Psychosocial Studies

This BA Psychosocial Studies course is ideal if you are interested in understanding and responding to critical social issues in contemporary society and want to have a positive involvement in improving human social life.

Why choose this course?

• It involves collaboration and engagement with experts in the field of human rights, women’s rights, psychoanalysis, social justice, and those working to tackle homophobia, racial, sexual, gender-based violence and other forms of social inequalities.

• You will learn from scholars across our School of Social Sciences, including in politics, geography, gender studies, criminology, health and social care as you study modules including themes of power, love, hate and class.

• It benefits from connections to research centres such as the Centre for Psychosocial Studies.

What you will learn

You will explore human behaviour and our capacity to influence change in the global social world considering what we know about war, terror and conflict and the simultaneous outpouring of love, compassion and humanity in society.

You will learn about the work of leading contemporary psychosocial theorists such as Stuart Hall, Judith Butler, bell hooks and Pierre Bourdieu. You will also explore how academics and activists collaborate to impact change in human social life.

This course offers you a pathway, the Psychosocial Studies with Principles of Psychodynamic Counselling, allowing you to specialise further depending on your interests and career goals.

How you will learn

This course is available for you to study full- or part-time with evening classes to help you balance your studies with work and other commitments.

Classes consist of lectures, small-group seminars, individual tutorials, practical fieldwork sessions and interactive group work with fellow students. You will also be able to undertake a supervised research project and participate in termly, high-profile seminars focusing on critical social issues in contemporary society.

Foundation Year

If you opt for the Foundation Year route, this will fully prepare you for undergraduate study. It is ideal if you are returning to study after a gap, or if you have not previously studied the relevant subjects, or if you didn't achieve the grades you need for a place on your chosen undergraduate degree.

Highlights

• This course has strong connections to the work of our psychosocial scholars in notable research centres such as the Centre for Psychosocial Research, the Birkbeck Institute for Gender and Sexuality, the Birkbeck Institute for Social Research, the Womanism, Activism, Higher Education Research Network, the Race Forum and the Birkbeck Africa Diaspora research initiative.

• We have a keen interest in the development of new and innovative psychosocial methods, as well as forging new theoretical trajectories across a range of critical fields of enquiry.

• Our psychosocial studies team is genuinely interdisciplinary, with academics coming from backgrounds in anthropology, cultural and postcolonial studies, education studies, gender and sexuality studies, literary studies, critical psychology, psychoanalytic studies and sociology.

Careers and employability

This course prepares you to work in areas such as the community voluntary sector, human rights, women’s rights, race equality, local, public, international charity or non-governmental sectors.

On successfully graduating, you will have gained an array of transferable skills, including:

• the ability to communicate complex ideas and opinions

• critical, analytic and research skills

• the ability to work collaboratively with peers

• self-reflection

• identifying ethical considerations.

Studying this course will prepare you for roles in a range of fields and professions including:

• social justice and advocacy

• higher education lecturer

• community arts worker

• charity officer

• community development worker.

Course modules

For information about course structure and the modules you will be studying, please visit Birkbeck’s online prospectus.