Social Sciences Conference

Booking Deadline:

We’re inviting Year 12 and 13 students to join us on campus for an exciting day packed with activities! Explore undergraduate-level subjects in Sociology, Psychology, and Psychosocial and Psychoanalytical Studies. Students will choose three engaging taster sessions, tour the campus, and hear directly from current students.

The Social Science Conference will run from 9.30-2:15, and is open to bookings from school groups as well as individuals who would like to attend.

Taster sessions on offer:

• Psychoanalytic Criminology in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Explore psychoanalytic criminology through Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This interactive session examines the idea that we can carry multiple personalities within us and applies psychoanalytic assessment to Hyde’s brutal murder of Sir Danvers Carew. What drives Hyde’s shocking act of violence?
• “Man Up”: How Social Psychology can help us understand the idea of “Toxic Masculinity”: Explore the psychology behind the polarizing debates on 'toxic masculinity.' This session introduces how social identity research helps us understand the complexity of the term and highlights how the University of Essex Psychology Department equips students to tackle global challenges like this.
• Doing a cultural study of mobile phones: This talk explores how we understand media technologies through one of the most iconic modern inventions, the mobile phone. By treating technologies like mobile phones as having a 'biography,' we’ll examine their journey from creation and use to relationships formed and their eventual transformation into waste.
• Victims and the criminal justice system: This talk will look at how victims of crime experience the criminal justice process focusing primarily on their experience of the courts.
• What is education for?: Explore the vital role of education in society. Is it solely for job preparation or for shaping informed democratic citizens, or both? This session traces Britain’s struggle to broaden access to higher education and examines its value in fostering achievement, critical thinking, and intercultural understanding essential for democracy.
• Why are we scared of children? Why are we so afraid of children in horror? This session explores the rise of the ‘evil child’ as a powerful trope in the genre, examining how and why they evoke fear. Through a psychosocial lens, we’ll unpack what this trend reveals about childhood, popular culture, society and what our fears might say about us.

The programme for the conference, including futher details of planned activities and timings for the day can be found on our website.