Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry MD(Res)/MPhil/PhD at Kings College London

Overview

Key features

The Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry (SGDP) Centre is an interdisciplinary, collaborative research group that combines genetic and environmental strategies in order to study how nature and nurture interact in the development of complex behavioural dimensions and disorders. The Centre is equipped with cutting-edge research facilities, including extensive modern laboratories with state-of-the-art genomics, epigenomics and biomarker assay equipment, an EEG laboratory, bioinformatics resources, and a modern well-supported and powered computing cluster. The Centre also houses the MRC London Neurodegenerative Diseases Brain Bank.

Description

The SGDP Centre welcomes applications for several fully funded PhD studentships for autumn 2019, for either the 1+3 or +3 PhD programme. The Centre’s students are diverse in their backgrounds, with about half coming from social science and the other half from biological and related sciences. Our studentships are highly competitive and popular, and the programmes have seen a significant increase in overseas applications, including applications from the USA. In addition to the Centre’s 1+3 interdisciplinary PhD training programme, faculty members of the Centre are able to supervise students on a traditional +3 PhD.

Our 1+3 students will undertake the MSc in Genes, Environment & Development in Psychology & Psychiatry (GED PP) for 1 year before commencing their PhD project. The MSc GED PP programme takes a highly interdisciplinary approach to the study of how genetics and the environment ('nature and nurture') combine during human development to produce behaviour, diseases and psychiatric disorders. Students are taught by world-leading experts and receive training across multiple research fields: molecular & behavioural genetics, twin modelling, statistical genetics, epigenetics, bioinformatics, social and cognitive psychology, and developmental psychiatry. At the end of the first year, successful students are awarded a Master of Science degree and need not apply to be promoted to PhD training for the remaining 3 years.

The +3 students may already have research experience and/or be familiar with the interdisciplinary nature of our research areas and have ideas about an appropriate SGDP project and/or research method. They will also usually already hold an MSc (or equivalent qualification) relevant to their PhD topic.