MPhil/PhD programme

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Programme

The Social Psychology Institute provides a lively and stimulating atmosphere for research students. There are four streams within the doctoral programme:

Health, Community and Development
Organisational and Social Psychology
Social and Public Communication
Social and Cultural Psychology

Applicants, normally, should possess a high level of pass in an appropriate master's degree, together with at least an upper second class honours degree in an appropriate subject from a UK university or its equivalent elsewhere. Graduates from the Institute's own master's degrees must have achieved an average mark of 65% or better (pass mark, 50%) to be eligible for admission to the corresponding doctoral programme.

The programme involves coursework which will be formally assessed. This includes a broad training in research methods together with the core course from the corresponding Master's programme (Contemporary Social and Cultural Psychology (PS400), Organisational Social Psychology (PS404), Health Community and Development (PS461) and Social and Public Communication (PS429) respectively). In addition students will follow a specialised option course in the Lent Term of their initial year appropriate to the topic of their doctoral research. This latter course will be assessed by coursework alone. Candidates may be exempt from some or all of these course requirements, depending on their prior qualifications. All students are required to attend the Current Research Seminar (PS950).

Initial registration is for the Degree of MPhil. The power to up-grade a student's registration from MPhil to PhD is vested in a thesis committee (unique to each research student) chaired by someone other than the candidate's supervisor. This decision is based on members of the committee reading a number of draft chapters (usually four) and conducting a viva voce examination. The committee will meet, normally, not later than 15 months after initial registration for MPhil. A decision to upgrade registration from MPhil to PhD will apply retrospectively to incorporate the initial period of registration for MPhil. Candidates on the programme will be expected to submit their thesis by the end of their third year of registration full-time or its equivalent part-time.

Research facilities

The Institute has excellent computing facilities supported by the IT Services cluster support group. All research students will have access to computers within the Institute, all of which are linked to the School-wide ethernet network including Mac and PC servers and Unix computers, and to the University of London computer centre, ULCC. All of our computers are connected to JANET, the UK academic computing network, and to INTERNET, which provides international electronic mail and file transfer services. The main library catalogue and reservation services are also available on line, using a system called UNICORN, which can be accessed from workstations within the Institute. A wide variety of software is available, including well known statistical packages like SPSS and multimedia development tools (Macromedia Director, Adobe Premiere, Adobe Photoshop, etc.). For those who wish to write their own programmes, most of the popular programming languages are available on a variety of machines.

The Institute has various facilities for research purposes, including: an observation and audio-visual suite; professional videotape editing facilities and videocapture for multimedia applications; Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing; a series of rooms for computer controlled research on group processes, etc.; and a number of rooms set aside for the purposes of research. The Institute does not participate in animal experimentation.

A technical workshop supports the teaching of research methods and the work of undergraduates, postgraduates and staff. The Technical Supervisor (Steve Bennett) and a technician (Steve Gaskell), provide expert advice and assistance over a broad range of areas, including audio-visual recording, multimedia production and analysis, and the design and construction of apparatus for experimental and observational studies.

MPhil/PhD programme handbook is available here.

An information pack on sources of funding is available here.

The Graduate Prospectus is available here.

Graduate school applicants can apply online at Graduate Admissions.