Humanities & Social Sciences Research Degrees

Research topics

All research degrees begin with an idea and a relationship. Ask yourself:

• What is your big idea and how will you develop it?
• Who are the best people to supervise your research?

There are two factors that need to be considered when applying for a PhD at Regent's:

• Do you have a clearly defined and feasible proposal for your research?
• Does Regent’s have available members of academic staff with relevant expertise to supervise your studies?

Although we have a wide range of specialist academic staff, we cannot accommodate all research interests. Our research expertise particularly focuses on the fields of business, management, humanities and social sciences. To find out if we have the expertise to supervise your doctoral study, please take a look at:

• The list of our staff who supervise research degrees, including their fields of expertise
• The topics in which we can support research degrees

We have the expertise to supervise PhDs in the following areas:

International Relations and politics

• Middle-Eastern studies
• Security studies
• Complexity studies
• Migration studies
• Medieval and Modern history

Medieval landscape history

• Early 20th century literary and political culture in Britain
• Catholicism in 20th century Britain
• Protestantism in China
• 20th century contemporary art with particular reference to issues of memory
• Word-image works

English Literature

• Victorian literary culture

Media, cinema and performance

• See academic staff profiles.

Psychology

• Smell, taste and flavour
• The psychology of branding and marketing
• Forensic psychology
• Human sexuality
• The psychology of humour
• Evolutionary psychology and mate-poaching
• Social cognition
• Cross-cultural psychology
• Social media use

Counselling Psychology

The DPsych is a professional doctorate, incorporating a doctoral degree, rather than a PhD programme. As such, applicants will need to make a general application to the programme, outlining their academic performance, research skills and practitioner skills and experience. More information can be found on the DPsych Counselling Psychology programme page.

Professional doctorates are doctoral degrees that entail carrying out research that enhances trainees' own counselling psychology practice while also contributing to the counselling psychology profession more widely. The counselling psychology programme team at Regent's encourage trainees to follow their own research passions, but also offer specific areas for potential projects at the outset of the programme. These areas include but are not limited to:

• Ecopsychology and the environment in psychology
• Intersections between research and therapeutic practice
• The body in psychotherapy
• The interface between politics, society and psychotherapy
• Social justice and anti-discriminatory practice
• Sex and gender diversity
• Phenomenological methods
• Qualitative research around psychosis
• Research projects incorporating existential perspectives
• The relational self in context

Psychotherapy

• The therapeutic relationship and process, competencies and treatments for therapeutic effectiveness.
• Integration and relational research
• Sexuality, sex, sexual attraction, gender and therapeutic management.
• Sexual bullying and harassment in schools and universities and therapy interventions to work with bullied individuals.
• Therapeutic approach and interventions with victims of stalking.
• An Exploration of Female-to-Female Child Sexual Abuse
• Working with drug addiction – A Phenomenological exploration
• The Shifting Sound of Silence: A Grounded Theory Study
• The Lived Experience of Migrant Women Who Have Suffered Domestic Violence
• The Lived Experience of Intimacy in the Lives of Gay Men
• A Qualitative Study of Psychoanalytic and Phenomenological Psychotherapists’ Perception, Understanding and Interpretation of What They Deem Therapeutic in Their Clinical Work
• Working therapeutically with Paraphilias