Forensic Psychology - MSc

Entry requirements

1.Degree requirement

a. GBC status

You must hold, or have applied for Graduate Basis for Chartered Membership (GBC, formerly GBR) with the British Psychological Society (BPS). Please note that Graduate Membership of the BPS is not accepted.

You will normally have GBC status if you hold a Psychology honours degree accredited by the BPS. Otherwise, you can apply to have your existing degree assessed by the BPS, or take a conversion course. If you are not sure whether you hold GBC status, please contact the BPS directly.

b. Adequate level of academic achievement

You must also hold a Bachelor's or Master's degree with a classification (grade average) of a high 2.1 (i.e. average grade of 65 or over) or Merit in the UK system (the second highest classification after First/Distinction). Results from institutions in other countries will be assessed individually according to this standard.

An assessed piece of coursework must also be submitted as part of the application for review by the programme director. 

c. Statistics and research methods training in the social sciences

This programme includes a one-year statistics sequence which you must normally pass in order to receive your award. The teaching assumes that you are familiar with the following topics:

1. Means and standard deviations
2. Distributions, hypothesis testing and statistical significance
3. t-tests
4. Correlation coefficients
5. Variables and measurement

Therefore, your existing degree transcript should note that you have taken and passed a minimum of one term each in statistics and social science research methods courses (or two terms of a joint statistics and research methods course).

2. Forensic-related work/research experience

We encourage applicants to gain voluntary (or in some cases paid) work/research experience in a forensic setting, for example victim support, the police, the prison service, the NHS, or forensic-relevant charities. However, relevant work experience is not mandatory for entry to this programme.

The University of Kent's Code of Practice provides guidance on the practice and operation of APL (accreditation of prior learning). 

All applicants are considered on an individual basis and additional qualifications, professional qualifications and relevant experience may also be taken into account when considering applications. 

International students

Please see our International website for entry requirements by country and other relevant information. Due to visa restrictions, international fee-paying students cannot study part-time unless undertaking a distance or blended-learning programme with no on-campus provision.

English language entry requirements

The University requires all non-native speakers of English to reach a minimum standard of proficiency in written and spoken English before beginning a postgraduate degree. Certain subjects require a higher level.

For detailed information see our English language requirements web pages. 

Need help with English?

Please note that if you are required to meet an English language condition, we offer a number of pre-sessional courses in English for Academic Purposes through Kent International Pathways.

Teaching and assessment

The MSc in Forensic Psychology aims to satisfy the academic component of professional training in forensic psychology (that is, to become a Chartered Forensic Psychologist). Throughout the programme, you attend non-assessed seminars and go on site visits.

The programme includes lecture, workshop and seminar-based teaching, as well as an individually supervised empirical research project.

Advanced Statistics and Methodology is assessed by examination. All other taught modules are assessed by written work and presentations. Research is assessed by two articles: one empirical paper and one review article on your chosen topic.

Programme aims

This programme aims to:

• foster your intellectual development by providing you with specialised knowledge of a range of theoretical approaches to forensic psychology and statistical and methodological expertise in order that you should be well equipped to make your own original contribution to psychological knowledge
• provide teaching that is informed by current research and scholarship and that requires you to engage with aspects of work at the frontiers of knowledge
• help you to develop research skills and transferable skills in preparation for entering academic or other careers as psychologists
• satisfy the academic requirements of the knowledge base specified by the British Psychological Society
• enable you to manage your own learning and to carry out independent research
• help you to develop general critical, analytic and problem-solving skills that can be applied in a wide range of settings.

Learning outcomes

Knowledge and understanding

You will gain knowledge and understanding of:

• a range of general, historical, theoretical and philosophical issues underlying the disciplines of forensic psychology
• the major analytic techniques and research methodologies employed by forensic psychologists
• specialist knowledge and systematic understanding of the key issues in forensic psychology.

Intellectual skills

You develop intellectual skills in:

• the ability to critically reflect on key themes
• the ability to produce sustained work
• discussion skills
• written analysis and interpretation of relevant material
• a critical awareness of both cognitive and neuropsychological approaches to the nature of mind/body.

Subject-specific skills

You gain subject-specific skills in:

• how to identify, locate and use material available in the library and online resources
• the major analytic techniques employed by forensic psychologists
• how to evaluate and select appropriate methods for researching questions in forensic psychology.

Transferable skills

You will gain the following transferable skills:

• numeracy: the ability to analyse data and make sense of statistical materials, integrate numerical and non-numerical information, understand the limits and potentialities of arguments based on quantitative information.
• communication: the ability to organise information clearly, write coherently and concisely about your chosen research area and other areas of forensic psychology, and give oral presentations about your work.
• working with others: the ability to review the work of others, work co-operatively in groups, understand ethical principles and the procedures for gaining ethics approval for research
• improving your own learning: the ability to explore your personal strengths and weaknesses, develop the skills of time management, review the student-staff relationship, develop specialist learning skills, develop autonomy in learning
• information technology: use computers for data analysis, word processing, graphical display of data for analysis and presentation, bibliographical research, documentation and email
• problem-solving: the ability to identify and define problems, explore alternative solutions and discriminate between them
• teaching and learning: we will provide lecture workshops on computing, drop-in computing surgeries, training in making oral presentations of research material, lecture-seminars on writing critical reviews of literature, carrying out literature searches, lecture-workshops on career development, media training and training in the dissemination of research findings.
• you will also sit computing tests and unseen examinations and write coursework essays.

Fees

The 2020/21 annual tuition fees for this programme are:

• Home/EU full-time £8300
• International full-time £19000
• Home/EU part-time £4150
• International part-time £9500

For details of when and how to pay fees and charges, please see our Student Finance Guide.

For students continuing on this programme fees will increase year on year by no more than RPI + 3% in each academic year of study except where regulated.* If you are uncertain about your fee status please contact information@kent.ac.uk

Additional costs

General additional costs

Find out more about general additional costs that you may pay when studying at Kent. 

Funding

Search our scholarships finder for possible funding opportunities. You may find it helpful to look at both:

• University and external funds
• Scholarships specific to the academic school delivering this programme.

Research areas

Research themes

The School of Psychology is highly regarded as a leading European centre for postgraduate research, with an international reputation for excellence in social psychology (including group processes and intergroup relations); cognition and neuroscience; developmental psychology; and forensic psychology. We have staff who can supervise research degrees in all of these areas. The research environment is designed to sustain a strong, vibrant research culture, encourage collaboration, and unite staff and students with shared research interests. Our themes ensure critical mass and create a highly energetic and stimulating intellectual climate.

Research activity is supported by:

• centrally co-ordinated provision and use of laboratories and technical support
• selection of speakers for our weekly departmental research colloquia
• weekly research meetings within each theme
• developing, reporting and analysing research, and hosting our many visiting scholars
• several monthly small meeting series on specific areas of cross-cutting research (such as forensic, social development, emotion, social cognition and health).

Forensic Psychology

Forensic Psychology research at Kent and all forensic-related teaching operates through our newly constituted Centre of Research and Education in Forensic Psychology (CORE-FP). Current research is focused on bullying in prisons, prison gang behaviour, jury decision-making, child sexual offending, rape, rape proclivity, female sexual offending, theories of offender rehabilitation, firesetting, sexual harassment, violence, aggression and alcohol, and the infrahumanisation of offenders. Other areas of research include social cognition, social and moral emotion, and group process theory, all of which are applied to the study of offending behaviour or court process issues.

Forensic psychology research at Kent is funded by various national and international sources, which include: The British Academy, Economic and Social Research Council, Home Office, Leverhulme, Ministry of Justice and the Nuffield Foundation.

Research may be carried out with staff or offenders/ex-offenders in a variety of settings, including prisons, youth offender institutions, secure mental health units and probation offices. Alternatively, research may take place with students or members of the community in our newly equipped laboratories.

Social Psychology

Much of our social psychology research is co-ordinated through the Centre for the Study of Group Processes (CSGP), the largest research group in this area in Europe. CSGP attracts a stream of major international social psychology researchers, who are officially affiliated to the Centre and visit regularly to work with our staff. The Social Psychology group also includes the co-editor of Group Processes and Intergroup Relations (Abrams).

Social psychology research at Kent is funded by a variety of British and international sources, currently and recently including ESRC, British Academy, Leverhulme, Age Concern, European Commission, European Science Foundation, Home Office, Equality and Human Rights Commission, Nuffield, and Joseph Rowntree Foundation, as well as government departments such as the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Work and Pensions.

The Social Psychology group includes the following themes:

Prejudice, intergroup contact and social categorisation

This research is carried out in our social psychology laboratories, at schools and in business organisations. For example, research within this topic focuses on questions such as: how contact between members of different social groups is represented psychologically, how intergroup contact affects prejudice, when outgroups are seen as less human, when and why children show prejudice, and why organisational mergers sometimes fail.

Social inequality and cohesion

Research on this topic combines theory-driven research and engagement with policy. It is conducted in real-life settings such as the workplace, and involves national and international surveys. For example, the research focuses on the well-being of elderly people in Britain, work participation and motherhood, and discrimination against different groups in society.

Group dynamics and social influence

Laboratory studies and community-based research are conducted on this topic. For example, research focuses on co-operation in small groups, group decision-making, perception and influence of leaders, social communication and language, subjective group dynamics in adults and children, the dynamics of prison gang activity, and the impact of alcohol on group processes.

