Counselling Studies

Entry requirements

A UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent, in a relevant subject.

We will also consider your application if your degree is in another subject but you have a professional qualification in counselling or psychotherapy.

Months of entry

January, September

Course content

This PhD programme is an advanced research degree enabling students to conduct in-depth independent research on a topic of their choice, thereby making a significant and original contribution to knowledge in the field of counselling and psychotherapy.

Counselling and psychotherapy specialise in qualitative, reflexive and critical approaches to research, and have particular expertise in practice-based research that draws directly on practitioners' own therapeutic work, on the client's experience of therapy, and in narrative, reflexive and auto-ethnographic methods.

We are especially keen to encourage research concerned with the interface between counselling, psychotherapy and social, cultural and political life.

Our research portfolio is highly interdisciplinary, integrating concepts, practices and scholarship from counselling and psychotherapy, psychology, sociology, philosophy, education, cultural studies, health and social care, and other social sciences.

Our interests include disability, gender, trauma, abuse, counselling children and young people, and sexualities.