Social policy and social justice

Entry requirements

Minimum 2:1 (or equivalent).

Months of entry

October

Course content

The focus upon work at the boundaries of social policy and social justice – encompassing a plethora of concerns with crime, criminalisation and social harm – both renews longstanding research concerns within The Open University as well as setting out an exciting new terrain upon which these might be developed. The research topic broadly coheres with the range of the Harm and Evidence Research Collaborative (HERC), a multidisciplinary research initiative drawing on expertise from Arts and Social Sciences (notably social policy & criminology, history, psychology and sociology) and Health, Wellbeing and Social Care (youth justice). HERC unites contemporary practice-based research and critical policy analysis in crime, harm, policing, criminal justice and criminalisation, with an awareness of historical, psychological and social contexts, and rooted in a commitment to social justice.

Department specialisms

- corporate crime and harm - critical analyses around justice – criminal, social and territorial - globalisation and development - the harms of austerity - the history of criminal justice - homelessness and housing - policing - prisons, and other sites and processes of incarceration - research methods - social harm and zemiology - social inequalities and social divisions of ‘race’, ethnicity, class, gender, age, sexuality and locality - the state - youth un/employment and youth justice - utopias and utopian social theory - various forms of criminalisation, non-criminalisation and regulation.

Fees and funding

Please see The Open University website.

Qualification and course duration

PhD

MPhil