The UCD College of Human Sciences is one of the largest and most dynamic in UCD with over 200 staff and almost 4,500 students including over 1,000 graduate students. It consists of ten schools that bring together the traditional social sciences, other disciplines including psychology, geography and philosophy, and a range of interdisciplinary areas.

Academics in the UCD College of Human Sciences have received research awards from the Irish Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS), the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and public bodies in Ireland and Europe. Building upon this established track record of excellence, the graduate school’s role is to offer added value to the wide range of fascinating, challenging and socially-relevant programmes offered within the college and to the large body of research and doctoral students enrolled in its schools.

Through its graduate taught programmes, the College contributes directly to the professional ambitions and personal needs of its students. We offer more than 50 dedicated graduate programmes from Certificate through Master’s level, and often in both full-time and part-time variants. The wide variety of these programmes - whether they prepare you for professional practice and certification, offer new insights into age-old social issues, or provide unique and specialised skill sets - are all united by an absolute commitment to quality and the dedication of our internationally renowned academic staff to research and teaching excellence.

School of Applied Social Science

The School of Applied Social Science is a centre of excellence for research, teaching and professional training in social policy and social work. It offers a wide range of postgraduate degree programmes in those areas. These courses are delivered within a modularised framework to facilitate full and part time study. The two-year Masters in Social Work is a professional qualification recognized by the national registration board for social work.

The School is actively engaged in research in a wide range of policy areas, such as child and family welfare, poverty and inequality, housing, family policy, social integration, community development, health policy, disability and addiction. In addition development of theoretical perspectives in applied social science features in the research output. The School’s strong applied social research programme contributes significantly to State policy-making. The research work of the School is closely linked with UCD’s Geary Institute and Social Science Research Centre.

 

School of Economics

Economics is a School in UCD College of Human Sciences and participates in a wide range of programmes including undergraduate, taught masters and PhD degrees. The School offers its own graduate programmes designed for students who wish to follow a career in economics. Many of our graduates have gone on to establish themselves in leading positions in business, finance and government as well as in academic life.

UCD School of Economics  is the largest and most prestigious School of Economics in Ireland with an international reputation for excellence in teaching and research. Members of the School are highly regarded for the quality of their research which frequently appears in leading academic journals such as the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics and Review of Economics and Statistics. School members also present papers at leading international conferences and produce scholarly books which have been published by internationally known publishing houses such as Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Princeton University Press. The School also maintains strong links with the UCD Geary Institute in providing rigorous policy-based research.

The UCD School of Economics is committed to maintaining its position as Ireland’s leading centre for teaching and research in economics and welcomes graduates from all quantitative based backgrounds.

 

School of Education

The School has a long and distinguished history in teacher education dating back to the foundation of the UCD Education Department in 1909. The deep commitment on the part of the School to excellence in scholarship, teaching, and service is reflected in the opportunities offered to students and professionals to acquire expertise about a variety of significant issues that confront education in Ireland and internationally. The wide-ranging expertise within the School allows us to provide a variety of perspectives from which each student can form a personal point of view. Students in the School are enabled to become knowledgeable and proficient researchers, and to be effective practitioners. Whether you plan to teach, conduct research, serve as an educational leader, teach in higher education or if you are already active in one of these fields at the School of Education, you will undertake a journey that will have a major impact on you and the people that you will subsequently meet.

 

School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy (GPEP)

The UCD School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy (GPEP) is a dynamic research and learning environment based at University College Dublin. GPEP is the only University School in Ireland specialising in research and teaching in geography, spatial planning, environmental policy and economics. The school combines academic with professional education and we offer a range of graduate programmes, including taught Masters programmes in Regional and Urban Planning and in Geography. We have a strong track record and international reputation in each of the disciplinary areas and our research benefits from the manner in which approaches, techniques, knowledge and perspectives from each of the disciplines can be drawn together.

GPEP seeks to provide the knowledge and analytical tools to understand the dynamics of physical landscapes and environmental processes, and the interrelationship between people and places at all geographical scales. To address the pressing international, national and local challenges in implementing sustainable development and improving quality of life via environmental policy and spatial planning, GPEP endeavours to provide the very best in terms of multidisciplinary teaching and research offering our students, the policy process and the community at large, an unmatched resource.

