Psychology

Undergraduate Psychology degrees

If you want to understand our place in the world, then psychology at Essex is for you. We focus on the big questions so that you embark on a journey into the thoughts, feelings, and actions of individuals. At Essex we take a multi-method approach, working beyond traditional boundaries to combine different expertise and share fascinating techniques and intriguing theories. We teach you psychological findings by looking at “how we think about the world”, “how we interact with the world”, and “how we experience the world”.

As an undergraduate student, you can gain authentic research experience by participating in our Research Experience Scheme (RES). Throughout your RES placement, you'll acquire skills essential to researchers across various fields of psychology. This includes tasks such as setting up and designing experiments, conducting literature reviews, recruiting and testing participants, and engaging in coding and data analysis.

Career prospects

A psychology degree, especially one accredited by the British Psychology Society, will provide you with the foundations needed for specialising in diverse areas, including clinical and educational psychology.

Many of our psychology graduates choose careers outside traditional psychology fields. The skills you learn during your degree opens doors to careers in market research, human resources, and people-focussed careers such as a high-intensity therapist or special educational needs.

Our psychology graduates have progressed in diverse careers across the public, private and third sectors, including working for the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, and Prison and Probation Service, mental health charity MIND, and organisations like the BBC.

Visit our psychology careers page to find out more about your career opportunities and discover the variety of career paths our recent graduates have taken. We also work with our University's careers services to help you find out about further work experience, internships, placements, and voluntary opportunities.

Your masters degree

We provide a stimulating and vibrant research environment that allows both our students and staff to shape the future of our expanding research-intensive department.

Further study in our Department of Psychology gives you the freedom and the facilities to study, experiment, explore and research why we think, feel and act the way we do. At Essex we take a multi-method approach, working beyond traditional boundaries to combine different expertise and share fascinating techniques and intriguing theories. We teach you psychological findings by looking at “how we think about the world”, “how we interact with the world”, and “how we experience the world”.

At Essex, we pride ourselves on providing a research-led education with award-winning lecturers who are also world leaders in their research fields. As well as your research project, you can work alongside researchers through our Research Experience Scheme (RES). During a RES placement, you can gain experience developing all kinds of skills used by researchers from all areas of psychology, including experiment set-up and design, literature reviews, recruiting and testing participants, coding and data analysis.

Research degrees

Embarking on a PhD in psychology promises an intellectually enriching journey, guided by distinguished experts in diverse range of expertise.. Our experts carry our research that helps use understand how we think about, interact with and experience the world. Dr. Eva Gutierrez-Sigut's research during the COVID-19 pandemic uncovered that 90% of deaf individuals struggled to communicate with mandatory mask-wearing, bridging psychology and public health. Dr. Elia Valentini's cutting-edge study explores the neurobiology of pain, discovering that found fast-oscillating brain waves linked to brief pain and touch can differ widely in scans.

Find a supervisor that can support your study and let your research guide you to explore some of life great challenges.

Start your application with us

Explore our psychology research by theme or your area of interest and find a supervisor that can support your through your studies. More information can be found about research degrees on our department pages. Our courses below will help guide you through the various research degree programmes we offer.