PhD - Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology

The Graduate Program in Psychology at Georgetown University offers a five-year, full-time program of study in developmental science leading to a Ph.D. in Psychology. Located in close proximity to the White House, Congress, the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, and many of the world’s most prestigious research and nonprofit organizations, the Department of Psychology provides a unique graduate education that bridges academic study and practice in both public policy and health/medicine. Our two graduate student concentrations take full advantage of these resources. Students concentrate in either Human Development and Public Policy or Lifespan Cognitive Neuroscience Both concentrations offer strengths that include an interdisciplinary education in the processes and contexts of development across the lifespan. Program requirements are explicitly designed to offer students rigorous training in the range of theories and methods that characterize the developmental sciences and enable them to place the study of development into the broader contexts- biological, familial, social, cultural, economic, historical, political- from which the field draws its societal applications. Faculty research ranges from studies of age-related differences to those focusing on only one period of the lifespan. Similarly, Ph.D. students' dissertation projects include both developmental and non-developmental components