Social Sciences Conference

On 27 March 2025, we welcomed students in Years 12-13 to our campus for a day packed with  activities. The event featured interactive workshops, taster sessions, and hands-on demonstrations, delivered by our departments of Sociology and Criminology, Psychology and Psychosocial and Psychoanalytical Studies. 

Students explored a variety of subjects, engaging with our academics and experiencing university-style learning first-hand. See the timetable below to get a sense of how the event ran, as we’ll be running a similar programme in 2026 and look forward to welcoming students back onto campus for even more dynamic activities.

2025 Event Programme:

Session information:

• Psychoanalytic Criminology in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Explore psychoanalytic criminology through Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This interactive session examines the idea that we can carry multiple personalities within us and applies psychoanalytic assessment to Hyde’s brutal murder of Sir Danvers Carew. What drives Hyde’s shocking act of violence?

• “Man Up”: How Social Psychology can help us understand the idea of “Toxic Masculinity”: Explore the psychology behind the polarizing debates on 'toxic masculinity.' This session introduces how social identity research helps us understand the complexity of the term and highlights how the University of Essex Psychology Department equips students to tackle global challenges like this.

• Doing a cultural study of mobile phones:  This talk explores how we understand media technologies through one of the most iconic modern inventions, the mobile phone. By treating technologies like mobile phones as having a 'biography,' we’ll examine their journey from creation and use to relationships formed and their eventual transformation into waste.

• Victims and the criminal justice system: This talk will look at how victims of crime experience the criminal justice process focusing primarily on their experience of the courts.

• What is education for?: Explore the vital role of education in society. Is it solely for job preparation or for shaping informed democratic citizens, or both? This session traces Britain’s struggle to broaden access to higher education and examines its value in fostering achievement, critical thinking, and intercultural understanding essential for democracy.
• Why are we scared of children? Why are we so afraid of children in horror? This session explores the rise of the ‘evil child’ as a powerful trope in the genre, examining how and why they evoke fear. Through a psychosocial lens, we’ll unpack what this trend reveals about childhood, popular culture, society and what our fears might say about us.

Please do get in touch with us if you have any questions about the event in the meantime, we'd love to hear from you.