About the Department of Psychology
Psychology at York is one of Britain's leading departments of psychology. The Department has been placed among the World's top 100 departments of psychology in the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings every year since 2013.
The Department of Psychology is a large and vibrant Department with a strong community atmosphere and a nurturing learning environment. There are currently 50 members of academic staff, backed up by excellent technical and administrative support staff. The Department supports approximately 800 undergraduates, 80 MSc students, 40 PhD students, and 25 post-doctoral fellows. We offer two undergraduate programmes: a 3-year BSc and a 4-year MSci. We offer three taught MSc programmes: Cognitive Neuroscience, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, and Development, Disorders, and Clinical Practice.
Core activities: Teaching and Research
The high quality of our teaching and support for students has been endorsed by the British Psychological Society and is reflected in positive ratings from students. Students in the department benefit from research-led teaching that is coherently organized around the core curriculum set-out by the BPS. Students benefit from the department’s excellent research facilities and expertise: our main building houses specialised laboratories for research on vision, speech and hearing, memory, language processing, child development, and experimental social psychology using state-of-the-art behavioural, electrophysiological and neuroimaging techniques. Satellite buildings on campus (max. 15 minute walk) house the Wolfson Centre for Child Development and Family Research as well as the York Neuroimaging Centre. Access to these facilities and the researchers who work here are an integral part of the student experience. The department sits within the Faculty of Sciences, and actively aids in the development of Learning and Teaching strategies both within the faculty and the greater university.
As committed providers of higher education, we strive to develop and deliver interesting and effective programmes at all levels of the curriculum. In addition, we place a heavy focus on ensuring that our students leave York with excellent employability skills for a range of different careers. In a rapidly changing global workplace, we work hard to provide consistent and useful supervision to promote personal development and career planning throughout all degree programmes.
Psychology at York was ranked 8th in the UK for research and 2nd for research output in the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021). Our research environment – the support we give our researchers was rated 4*. We have a broad range of interests spanning high-level cognitive acts such as communication and language-use to low level visual and auditory perception. Our research is internationally recognized and has been judged to be among the strongest in experimental psychology in the UK. For more information on particular research areas, facilities and grant activities please refer to our research webpages.
Our ethos
Psychology at York is committed to ensuring that all members of staff achieve their full potential in a supportive and responsive work environment. In 2007, we received the first Athena SWAN Silver Award for a psychology department in recognition of our commitment to supporting women in science. The award was renewed in in 2011 and 2016, and in 2019 we recived the Athena Swan Gold award. Working patterns in the Department are flexible. We provide support for staff taking maternity, paternity, adoption, and parental leave, and the University has a nursery and a child-care voucher scheme. The Department strives to address gender inequalities in both the staff and student bodies. Our success is founded on an inclusive culture wherein women and men seek excellence and support each other in attaining it.