MSc Social Work Research

This programme creates links between social work research and practice in a range of settings. You will be taught the necessary skills to undertake research into social work and social care as practice-based professionals or as postgraduate research students.

This degree helps you acquire vital tools to maximise your work in addressing real issues of concern with policymakers, managers, practitioners and service users in social work and care.

The programme provides core research training in philosophy and research design in the social sciences, along with introductions to and further approaches in quantitative and qualitative methods in the social sciences.

Optional units build on our particular research expertise and will focus on the skills you will require as a social work researcher engaged with a range of multi-disciplinary colleagues. For example, you may choose to study community development programmes in the context of poverty, interventions to tackle domestic violence, or programmes for young offenders. Other optional units focus on the wellbeing of particular groups: children with disabilities, people with severe and long-term mental illness, or asylum seekers and migrants.

We recognise that students will be joining with relevant, albeit varied, experience and there will be opportunities for you to draw on your own experiences as researchers, managers and policy advisers and to share these with other participants on the programme. A co-learning environment also gives you the opportunity to interact and share insights with other students studying research degrees in disability studies, policy research and health and wellbeing. 

This programme does not include practical training or lead to a professional qualification in social work. If you want to study for a qualification in social work practice, please see the MSc in Social Work.