Personality and social motivation

Much of this research is carried out in laboratories, through surveys and in clinical or other applied settings. For example, research has examined aggression, the adaptive functions of perfectionism, and consequences of mortality salience.

Cognition and Neuroscience

Research under this theme has an international reputation in the topic areas of Visual Cognition, Attention and Memory, and Language and Communication. Some of this research activity occurs in the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems, a strategic partnership between the Schools of Psychology and Computing.

Visual cognition, attention and memory

Research on this topic focuses primarily on the role of vision and visual perception in human performance. The fundamental aim of this work is to identify the cognitive processes and neurological mechanisms underlying various visual tasks. Studies involving neurologically healthy volunteers examine issues such as face recognition and identification, eyewitness testimony, person detection, emotion processing, episodic memory and pattern and motion recognition.

Language and communication

Research in this group examines various aspects of semantic, pragmatic and syntactic understanding. Research questions on healthy populations include the role of executive functions in successful language use and communication, how language influences attentional processes and perspective taking, anomaly detection, and the effect of interruptions on reading. Work on developmental populations examines issues such as how children learn to understand and produce sentences in their own language, and how they learn conversational conventions and self-repair. Research also examines developmental disorders of communication, including autism spectrum disorders and dyslexia. This research group has links with researchers in the School of European Culture and Languages, as part of the Centre for Language and Linguistic Studies.

Developmental Psychology

Much of the research conducted by members of the Developmental Psychology group is conducted with neurotypical infants, children, and adolescents.  However, we also take a lifespan approach to the study of development and conduct research with older adults.  Moreover, a key focus of our research is on neuro-developmental disorders.  Central research topics include:

Social development

Developmental group members are particularly interested in the expression and control of ethnic and gender prejudice, social ostracism and inclusion, conversational norms and group identity in children.  We also conduct research on social aspects of older adulthood, in particular self-stereotyping and prejudice against elderly people.

Cognitive development

Cognitive development is a major focus of many of our developmental psychologists.  In particular, members of the Developmental Psychology group actively research topics such as the development of social cognition and theory of mind, language, information and sensory processing, and conversation and pragmatic skills.

Forensic research

Our developmental research also focuses on adolescence, as well as infancy, childhood and older adulthood.  In particular, we are interested in the emergence of gang activity and antisocial behaviour during this period of development.

Developmental psychopathology

We also conduct cutting-edge research into neuro-developmental disorders, such as autism and language impairment, with a view to understanding the nature and basis of, and best ways to treat, these disorders.  

Research centres

The School of Psychology currently includes three formally constituted research centres, representing areas of concentration and excellence in research.

Centre for the Study of Group Processes

The Centre for the Study of Group Processes (CSGP) was set up in 1990 to consolidate the School’s excellent international reputation for social psychological research into group processes and intergroup relations. CSGP is now a thriving international research community, including 15 full-time academic staff and a large number of research fellows and PhD students. The Centre also attracts a stream of major international group researchers, who are officially affiliated to it and regularly visit to work with our staff. The Centre also edits an international journal, Group Processes and Intergroup Relations.

Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems

The objective of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems (CCNCS) is to harness the potential for cross-disciplinary research at the junction of cognitive psychology and the computational sciences. The Centre focuses on how behavioural and neuro-physiological experimentation needs to inform and be informed by the construction of computational models. Furthermore, the results of such studies should inform the construction of artificial systems, such as forensic imaging, human-computer interfaces and robotic systems.

Centre of Research and Education in Forensic Psychology

The main aim of the Centre of Research and Education in Forensic Psychology is to conduct high-impact psychological research to further understand key forensic issues of social significance, and to lead to cutting-edge teaching and research opportunities for postgraduate students. Forensic psychology is an extremely popular and rapidly developing branch of psychology that seeks to understand the psychological processes underlying offending behaviour (including group processes), the reduction and supervision of offending behaviour (ie rehabilitation, treatment and management of community risk), victim responses to offending, the mechanisms underlying the criminal justice system more generally (ie jury decision-making and the courts), and attitudes to offenders and offender reintegration in society.

Staff research interests

Full details of staff research interests can be found on the School's website.

Dr Kirsten Abbot-Smith : Senior Lecturer in Psychology

Professor Dominic Abrams : Professor of Social Psychology

Dr Emma Alleyne : Senior Lecturer in Forensic Psychology

Dr Zara Bergstrom : Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology

Dr Markus Bindemann : Reader in Psychology

Dr Anna Brown : Senior Lecturer in Psychological Methods and Statistics

Dr Lindsey Cameron : Senior Lecturer in Psychology

Dr Aleksandra Cichocka : Senior Lecturer in Political Psychology

Dr Kristof Dhont : Senior Lecturer in Psychology

Professor Karen Douglas : Professor of Social Psychology

Professor Heather Ferguson : Professor of Psychology

Dr Michael Forrester : Reader in Psychology

Lazaros Gonidis : Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience (Teaching and Scholarship)

