This is an ideal course if you want to develop your capacity to analyse social and public policies nationally and internationally. It will enable you to deepen your understanding of the major aspects of social and public policy, including competing conceptions of citizenship and how these inform social policy; contemporary forms of governance and public policy implementation, and the use of theories and research evidence to analyse and explain social and public policy change.

The course is suitable for those who have recently completed undergraduate courses of study, as well as those working in the community and voluntary sector, think-tanks, as researchers, or at different levels of government. It has been designed to be of value and relevance to students both from the UK and overseas, so interested individuals from all nations are encouraged to apply.

We aim to equip you with the theoretical, conceptual and analytical tools to examine contemporary social and public policies in both national and international contexts. It will enable you to draw on theories and concepts and interpret a range of forms of evidence in analysing policy developments and their social impacts.

Distinctive features

This MSc in Social and Public Policy is one of the few such courses in the UK to be offered by an interdisciplinary School of Social Sciences. As such, the approach to social and public policy offered here is shaped by a strong belief in the value of interdisciplinary social science theory and research and the importance of understanding the relationship between social and public policy and the other social sciences.