The Department of Psychology is a dynamic and varied research community covering the cognitive and neural underpinnings of social interaction, learning, memory, and language, through to more applied research topics in forensic, health, and developmental psychology.
Our academic staff work at the forefront of their field, across psychological science and neuroscience, with an active, thriving postgraduate research community.
The Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway has been placed joint third in the country by The Times Higher Education following the publication of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 results.
In the REF 2021 results overall, 67% of Psychology's research was classified as 4* world leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour, highlighting the exceptional quality of the department’s research outputs, impact and environment.
The department received a top score for its research impact, with 100% judged to be 4* which is the highest standard of excellence. This outstanding result for research impact reinforces the importance and value of the department’s research to society and the economy.
We are located on a beautiful campus in Surrey, close to London and we have a wide range of research-dedicated facilities.
The department has earned a Silver Athena SWAN award for best practice in equal opportunities and our inclusive environment.
We invite candidates to discuss possible research topics with a potential supervisor before submitting a formal application. You can find out more about our staff and their areas of expertise here.
From time to time, we make changes to our courses to improve the student and learning experience, and this is particularly the case as we continue to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic. If we make a significant change to your chosen course, we’ll let you know as soon as we can.
Principal Investigators and their lab groups are supported by state-of-the-art facilities (fMRI, EEG, TMS, tDCS, VR, and eye-tracking as well as labs dedicated to sleep, vestibular-multisensory integration, psychophysiology, psycholinguistics, and infant cognition), and the department provides a supportive environment for the scientific training of doctoral students through one-on-one mentoring, regular training events, student-led seminars, and journal clubs.
Research in the department falls broadly into the following groupings:
Health and Well-Being
Language, Memory and Attention
Perception, Action and Decision Making
Social and Affective Processes
Each of the groupings have regularly held seminars where external researchers present the latest research and provide a rich opportunity for postgraduate research students to meet and discuss research with leaders in their fields. More information about the research groups is here.
Students who are admitted to this programme are initially registered on a MPhil programme. Before their second year of studies they will have an upgrade meeting, if successful, they will become registered on the PhD Psychology programme.
To be awarded a PhD Psychology degree, students must submit their thesis, and pass their viva examination with one internal and one external examiner.
Applicants should have the equivalent of a 2:1 honours in Psychology, or a related discipline, and meet Royal Holloway’s requirements for English (for international students).
Before applying we recommend securing a supervisor in order to apply for your research project.
We advise getting in touch with the Director of Postgraduate Education making an informal enquiry for your chosen research degree to inquire whether there is any other additional material they require you to submit in your application.
English language requirements
All teaching at Royal Holloway is in English. You will therefore need to have good enough written and spoken English to cope with your studies right from the start.
The scores we require
IELTS: 6.5 overall. Writing 7.0. No other subscore lower than 5.5.
Pearson Test of English: 61 overall. Writing 69. No other subscore lower than 51.
Trinity College London Integrated Skills in English (ISE): ISE III.
Our PGR students often continue in careers in academia (Post-doctoral work, Teaching Fellow, Lecturer) or onto research in business and industry. Our former PGR students have moved into academia, into industry as statisticians, into marketing and neuromarketing, government (eg, Office for National Statistics), policy, cybersecurity, and have become founders of Tech start ups and charities.
* and ** These tuition fees apply to students enrolled on a full-time basis in the academic year 2025/26.
* Please note that for research courses, we adopt the minimum fee level recommended by the UK Research Councils for the Hometuition fee. Each year, the fee level is adjusted in line with inflation (currently, the measure used is the Treasury GDP deflator). Fees displayed here are therefore subject to change and are usually confirmed in the spring of the year of entry.For more information on the Research Council Indicative Fee please see theUKRI website.
** This figure is the fee for EU and international students starting a degree in the academic year 2025/26.
Royal Holloway reserves the right to increase fees for all students annually. Be aware that tuition fees can rise during your degree (if longer than one year’s duration), and that this also means that the overall cost of studying the course part-time will be slightly higher than studying it full-time in one year. For further information see fees and funding and the terms and conditions.
***These estimated costs relate to studying this particular degree at Royal Holloway during the 2025/26 academic year and are included as a guide. Costs, such as accommodation, food, books and other learning materials and printing, have not been included.
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