Professor Theresa Gannon : Professor of Forensic Psychology

Professor Roger Giner-Sorolla : Professor of Social Psychology

Dr Tim Hopthrow : Reader in Psychology

Dr Amir-Homayoun Javadi : Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience

Dr Aife Hopkins-Doyle : Lecturer in Social and Organisational Psychology

Christiana Iordanou : Lecturer in Developmental Psychology

Dr Lydia Kearney : Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology

Dr David Kelly : Lecturer in Developmental Psychology

Dr Erika Nurmsoo : Lecturer in Psychology

Dr Caoilte O Ciardha : Senior Lecturer in Forensic Psychology

Dr Afroditi Pina : Senior Lecturer in Psychology

Dr Marta Ponari : Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology

Professor Georgina Randsley de Moura : Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology

Dr Andy Russ : Lecturer in Psychology

Dr John Sabo : Lecturer in Social and Organisational Psychology T&S

Dr Dinkar Sharma : Reader in Psychology

Professor Joachim Stoeber : Professor of Psychology

Professor Robbie Sutton : Professor of Social Psychology

Dr Hannah Swift : Eastern ARC Research Fellow

Professor Ayse Uskul : Professor of Social Psychology

Dr Eduardo Vasquez : Senior Lecturer in Forensic Psychology

Professor David Wilkinson : Head of School

Professor David Williams : Professor of Developmental Psychology

Dr Arnaud Wisman : Lecturer in Psychology

Professor Jane Wood : Professor of Forensic Psychology

Careers

Our postgraduate students commonly go into the fields of health, teaching or further education. For instance, many of our graduates take up roles as assistant psychologists in the NHS with a view to becoming a professional clinical or forensic psychologist. Upon completing our Master’s courses, graduates have also pursued doctoral study and academic careers at higher education institutions.

The programmes we offer help you to develop general critical, analytic and problem-solving skills that can be applied in a wide range of settings.

Professional recognition

All of our taught Master’s (MSc) programmes have been recognised by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as meeting the nationally recognised criteria for preparation training for PhD research.

The MSc in Forensic Psychology at Kent is accredited by The British Psychological Society as providing the first (academic) year of professional training for those who wish to qualify as Chartered Forensic Psychologists. Graduates from the programme are then required to gain the equivalent of a further two years' relevant experience under the supervision of a Chartered Forensic Psychologist before qualifying for Chartered status themselves. You should contact the BPS directly if you have enquiries about the nature of the supervised practice element of qualification.

Please note that only students who gain a mark of 40% or above in every module, with an overall mark of at least 50%, are eligible for accreditation by the British Psychological Society.

Study support

Postgraduate resources

The School has excellent facilities for both laboratory and field research, including advanced laboratory and teaching facilities. Resources include:

• three fully equipped colour video laboratories for face-to-face group research, together with ten satellite laboratories connected via remote-control CCTV and two-way audio links
• 58 research laboratories, all containing networked computers
• a further 80 PCs available exclusively to Psychology students, including a designated MSc computer-networked room providing full email and internet access
• shared offices and a personal, networked computer for research students
• a full range of computer-based experiment generators and productivity software installed on all the School’s systems
• an upgraded laboratory suite with equipment for digital sound and vision recording
• four Brain Vision EEG labs (including one for simultaneous TMS & EEG, and one portable EEG system)
• two Trans-cranial direct current electrical stimulators (GVS, Magstim)
• Neuroconn tDCS/tACS electrical stimulator with facilities for simultaneous EEG
• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) PowerMAG Research 100 High Frequency Stimulator
• two Tobii eye-trackers (Tobii X120 & Tobii T60 XL portable)
• one Arrington eye-tracker
• a suite equipped with Bio-Pac recorders to allow for a range of physiological measures to be taken during stressful and other tasks
• specialist laboratories equipped for face processing and vision research
• CRS ColorCal II Colorimeter/Photometer
• CRS Audiofile for synchronized audio-visual presentation
• numerous PC and Mac labs to run behavioural experiments
• Mirror Stereoscopes for dichoptic presentation and stereo vision research
• immersive virtual reality lab (including integrated eye-tracker)
• a social cognition laboratory
• creation in 2010 of the Kent Child Development Unit and research team focusing on how children learn about their world, about other people and about the language they hear around them.

Dynamic publishing culture

Staff publish regularly and widely in journals, conference proceedings and books. Among others, they have recently contributed to: Journal of Experimental Social Psychology; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; Child Development; Clinical Psychology Review. Details of recently published books can be found within the staff research interests.

Global Skills Award

All students registered for a taught Master's programme are eligible to apply for a place on our Global Skills Award Programme. The programme is designed to broaden your understanding of global issues and current affairs as well as to develop personal skills which will enhance your employability.