Program Overview

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This is an online version of our MA Refugee Care, designed specifically for interactive, online delivery. This course is taught through distance learning meaning the entire year, or two years, of the course is taught online with no face-to-face, in-person teaching. Where possible, flexibility will be exercised to accommodate different time zones, for example with 1-2-1 sessions being held at a time best suited to you. You will graduate with the same qualification as our campus based MA. Interested in the course but want to study on campus? Read about our campus based course instead . This unique course brings together people from diverse walks of life and parts of the globe to explore how we can care for refugees more effectively. The only course of its kind, we focus on the care of refugees as opposed to the study of them. Through lively seminar discussion we unpack refugee experiences as multi-dimensional and complex, and explore psychosocial perspectives and different types of intervention and activism. We discuss how we may become more therapeutic in our work with refugees, beyond merely offering psychotherapy. Through our course, you'll gain skills in challenging negative and limiting stereotypes of asylum seekers and refugees as traumatised, passive recipients of help. You also gain new insight into effective humanitarian work with refugees and have a special opportunity to visit an Asylum Tribunal and learn from judges about how the UK asylum system operates. This programme is closely associated with Centre for Trauma Asylum and Refugees. Using an innovative online programme, our course staff are made up from the multidisciplinary practitioner expertise of the Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies Department. The course consists of Six Modules, delivered on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, for the first two academic terms. Whilst full-time students attend both days, part-time students attend modules only on one day in year 1 and on the other day in year 2. You will also have guest speakers, world experts in the field, who are practitioners, activists and academics. You will learn our unique, innovative and proven approach enabling you to work directly with refugees and other involuntarily dislocated people, combining theory and practice. We offer valuable opportunities to gain first-hand experience in this field through supportive work placements either online and/or near your location. Students often come with a wealth of voluntary and professional experience in fields such as education, psychology, therapy, medicine, nursing, social work, human rights, law, politics, philosophy, art, literature and media studies. We also welcome people coming to the field of Refugee Care anew, with an interest in working directly with refugees, asylum seekers or other involuntarily dislocated groups of people, or conducting conceptual or empirical research in this area. Students may successfully combine study on our course with part-time work with charity sector organisations. Topics include:

• Psychosocial meanings of home and the implications of loss of home
• Systemic and dynamic complexities of the refugee condition
• Refugee needs and therapeutic responses to them
• The therapeutic dimension of refugee care
• Theory and scope of the psycho-social approach to refugee care
• Psychodynamic and systemic approaches to refugee care
• Theories of trauma, PTSD, resilience and adversity-activated development
• Wider parameters in which the refugee condition is located and constructed
• Organisational dimensions
• Psychosocial perspectives to human rights interventions
• Conceptualising research in this field

Scholarships

New for 2023, The Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies is offering scholarships to assist postgraduate students taking the full-time on-campus or online MA Refugee Care course within the Department. The scholarship, which is open to all successful applicants to either of these two courses, covers all the university fees. For further information and details on how to apply please visit the Essex Futures Refugee Care Scholarship webpage. Why we're great.

• We have a unique, innovative and proven approach in enabling students to work directly with refugees, combining theory and practice
• Our course staff (at Essex, the Tavistock Centre, and external lecturers) are world experts
• We include placements and institutional observations to support your classroom-learned theory

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Our expert staff

The course team, directed by the founder Professor Renos Papadopoulos , is further enhanced by other international experts from a variety of relevant fields. One of the strengths of this course is that the staff team are actively engaged in academic, research and field work within this area. The course is located in the Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies and associated with the Department of Sociology . Being part of a leading university in the study of social sciences means you are surrounded by strong departments that fully support and enhance our work. This allows you to gain the opportunity to work with and be taught by top world-class scholars and top professionals in their fields.

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Specialist facilities

The course is closely associated with the internationally renowned Centre for Trauma Asylum and Refugees (CTAR) that is involved in many training, research and intervention projects in many parts of the world. The course also has strong links with the prestigious Human Rights Centre and the Transitional Justice Network of our university. A unique feature of the course is the annual online visit to an Asylum Tribunal where students attend hearings and have the opportunity of speaking with the judges about the specific cases observed as well as about their work and wider asylum issues. Our Albert Sloman Library is well stocked with books, journals, electronic resources and major archives relevant to our work and, in addition, we have our own library of specialist books and journals.

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Your future

The field of refugee work is not only topical but is expanding and developing rapidly, creating new employment initiatives and opportunities. This course is unique in equipping students to work directly in this field. Accordingly, our graduates make an impact by applying the innovative approach that our course offers in a variety of contexts and disciplines. Many of our graduates go on to play a leading role in many spheres e.g. education, social and community work, human rights, emergency and humanitarian aid, national, international and non-governmental organisations. "Having worked for many years with refugees in different contexts, I wasn’t expecting to be exposed to so many new ideas and perspectives. The MA Refugee Care is an amazing course which has allowed me to exchange views with people from all over the world. I would recommend it to anyone who is intending to work with refugees." Arij Bou Reslan, MA Refugee Care