 1996, CCCRW members were contacted by Frances Stewart, the Director of QEH, regarding her plans for the immediate future and reorganization of CCCRW, as part of her review of QEH, aimed at integrating it firmly within the University. It was recommended that the individual appointed to the new temporary post of Lecturer in Anthropology and Development should also serve as Director of CCCRW. The minutes of meetings held at the Centre at this time reveal that there was much discussion over the future of CCCRW, including suggestions by some that the Centre leave QEH and move elsewhere. There was also an on-going discussion regarding whether or not to change the name of the Centre.

By 1997, the initial recommendations of a link between the Directorship of the Centre and the post in Anthropology and Development were abandoned. It was suggested that the person appointed Director would also serve as Lecturer in Gender and Development. In the meantime, Cathie Lloyd was appointed Director of the CCCRW.

In 2000, a new Gender and Development research unit was established at QEH, amidst a review of the categories of QEH affiliation. The Gender and Development unit's remit to focus its research on development overlapped with that of the CCCRW and some Visiting Fellows were redirected from the CCCRW to Gender and Development, while Cathie Lloyd also resigned the Directorship of the CCCRW in order to run the new unit. In the wake of these changes, members of the CCCRW (although they also discussed leaving QEH and forming official links with ICSA) sought to prove that the Centre still had a role to play in QEH and by the end of 2002 the CCCRW had rebranded itself as the International Gender Studies Centre.

In 2005 the Centre moved to temporary accommodation at 42 St Giles, awaiting completion of the new QEH site on Mansfield Road. In June 2011, after unsuccessful attempts to secure core funding, the IGS centre relocated to Lady Margaret Hall. At the time of the move it was anticipated by the Department of International Development that the academic and personal links between the Department and IGS would be maintained.

The IGS continued to develop new visiting fellowship programmes until their closure. The Junior Research Fellowship in Burmese Studies and the Visiting Research Fellowship in Burmese Studies were funded by the Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Trust and the Body Shop Foundation, and ran from 2012–17. These fellowships sought to allow academics from Myanmar to carry out gender related research in their country, as a part of university wide efforts to help rebuild higher education in Myanmar following the dissolution of the military junta in 2011. From 2015–18, the centre also established the Global Dialogues and Women's Empowerment in Eurasian Contexts Feminist Mentoring (WEF) programme, funded by the Foundation for Open Society Institute (FOSI).

The Centre was closed in early 2019. Its closing statement, published on the Lady Margaret Hall website, reads:

'The International Gender Studies Centre, formally established in 1983 as Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women (one of the leading feminist anthropologists' seminars of the 1970s in its previous incarnation), was known internationally for its feminist multi/inter-disciplinary approach which concentrated on cross-cultural and comparative analyses of gender issues in mainly, but not exclusively, the developing world. Research undertaken by its members aimed to provide understanding as well as recommendations for effective policies in development. The Centre offered a lively space for intra-University debates, research presentations and mentoring. It served the international community through collaborative research projects and bespoke research fellowships, enabling women academics from diverse parts of the world to take advantage of IGS and University academic and human resources. The measure of its success in facilitating gender-mainstreaming in transformative research, mentoring and publishing came with the decision in 2019 to close the Centre's doors; with Gender Studies now present in the majority of faculties in the Humanities and in Social Sciences at Oxford, it had (successfully) made itself redundant. Its doors may have closed, but the IGS lives on through its publications and the many women (and a few men) who were able to take advantage of what over a span of richly creative 36 years was to become one of the UK's few long-serving feminist research centres. International Gender Studies Centre, 1983–2019.'

Directors of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women:

The Oxford University Women's Studies Committee:

At the end of 1976, an inter-disciplinary Oxford University Women's Studies Committee was established using grants from a donation made by Dr Keith Hope, University Lecturer in Methods of Social Research and Fellow of Nuffield College and from the Ford Foundation in New York. The Committee brought together members of various faculties of the University who were interested in Women's Studies, implementing a study programme in Michaelmas term 1977. Some members of the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women were also members of the Oxford University Women's Studies Committee; the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research on Women has had joint seminars and close links with the OUWSC and Shirley Ardener served as Chairwoman of the Committee.