Overview

You gain a clear, confident and advanced understanding of the subject while receiving intensive coaching in academic study and writing. Language and study support are also given in the first year to help you achieve your full potential.

The skills you develop on this programme include critical thinking, data analysis and presentation of key findings as well as transferable skills such as time management, IT and problem solving.

Studying the pathway of International Social Policy enables you to apply theories and methods of comparative social policy in exploring specific fields such as health, migration, pensions, education, social care, poverty and social exclusion, urban development and family policy. You learn advanced research techniques becoming equipped to think critically about the development of social welfare systems in a global age.

About the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SSPSSR)

SSPSSR has a long and distinguished history and is one of the largest and most successful social science research communities in Europe. In the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, 100% of our Social Work and Social Policy research was classified as ‘world-leading’ or 'internationally excellent' for impact and environment.

The School supports a large and thriving postgraduate community and in 2010 distributed in excess of £100,000 in Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) quota awards, and in University and SSPSSR bursaries and scholarships to new students.

Academic staff specialise in research of international, comparative and theoretical significance, and we have collective strengths in the following areas: civil society, NGOs and the third sector; cross-national and European social policy; health, social care and health studies; work, employment and economic life; risk, ‘risk society’ and risk management; race, ethnicity and religion; social and public policy; sociology and the body; crime, culture and control; sociological theory and the culture of modernity.