PgCert Mad Studies

You may be a student, volunteer, activist or employee who wants to learn how Mad Studies theory and research can meaningfully contribute to your academic skills, activism and work. It will also be suitable for you if you are a professional who is looking to expand your knowledge, skills and practice through single CPD modules in Mad Studies.

With part-time and full-time options, Mad Studies is suitable for people from local, national and international contexts, who wish to further develop critical thinking, generate Mad Studies knowledge and research. Your studies will be driven by regular engagement with activists and educators from the mad community and the close sharing of insights with your peers on the programme. You’ll learn from academics and activists who have diverse community experience, and who are engaged with critical education, activism, and innovative research.

The MSc Mad Studies programme draws on the experiences of Mad Studies scholars and activists throughout the world and involves teaching by academics from a range of disciplines in which Mad Studies is relevant. Lecturers are engaged in research, education, and activism with various communities within society.
The programme is embedded as an integrated pathway on an existing master’s framework for person-centered practice (PCPF), in partnership with CAPS Independent Advocacy, Occupational Therapy and Public Sociology. The PCP framework offers a person-centered approach to learning, fostered through four processes of engagement: experimentation, collaboration, critical discourse, and evidence-informed perspectives. Specifically, the MSc programme aims to ensure the centrality of Mad Studies to facilitate learning at the master’s level.

This course offers you the opportunity to engage with diverse public groups and to reflect critically on how Mad Studies can contribute to work for social justice and change. You will study what is distinctive about Mad Studies and Public Sociology and the methods of engagement and research of the disciplines.

Mad Studies is an emerging academic discipline that explores the global knowledge that has emerged from the mad movement. This body of knowledge includes the exploration of the dominant understandings of madness. It examines individual and collective experiences of madness. It offers a critique of the mental health service landscape and the cultural and socio-political responses experienced by the mad community. It evaluates activist responses and the creation of mad knowledge and action.