Psychology
We are a research-intensive team of internationally recognised psychology experts, committed to producing capable researchers, able to make high profile contributions to an area of pressing policy concern.
We offer the following research degrees:
- MPhil
- PhD, which includes our innovative and multidisciplinary doctoral training programme focused on the scientific study of psychological development, education and health from birth to young adulthood.
Support
You can expect:
- Supervision from experts in the field, including joint supervision for interdisciplinary projects
- Help with qualitative and quantitative data analysis and statistics and guidance from award-winning Psychology demonstrators
- Support setting up computer-based experiments and analysis of data sets including the writing of bespoke software (eg Superlab, DMDX, Matlab)
- A comprehensive programme of research seminars offered by the department as well as specialist seminars organised by individual research groups
- Excellent facilities including a specialist laboratory for studies involving high-density EEG and ERP and a purpose-built video observation Babylab with one-way mirrors and remotely controlled cameras
- Access to other resources such as a test library containing a battery of tests for child and adult populations and clinical and non-clinical groups to inform your research.
Research Areas
You can undertake research degrees in the following areas:
Developmental Psychology
Our focus is on cognitive, linguistic, social and motor development, sleep and its disorders and, in particular, developmental disorders such as dyslexia, specific language impairment and developmental co-ordination disorder. Research in this area has recently been boosted by the establishment of the Institute for Research in Child Development.
Cognition and Neuroscience
Our particular research interests include: audio-visual speech perception, visual perception, attention and cognition, visual masking, memory and reasoning, neurolinguistics and autism. Recent projects have looked
at emotional factors in cognition, temporal order perception, object representations and change blindness, attentional factors in visual masking, processes of conceptual categorisation, and models of residing and prospective memory.
Qualitative Methods
Psychologists specialising in qualitative methods at Oxford Brookes investigate the socio-cultural and subjective nature of psychological phenomena by gaining an understanding of people’s knowledge, experiences and decision- making processes. Recent projects have researched attitudes to peace and terrorism, adapting to green technologies and perceptions of personal growth through musical development and performance, as well as research into cultural identity.
