Course summary

The MSc by Research in Counselling Studies provides students with a comprehensive understanding of research design, data collection and data analysis for research in the field of counselling and psychotherapy. It offers an advanced education to students interested in developing research skills, including qualified counselling and psychotherapy practitioners and social science researchers. Counselling and psychotherapy specialise in qualitative, reflexive and critical approaches to research, and have particular expertise in practice-based research that draws directly on practitioners' own therapeutic work, on the client's experience of therapy, and in narrative, reflexive and auto-ethnographic methods. We are especially keen to encourage research concerned with the interface between counselling, psychotherapy and social, cultural and political life. Our research portfolio is highly interdisciplinary, integrating concepts, practices and scholarship from:

• counselling and psychotherapy

• psychology

• sociology

• philosophy

• education

• cultural studies

• health and social care

• other social sciences

• disability

• gender

• trauma

• abuse

• counselling children and young people

• sexualities