The paper aims to build understanding of the recent growth of interest in engineering for international development as an emerging focus of new knowledge, practice, and community development. In the paper, we create a borderlands approach to studying the activities referred to as engineering for development and development engineering. These activities take place in ‘borderland’ spaces where new approaches are being tried out through creative engagement of networks and communities willing to integrate social as well as technical knowledge and practice. We analyze four cases, selected as exemplars of engineering for development, from a large data set of case studies to demonstrate the socio-economic impact of research. We found evidence of important and original engineering, which showed paradigmatic shifts in engineering knowledge and practice. There was ambivalence inside the engineering community about engineering quality, mixing pride in the building of new paradigms with modesty about whether new knowledge and practices were ‘real’ engineering. These findings provide evidence that engineering aimed at global development offers an exciting new ‘borderlands’ approach to engineering that warrants further study.

本文旨在建立对国际发展工程学兴趣的最新增长的理解，这是新知识，实践和社区发展的新兴焦点。在本文中，我们创建了一种边疆方法来研究被称为“工程开发”和“开发工程”的活动。这些活动在“边界”空间中进行，在这些空间中，通过愿意整合社会以及技术知识和实践的网络和社区的创造性参与，正在尝试新方法。我们从大量的案例研究数据集中分析了四个案例，这些案例被选为开发工程的范例，以证明研究的社会经济影响。我们发现了重要且原始的工程证据，表明工程知识和实践发生了范式转换。工程界内部对工程质量存有矛盾，将建立新范式的自豪感与对新知识和实践是否为“真正的”工程的谦虚相结合。这些发现提供了证据，证明面向全球发展的工程学为工程学提供了令人兴奋的新“边界”方法，值得进一步研究。