Health Psychology, Ph.D. / M.Phil

Start dates: 1st October, 1st January, 1st April, 1st July.

The importance of psychological factors in promoting good health and managing illness and health risks is an increasingly important field of study.

With a keen focus on understanding how behaviours develop and influence people’s decisions concerning their health and well-being, our School of Health and Social Care is an ideal base for you to pursue your PhD studies in Health Psychology.  

Our School of Psychology has an outstanding reputation from take the Science behind their Psychology research and taking a translational approach to have a real-world impact for the benefit of patients and improving healthcare practise. Studying your Psychology PhD with us you will become part of our 3*-4* research environment (REF2021). This means you will be joining a research environment of sufficient quality reflective of a profile conducive to producing research of world-leading and internationally excellent quality.

Research students are currently exploring interventions to address the psychosocial needs of people living with chronic illnesses such as cancer and heart disease and developing methods to encourage children and young people to engage in healthy lifestyle behaviours.

As a student at the School of Health and Social Care, you will benefit from a dynamic and supportive research environment with many opportunities to make connections across disciplines and develop links with organisations and policymakers both in the UK and abroad. As such, you can be confident that your research will inform and be informed by the wider health and social care environment.

According to the most recent Research Excellence Framework in 2014-2021, over 75% of the research carried out at the college was of international or world-leading quality.

Our state-of-the-art research facilities include a high-density electroencephalography (EEG) suite, a fully fitted sleep laboratory, a social observation suite, eye-tracking, psychophysiological, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), and conditioning labs, a lifespan lab and baby room, plus more than 20 all-purpose research rooms.