Program Overview

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Our MA Childhood Studies offers a unique psychosocial focus, seeking to understand not only the outer social experience of children but also their complex inner, emotional worlds. Building upon our existing expertise in postgraduate courses like refugee care , psychoanalytic studies and psychodynamic counselling , this programme offers much more than you would find in other MA Childhood Studies courses. Our inherently interdisciplinary programme is rooted in psychosocial, sociological and psychodynamic approaches. Drawing on the history of Childhood Studies and the best contemporary research, including the excellent research and practice experience of our academics, modules will explore a variety of subjects, including:

• Families and peer relationships
• Emotions and the inner worlds of children
• Education
• The role of play and leisure
• Generation and intergenerational relationships
• Gender and sexuality
• Race and ethnicity
• Cross-cultural experiences of childhood
• Children, popular culture and literature,
• Children with disabilities
• Children and the state
• Ethical research with children and young people
• Spaces and places of children’s lives
• Intersectionality

Our MA Childhood Studies programme will equip you for a career in sectors including education, health, international fields such as the charitable sector and NGOs, social care including children’s homes, therapeutic communities and supporting children and their families. This course also acts as a stepping stone to further qualifications in specific professions such as social work or counselling as well as PhD study. If you’re committed to understanding the child as a whole, incorporating their complex emotional worlds, and want to use this knowledge to improve the experience of children in a variety of settings, welcome home. Why we're great.

• Our unique interdisciplinary approach combines psychosocial, sociological and psychodynamic approaches
• You’ll be taught by lecturers who bring both academic and practical knowledge from years of working with children
• Close links with health, education and social care services ensures our courses are highly credible

Our expert staff

Within Childhood Studies, our faculty are specialists in some key research areas, including: childhood geographies; relational and psychosocial approaches to childhood; childhood and popular culture; postcolonial and decolonial theory; critical methodologies for research with children; children's learning and education; feminist and queer theory; child psychoanalysis; YA literature and film; the social history of childhood; and critical race studies. As active writers and researchers, we are on the cutting edge of current trends in our field and publish regularly in leading academic journals like: Children and Society, History of the Human Sciences, Sexualities, Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society, Sociological Research Online, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, and Psychoanalysis and History. Check out three of our recent publications here , here and here . Our Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies is internationally recognised as one of the leading departments for work that focuses on the role of the unconscious mind in mental health, as well as in culture and society generally. Our research and teaching is deeply grounded in the highest standards of academic thinking and derived from clinical practice. 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 senior clinicians and world-class scholars in their fields.

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Specialist facilities

If you are studying within our Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, you will have access to our extensive facilities to aid your learning and research. In particular, 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. Our Centre for Childhood Studies will offer a unique, international experience for students and staff, developing a collegiate research culture that is based on theoretically-applied research, relevant for child-focused academics, clinicians and policymakers. With regular internationally acclaimed speakers, postgraduate students will enhance their theoretical understanding, knowledge, and practical experience with children and young people, being a part of a learning community that is dedicated to the development of cutting edge research. We hold free evening Open Seminars , which are open to students, staff and members of the public.

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Your future

You will develop key employability skills including thinking analytically, evaluation, essay-writing, research methods in psychoanalysis and an understanding of psychoanalytic thinking, applicable to clinical and academic work. Our MA Childhood Studies will equip you for a career in sectors including education, health, international fields such as the charitable sector and NGOs, social care including children’s homes, therapeutic communities and supporting children and their families. This course also acts as a stepping stone to further qualifications in specific professions such as social work or counselling as well as PhD study.