PhD Psychology

Supervision for PhD Psychology within our Department of Psychology is available in diverse fields of psychology including (but not limited to) cognitive psychology, social and cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, and developmental psychology. You study in a stimulating and vibrant research environment, and we provide excellent research facilities. In general, our PhD students enjoy the same access to neuroscience and other research equipment as our academic staff, and access to our research participant pool, which is essential for your experimental research. You also benefit from the supportive supervision given by our staff, and the friendly and collegiate atmosphere provided by fellow students. This ensures that we have an exemplary record in supporting our PhD students to produce high quality theses within three years.

Please note, part-time research study is also available.

We also offer an Integrated PhD in this subject, which enables you to spend your first year completing a Masters-level qualification followed by a full-time PhD studied over 3-4 years.

Our expert staff

Our psychology lecturers include award-winning teachers and prize-winning researchers who are international experts in their own research areas.

Our staff carry out research into areas of psychology that fall under our three key themes: thinking about the world, interacting with the world, and experiencing the world. These three themes help tie your knowledge together as they directly feed into our modules, where you can study how we remember things, what captures out attention, how relationships work, what our emotions do with us, or the impact of culture on ourselves and others.

Within our Department of Psychology, you will be allocated a supervisor whose role it is to guide you through the different stages of your research degree. In some cases, you may have joint supervision by two members of our staff.

The support provided by your supervisor is a key feature of your research student experience and you will have regular one-to-one meetings to discuss progress on your research. Initially, your supervisor will help you develop your research topic and plan.

Twice a year, you will have a supervisory panel meeting, which provides a more formal opportunity to discuss your progress and agree your plans for the next six months.

Specialist facilities

Within our Department of Psychology, we provide excellent state-of-the-art facilities for your study, with extensive laboratory space for experimental psychology and special facilities for visual and auditory perception, developmental psychology and social psychology.

We also have our Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, a state-of-the-art research facility dedicated to the study of brain activity in relation to psychological processes. This provides a dynamic resource with specialised laboratories for investigating behaviour and brain activity including: two eye tracking labs for recording eye movements, four electroencephalography (EEG) labs for recording cortical oscillatory activity, event-related potentials (ERP) and functional connectivity; two near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) labs for measuring changes in blood oxygenation levels; four neuromodulation labs including transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), repetitive TMS (rTMS), transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and neuronavigation facilities.

Your future

With the skills and knowledge you acquire from studying within our Department of Psychology, you will find yourself in demand from a wide range of employers. Our graduates have been employed in clinical psychology, educational psychology, criminal and forensic psychology.

We also have excellent links with the research community and our PhD students have taken up post-doctoral positions in other top UK universities and internationally (including in the US, Italy and Australia), as well as being appointed to lectureships.

UK entry requirements

You will need an upper second class honours degree (2:1), or equivalent, in psychology or a related subject. A well-developed research proposal is also essential.

You will normally be required to attend an interview/Skype interview for acceptance, and acceptance is subject to research expertise in the department.

English language requirements

Course structure

A research degree doesn't have a taught structure, giving you the chance to investigate your chosen topic in real depth and reach a profound understanding. In communicating that understanding, through a thesis or other means, you have a rare opportunity to generate knowledge. A research degree allows you to develop new high-level skills, enhance your professional development and build new networks. It can open doors to many careers.

We understand that deciding where and what to study is a very important decision for you. We'll make all reasonable efforts to provide you with the courses, services and facilities as described on our website and in line with your contract with us. However, if we need to make material changes, for example due to significant disruption, we'll let our applicants and students know as soon as possible.

Assessment

The award of a PhD signifies an original and substantial contribution to knowledge that means you can be considered an expert in your field. The majority of your learning comes from ‘hands on' experience of designing, conducting and analysing your original research, as well as from the demanding process of writing and submitting a PhD. To help in this process, you attend several taught courses in your first year and all our research students are required to undertake postgraduate research training modules as part of their studies.

At the end of your first and second years you will prepare a 10,000 word document that contains a review of relevant literature and summarises findings from your empirical work conducted in that year. You will also take part in a Post Graduate Research conference in which you make an oral presentation of this work to the Department. The submission of the 10,000 word document in particular helps you prepare for the writing of your thesis.

Dissertation

Students within our Department of Psychology submit a dissertation of up to 80,000 words. We take pride in our completion record with our PhD students. We achieve this, in part, by ensuring from the outset that you follow a clear path to ensure completion within three years – with specific appropriate milestones at the end of your first and second years.