MA Childhood Studies offers a unique psychosocial focus, seeking to understand not only the outer social experience of children but also their complex inner, emotional worlds.
Building upon our existing expertise in postgraduate courses like refugee care, psychoanalytic studies and psychodynamic counselling, this programme offers much more than you would find in other MA Childhood Studies courses.
Our inherently interdisciplinary programme is rooted in psychosocial, sociological, and psychodynamic approaches. Drawing on the history of Childhood Studies and the best contemporary research, including the excellent research and practice experience of our academics, modules will explore a variety of subjects, including:

Families and peer relationships
Emotions and the inner worlds of children
Education
The role of play and leisure
Generation and intergenerational relationships
Gender and sexuality
Race and ethnicity
Cross-cultural experiences of childhood
Children, popular culture, and literature,
Children with disabilities
Children and the state
Ethical research with children and young people
Spaces and places of children’s lives
Intersectionality

Our MA Childhood Studies programme will equip you for a career in sectors including education, health, international fields such as the charitable sector and NGOs, social care including children’s homes, therapeutic communities and supporting children and their families. This course also acts as a steppingstone to further qualifications in specific professions such as social work or counselling as well as PhD study.
Your future
You will develop key employability skills including thinking analytically, evaluation, essay-writing, research methods in psychoanalysis and an understanding of psychoanalytic thinking, applicable to clinical and academic work. Our MA Childhood Studies will equip you for a career in sectors including education, health, international fields such as the charitable sector and NGOs, social care including children’s homes, therapeutic communities and supporting children and their families. This course also acts as a steppingstone to further qualifications in specific professions such as social work or counselling as well as PhD study.