University of Essex

The University of Essex is a leading centre for the social sciences, known for its expertise in quantitative methods, data analysis, and research that addresses global challenges.

The Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Essex is home to several highly rated departments and research centres. However, Social Science research expertise extends across all three Faculties and includes Sociology and Criminology; Data Analysis; Survey Methodology; Business and Management; Economics; Government and Politics; and interdisciplinary and applied research.

The University of Essex seeks PhD researchers interested in the following social science areas:

  • Applied social and economic research: Projects focusing on the empirical analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data.

  • Digital social sciences: Research exploring the impact of digital technology on society, governance, and culture.

  • Gender and sexuality: Research addressing issues of gender equality, intimate life, and gender relations.

  • Migration and borders: Projects analysing the movement of people across borders and related topics including border control and migrant criminalisation, as well as empowering people from underrepresented communities around the world through language. 

  • Psychology: Projects that reflect the real-world contexts in which psychological processes unfold and consider how we interact with the world and how we experience the world.

  • Psychosocial and psychoanalytic studies: Projects focusing on areas such as childhood studies or refugee care.

  • Social policy and Socio-Legal Studies: Research addressing national and international social and policy issues, with expertise in areas like social care, health sociology, and social justice.

  • Resolving uncertainty and addressing crises: Projects examining how societies and institutions respond to and manage crises.

  • Work, organisations, and society: Critical research into work and its organisation, examining topics such as equality and diversity in the workplace, work-life balance, and leadership.

  • Operational Lead: Laura Ruddick
    laura@essex.ac.uk
    Academic Lead: Prof. Philip Hancock
    phancock@essex.ac.uk

    Strategy Board Member: Prof. Shane Martin
    sm16256@essex.ac.uk

    Website: https://www.essex.ac.uk/

  • We welcome applied, interdisciplinary, and policy-relevant projects that address the design and delivery of health and social care as well as the experiences of people, communities and professionals locally, nationally and globally. Projects may involve quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods approaches, and involve collaboration with service providers, local authorities, or community organisations. We are also welcome projects that can be co-supervised across Departments (e.g. Sociology, Psychology, PPS, EBS or Government).

    Examples of project areas include:

    • Health Systems and Policy: organisation, commissioning, service design, and integration across health and social care.

    • Health Inequalities and Public Health: structural, sociopolitical and environmental determinants of health; equity, access and participation; activism and social movements.

    • Clinical and Applied Psychology: behavioural and psychosocial interventions, mental health promotion, and wellbeing across the life-course.

    • Mental Health and Wellbeing: trauma-informed, critical mental health studies, patient and user movements and advocacy, and community-based approaches.

    • Social Work and Safeguarding: rights-based, advocacy and activism, ethical and participatory models of care and protection.

    • Occupational Therapy and Participation: rehabilitation, inclusive environments, and everyday practices of independence.

    • Neurodevelopment, Disability and Long-Term Conditions: lived experience, support systems and service innovation.

    • Workforce, Education and Professional Practice: training, professional identity, and reflective practice in interdisciplinary teams.

    • Sustainability, Environment and ealth: climate justice, food security, and environmental health policy.

    • Health, Social Care and Welfare Governance, Discourse and Social Change: institutions, policy processes, and the politics of knowledge in health and social care.

    Essex Law School

    • Technology Law (in its general terms, which is to contain Data Protection and Privacy Law, AI law in its multiple parameters and links, and internet law)

    • Company, corporate governance and environmental law  (sustainable development will fall into this field)

    • Public Law and institutions 

    • Human Rights and Humanitarian Law (specialisation in all of its aspects from the law of war to refugee law and international human rights law)

    • International trade and maritime law 

    • Health law

    • Criminal law

    Language and Linguistics

    • Language and second language acquisition

    • Language Variation and Change

    • African Linguistics

    • Arabic Linguistics

    • Interpreting and Translation

    • Conversation Analysis

    • Psychology of language teacher training

    • Syntax-semantic interface

    • Language learning technologies

    • The language teaching classroom

    • Phonetics and phonology

    • Psycholinguistics

    Psychology

    • Visual perception and cognition — vision, visual search, object and face recognition, eye movements, visual neuroscience.

    • Social cognition and interpersonal processes — social perception, trust, imitation, cooperation, intergroup relations, political and moral cognition.

    • Language, reading and communication — psycholinguistics, sign language, reading acquisition, prosody, multimodal communication, science communication.

    • Development, infancy and childhood — developmental psychopathology, neurodevelopmental disorders, interoception, parenting, inhibitory control.

    • Emotion, mental health and wellbeing — emotion processing, anxiety, trauma, perinatal and child mental health, PTSD, wellbeing, weight stigma, emotion and motivation in education.

    • Multisensory integration and body representation — interoception, pain, somatosensation, body schema, shared touch, multisensory attention.

    • Cognitive control, memory and higher cognition — attention, inhibitory control, working memory, episodic memory, metacognition, brain networks.

    • Social and health behaviour change — intention–behaviour relations, self‑regulation, screening uptake, health communication, pro‑environmental and pro‑social decisions.

    • Neuroimaging and neurostimulation methods — EEG, ERPs, fMRI, fNIRS hyperscanning, TMS, tDCS, computational modelling.

    • Culture, migration and values — acculturation, cross‑cultural differences, human values, religion and meaning, economic psychology, inequality.

    School of Health and Social Care

    • Public Health and Global Public Health, health systems and policy

    • Clinical and applied psychology in health and social care

    • Sociopolitical, economic and environmental determinants of health and wellbeing

    • Health and social care inequalities and justice

    • Mental health, trauma, and recovery-oriented practice

    • Social work, human rights and social justice

    • Occupational therapy, participation and everyday living

    • Neurodevelopmental conditions, learning disabilities and non-communicable diseases (NCDs)

    • Disability, ageing and lifelong care

    • Workforce development, professional education, and reflective practice in health and care

    • Health, care and policy discourse.

    Sociology and Criminology

    • Crime, Justice and Public Policy

    • Culture, Identity and Subjectivity

    • Social Divisions and Economic Life

    • Transnationalism, Nation and Rights

    • Global South Studies

    • Sustainability and the Environment

    • Intimacy and Sexuality studies

    • Migration studies

    • Economic Sociology

    • We seek both theoretical and empirical projects, adopting different methodologies: experimental, qualitative, quantitative, and mixed.