Social Sciences is a vibrant, multidisciplinary and research-intensive School. The disciplines within the School have been established since the early 1970s and cover an impressive breadth, including research in political science, political theory, international relations, history, economics, finance, sociology, media and communications, anthropology, cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology and social psychology.

All areas feature world class and internationally recognised researchers and research. Each of our disciplines regularly scores well in research assessment exercises and all provide excellent examples of social and economic impact – producing research that not only advances scholarly endeavour, but also produces clear and tangible benefits for wider society.

Not only do we engage in excellent research with individual disciplines, we also conduct path-breaking multi-disciplinary research across the disciplines in the School and beyond, including areas as diverse as medicine, philosophy and law.

Each of our disciplines has core areas of research strength, including

Anthropology

• Ethnography of Africa, Britain, Europe, Latin America, Melanesia, South Asia, Southeast Asia
• Medical anthropology, the body, disability, suicide
• Global health politics, evidence & policy
• Anthropology of biomedicine, biotechnologies & science
• Embodiment, performance & identity
• Landscape, personhood, historicity and property relations
• Childhood, youth and the life-cycle
• Education and schooling
• Psychological and psychiatric anthropology
• Political violence and collective memory
• International development: politics, policy and practice

Economics and Finance

• exchange rates and asset prices
• volatility in financial markets
• corruption and social institutions
• economic development
• behavioural economics
• monetary policy

Politics, International Relations & History

• elections, campaigning and political parties
• European and trans-national governance
• international relations
• war and intervention
• intelligence and security
• social and political thought
• slavery and the slave trade
• European and American history

Psychology

• cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology
• cognitive psychology and computational modelling
• cross-cultural psychology
• evolutionary psychology
• health psychology
• psychoanalysis
• social and developmental psychology

Sociology and Communications

• social, psychological and cultural aspects of health and illness
• social and cultural research methods
• social theory
• national and international media: their social role, and production and consumption processes
• construction of scientific and medical knowledge
• social context and analysis of language and communication