Psychosocial Studies MA (by Distance Learning)
Overview
This is a cross disciplinary programme that assumes that to understand the contemporary human world we have to use ideas from psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, literature, history and cultural studies.
This new post-graduate programme is seeking to re-frame Psychosocial Studies for the 21st century. Questions about the nature of the relationship between the individual and our societies have become ever more pressing.
Psychosocial Studies is the academic study of the relationship between individuals and their social worlds. Further, the field of enquiry is driven by the belief that individuals have to be understood as psychologically complex, and that the interactions and entwinement between that psychological complexity and the social world need to be grasped.
The nature of the relationship between the psyche and the social, and the tools of investigation remain contested and uncertain. The strength of debate is perhaps not surprising as some of the issues are fundamental ones concerning the nature of humanity and they are often deeply political in their implications:
- Are human beings best understood as products of biology and evolution, who have ‘essential’ instincts that might be tamed or liberated within different social contexts?
- Or are we beings whose characteristics need to be understood as products of more distinctly human cultural processes that are subject to historical shifts?
- How can we live together?
- How do we understand each other?
- How do we treat each other?
Learn more about the programme of study.
Learn more about employment opportunities.
Contact the programme leader: Dr David W. Jones
