Our postgraduate research degree (PhD/MPhil) in Psychology is awarded for a thesis reporting original research by a student under the supervision of, typically, two members of staff. Very occasionally, the department is also able to take on a student undertaking a PhD by Published Work.

Our programme can enable postgraduate training for a career as an academic researcher, but also serves excellent preparation for a career as a professional psychologist (e.g., clinical, organisational, and school psychologist), or as a consultant or professional in different fields of industry. In addition to subject-related knowledge, a Psychology research degree provides valuable transferable skills in data analysis and management, written and oral communication, teamwork and time management.

PhD students are initially registered for an MPhil (PhD Track) with the expectation that their registration will be upgraded to PhD contingent upon satisfactory progress. Such upgrades normally take place at the first annual review.

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Behavioural Science

Economic and consumer psychology; judgement, risk and decision-making; psychology and the law; computational modelling of human behaviour; attention, visual processing and emotional processing.

Language and Learning

Reading; word recognition; computational approaches to language processing; historical language change; structure of the lexicon across life-span; Big Data research on language; language and gesture development in infants and children; second language learning; language learning and change; gesture and non-verbal communication in adults and children; development of social cognition; animal (e.g., orangutangs, chimpanzees, birds) communication and cognition; language evolution; sleep and language learning; socio-economic status and child language development.

Lifespan Health and Wellbeing

Longitudinal epidemiology, experimental psychology and clinical studies, with common interests in the factors that determine and/or the mechanisms that underlie healthy living, child and adolescent development and ageing; mental health, sleep and pain; disaster recovery; culture, relationships, beliefs, personality, and well-being.

All our postgraduate research students are strongly encouraged to engage with the Departmental and University-wide advanced training offered. Such training opportunities will be discussed with supervisors and will form part of the annual review process. Our postgraduate research students are also offered an opportunity to gain teaching and marking experience during the course of their doctoral studies.

Entry requirements 2:i undergraduate degree (or equivalent) in Psychology or a related subject

English language requirements Band B
IELTS overall score of 7.0, minimum component scores of two at 6.0/6.5 and the rest at 7.0 or above

International Students
We welcome applications from students with other internationally recognised qualifications. For more information please visit the international entry requirements page.

For up-to-date information concerning fees, funding and scholarships for Home, EU and Overseas students please visit Warwick's Fees and Funding webpage.