Program Overview

Program Overview

The Psychopathology And Mental Functioning: Research Methods In Forensic PhD program aims to train high-level researchers in the field of psychopathology applied to forensic and criminological sciences. The program enables students to expand the body of scientific literature on medical, psychological, and social sciences applied to forensic and legal contexts.

Program Details

• ID: 31897
• Course type: Dottorato
• Academic year: 2025/2026
• Positions: 3
• Grant numbers: 0
• Number of scholarships financed by institutions: 0
• Number of scholarships financed by consortiums: 1

Educational Goals

The main objective of this PhD is to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge and skills necessary for successful access to national and international research contexts. The program ensures that each student can be supported and explore their specific research interests.

Curriculum

The educational program is articulated in advanced institutional courses that deepen the study of research methodology in relation to:

• Life-cycle psychology and psychopathology
• Criminality and deviance
• Neurobiology
• Neuroscience and neuroimaging
• Memory and testimony
• Decision-making processes and biases
• Assessment and psychodiagnostic evaluation in forensic contexts Students will be trained in statistics and data analysis, including both traditional methods and the latest systems of artificial intelligence (e.g., machine learning algorithms).

Curricula

The program offers three curricula:

• Legal Psychology: Provides specialized skills related to the advancement of methodologies and techniques for the assessment of personality, family relationships, parenting capacity, victimology, offender treatment, and the credibility of adult and juvenile witnesses.
• Forensic Psychopathology: Aims to refine methodologies useful in forensic psychiatric semeiotic research, particularly relevant to the assessment of decision-making capacity, the methodology of conducting a psychiatric expert report, and the in-patient, out-patient, and pharmacological treatment of offenders.
• Forensic Neuroscience: Focuses on refining research methodologies related to the assessment of cognitive processes in forensic settings, in particular, memory, testimony, and free will, and to the decision-making processes of professionals working in the legal context.

Department and Staff

• Department: Neuroscienze Umane
• Coordinator: Paolo Roma
• Staff: Luisa Iafrate

Errata Corrige

An errata corrige has been published to correct a material error in the publication of the Approval Decree, which did not include decimal numbers in the scores, rounding them in excess. The correction has been made to provide accurate information.