The School of Psychology is a teaching school dedicated to teaching Psychology and developing professional practice in Psychology. Our main aim is to provide excellent and internationally-leading education in undergraduate and postgraduate psychology. Psychology at Newcastle focusses on the scientific and experimental study of mind and behaviour. We have strong professional psychology pathways in Clinical Psychology and Forensic Psychology and very distinct biological, evolutionary and neuroscience components in our undergraduate programmes.

Our School encourages students to draw from and contribute to the evidence-base, and for the applied fields of psychology (such as clinical and forensic psychology) we teach students theory and practice throughout their training. We take great pride in the quality of our teaching and are fully engaged in educational development and research.  We have a special interest Pedagogical Research Group (key contacts Patrick Rosenkrantz, Helen St Clair-Thompson, and Amy Fielden) who are currently working on projects investigating: student and staff attitudes to and responses to feedback; increasing student reading activity.  The latter project will explore students’ reading habits over the course of a semester, and then trial a series of structured reading groups that use a flipped classroom approach. The impact of the reading groups on students’ wider reading habits will then be examined. Our student satisfaction is at an all-time high (97%) making us the top Russell-group Psychology School in the country. This is due to our unique approach to our programmes that are delivered by our teaching focused school as well as research institutes. Students benefit by working at the cutting-edge of the discipline while also having their learning nurtured by a dedicated teaching team. Furthermore, our students actively engage in peer-assisted learning: Psychology has a long established peer-mentoring scheme in which final year students support the transition of new students into the psychology degree and university life.

We have 2 single honours accredited undergraduate programmes: BSc in Psychology (key contact Patrick Rosenkrantz) and a BSc in Psychology with Professional Placement (4-year degree, key contact Helen St Clair-Thompson. We also contribute to 3 (soon to be accredited) joint degrees from other Schools: Biology and Psychology; Mathematics and Psychology; Nutrition and Psychology.

At post graduate level we have the following programmes:

• MSc Psychology (Foundations in Clinical and health): key contact Sue Thorpe
• MSc Psychology (Foundations in Clinical and Forensics): key contact Sue Thorpe
• MSc Forensic Psychology: key contact Gavin Oxburgh
• IAPT Certificate Low intensity Psychological Therapies: key contact Mark Papworth
• PGCert/PGDip in CBT: key contact Stephen Barton
• Praxis CPD modules (e-learning): key contact Lawrence Conway
• Doctorate in Clinical Psychology: key contact Rob Dudley

Part of our strategy is to increase our international footprint. We are currently seeking to develop partnerships and recruitment in China, India and Malaysia: Key contacts Gavin Oxburgh, Patrick Rosenkrantz and Vicki Bruce.

We are affiliated with a number of research institutes around the University: we have strong ties to the Institute of Neuroscience and the Institute of Health and Society  with many of our teaching staff conducting their research within these institutes. Other psychological research within the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences includes educational psychology. An exciting interdisciplinary environment for research linking computer science, creative arts and others including psychologists is found in Culture Lab. There are several projects in Human-Communication Interaction there, led by Professor Patrick Olivier. Newcastle University Business School (NUBS) also has a range of multidisciplinary research centres and projects which include psychological perspectives on such areas as consumer behaviour and organisational behaviour. We also collaborate extensively with the International Investigative Interviewing Research Group (iIIRG) which is an international network of professionals committed to improving investigative interviewing of victims, witnesses and suspected offenders worldwide.

Professor Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon, Head of School, Psychology