Study the PhD in Psychology with guidance from internationally recognised researchers.

Course Overview

Our postgraduate research degree (PhD) in psychology is awarded for a thesis reporting original research by a student under the supervision of typically two members of staff. Occasionally the department is also able to take on a student undertaking a PhD by Published Work.

Our programme can enable postgraduate training for a career as an academic researcher as a professional psychologist (e.g. clinical organisational and school psychologist) or as a consultant or professional in different fields of industry. In addition to subject-related knowledge a psychology research degree provides valuable transferable skills in data analysis and management written and oral communication teamwork and time management.

PhD students are initially registered for an MPhil (PhD Track) with the expectation that their registration will be upgraded to PhD contingent upon satisfactory progress. Such upgrades normally take place at the first annual review.

Research Themes

Behavioural Science

Economic and consumer psychology; judgement risk and decision-making; psychology and the law; computational modelling of human behaviour; attention visual processing and emotional processing.

Language and Learning

Reading; word recognition; semantic representation of words; language development in children; second language learning; computational approaches to language processing learning and change; gesture and non-verbal communication in adults and children; development of social cognition; animal (comparative) communication and cognition; language evolution.

Lifespan Health and Wellbeing

Longitudinal epidemiology experimental psychology and clinical studies with common interests in the factors that determine and/or the mechanisms that underlie healthy living child and adolescent development and ageing; mental health sleep and pain; disaster recovery; culture relationships beliefs personality and well-being.

Teaching and Learning

All our postgraduate research students are strongly encouraged to engage with the Departmental and University-wide advanced training offered. Such training opportunities will be discussed with supervisors and will form part of the annual review process. Our postgraduate research students are also offered an opportunity to gain teaching and marking experience during the course of their doctoral studies.