 

School of Information & Library Studies

The School of Information and Library Studies only academic institution in Ireland to provide graduate degrees leading to professionally accredited and research qualifications in Information and Library Science. Our Master in Library and Information Science (MLIS) and Graduate Diploma in Library and Information Science are professionally accredited and internationally recognized, allowing students to work as information professionals around the world. We also offer research-oriented Master of Arts, MLitt and PhD degrees. After completing our degree programmes our graduates go on to work in many different sectors and have dynamic careers as Chief Information Officers, Library Directors, Research Directors, and Knowledge Managers.

At SILS we focus on the interplay of people, information, technology and social structures. Current research investigates ways information is shared, created, organized and searched within and across various organizations in industry, academia, government and medicine, as well as everyday life.  Our school has over 80 graduate students from 10 countries, and is a member of the international iSchool organization.

 

School of Philosophy

We are the largest teaching and research centre for Philosophy in Ireland, and are recognized as one of the top ten schools in the English speaking world for graduate studies in Twentieth Century Continental Philosophy (The Philosophical Gourmet report). Our interests cover the broad areas of contemporary European (continental) philosophy, analytic philosophy, classical philosophy and its contemporary manifestations. An idea of those interests can be gleaned from our considerable range of publications on topics and philosophers from:

• Phenomenology and critical theory
• The history of philosophy: the Greeks, Neo-Platonists,Medievals, Empiricists and German idealists
• Analytic philosophies of language, mind and action
• Classical oriented considerations of philosophical anthropology and bioethics

 

School of Politics & International Relations

The UCD School of Politics and International Relations is, the oldest and the largest of its kind in the Republic of Ireland.
Its activities cover almost all areas of political studies, and represent a comprehensive range of academic approaches and specialisations. We have special expertise in development studies, international relations, Irish and European politics, and political theory. The School includes various research and graduate centres, notably the Centre for Development Studies, the Dublin European Institute, and the Institute for British Irish Studies.

The School currently has nearly 170 postgraduate students from over 30 countries. Its graduates work at leading universities and in governments, EU institutions, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations, the media, business and the voluntary sector. They are known for their flexibility, their exceptional ability to communicate clearly with others, their ability to analyse and resolve difficult problems, and their ability to reproduce the discipline and contribute to society through research and publication.

 

School of Psychology

The UCD School of Psychology is one of the largest in Ireland. The School is known for its pioneering work in professional training in Clinical Psychology as well as in other areas of professional psychological practice. Today the School has a vibrant community of academics and graduate students with a range of research interests.

The School places great emphasis on the quality of its teaching and the support it provides to its graduate students.
School staff are actively involved in research and publish widely on all aspects of psychology, particularly in applied areas such as

youth mental health and well-being, cognition and neurological psychology, children’s school performance, disability and rehabilitation. The School’s research laboratory was refurbished in 2009 and contains a suite of 10 laboratory rooms, and a room for graduate research students. It is a purpose-built, spacious and well-equipped facility that supports the empirical research requirements. Staff are actively involved in national policy initiatives, particularly in relation to advising on best practice in professional work with children and young people.

 

School of Social Justice

The aim of the School of Social Justice is to promote social justice both locally and globally, using interdisciplinary, feminist and egalitarian approaches to learning. Our interdisciplinary programmes cover a wide range of equality, feminist, human rights and global justice issues.

Our programmes are flexible. To facilitate part-time students, many classes are offered in the evening. There are progression routes from one qualification to the next.

Our graduates can be found working in every sector. They include government ministers, community activists, home carers, educators, artists, health care professionals, farmers, police, civil servants and journalists. We welcome applicants from a wide a range of backgrounds, experience, interests and ambitions. Our lecturers, current and past students are available to meet to answer your questions.

 

School of Sociology

Sociology has a long tradition at UCD, and we are the largest teaching centre for our discipline in Ireland.

At Graduate level, we offer a number of taught programmes (available on a full-time and part-time basis), including a general MSocSc in Sociology, as well as specialist programmes in Health and Illness, and Migration, Race and Ethnicity. At PhD level, we have more than 20 registered students engaged in research on various topics.

Staff members have a wide-ranging set of research interests, including historical and comparative research, as well as work that focuses on recent social change in Ireland. Our current research activities address issues of globalization, inequality, migration and diversity, the state and national identity, health and illness, criminology and socio-legal studies, gender and childhood amongst other topics.

The college has links to numerous universities and research institutes in Europe and the wider world. Within UCD, it is aligned with the Geary Institute, one of Ireland's leading social science institutes, and has active research links with the John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies