Essex launches Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies

Our internationally recognised Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies has become the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies.

The new Department will build on the long established success of the Centre, which was created in 1993, and will carry forward its top 10 ranking in the UK for research quality (REF 2014). It will also continue its existing relationships with the National Health Service, education and social care services, and professional psychoanalytic, psychotherapy and counselling providers and training organisations.

Professor Sasha Roseneil, Executive Dean for the Faculty of Social Sciences, said: "The launch of the new Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies marks a broadening of our global leadership in the field of psychoanalysis to include the study of psychosocial phenomena, recognising that the social and the psychological are always, in reality, intertwined. The move to departmental status is a great achievement for the Centre and is significant because it represents a scaling up of activity, and recognition of the University’s belief that psychoanalysis and psychosocial studies are important fields of study within the social sciences."

Central to the new department’s offer are the existing degree courses BA Therapeutic Care and BA Psychoanalytic Studies, alongside the new BA Childhood Studies which will begin in 2018.

Dr Matt ffytche, Head of the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, said: "We are connecting the dots. In combining these fields we’re recognising that psychoanalysis has something to say about the psychosocial; about the way citizens live their lives alongside the social issues they encounter. It’s a major step towards our longer term expansion plans into areas beyond psychoanalysis such as refugee care, counselling, group relations and childhood studies."

The new Department is part of the Faculty of Social Sciences which is ranked in the top 5 in the UK for its research excellence (REF 2014) and is considered world leading (QS World University Rankings by Subject).

The change is effective from Tuesday 1 August 2017.