The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, abbreviated Geneva Graduate Institute, is a government-accredited postgraduate institution of higher education located in Geneva, Switzerland.

It currently enrolls over a thousand postgraduate students from nearly 100 countries. Foreign students make up nearly 90% of the student body. The school is officially a bilingual English-French institution, although the majority of classes are in English.

It runs joint degree programmes with universities such as Smith College and Yale University, and is Harvard Kennedy School’s only partner institution to co-deliver double degrees.

Founded in 1927, the Graduate Institute of International Studies (HEI) was continental Europe’s oldest school of international relations and was the world’s first graduate institute dedicated solely to the study of international affairs. It offered one of the first doctoral programmes in international relations in the world.

In 2008, the Graduate Institute merged with the Graduate Institute of Development Studies, a smaller postgraduate institution founded in 1961 in Geneva. The merger resulted in the current Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.

2008 was also a milestone year for Executive Education at the Institute. Training for professionals was identified as a high priority, and the Institute created an Executive Education Department, to regroup existing programmes from the two previous institutions.

In 2021, under the new joint Direction of Professor Mohamedou, Director of Executive Education and Eliane Ballouhey, Executive Director of Executive Education, the Institute’s Executive Education is entering an innovative strategic phase.