Social Policy is located within the Faculty of Social Sciences and the Department of Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy. The department is also home to the Center for Social Change, which hosts regular seminars by academics, collaborators and other academics around the world. Swansea University hosts the ESRC (Wales) Administrative Data Research Centre, which facilitates access to linked and de-identified administrative data in a secure environment.

Social Care and Social Work is based within the Faculty of Health and Social Care, and is home to the award-winning DEEP initiative, dedicated to innovating new forms of participatory evidence gathering, in ways appropriate to inform policy.

The Social Policy and Social Work teams are interested in supervising doctoral work across subject areas. Specific areas of research expertise include:

• Inequality and social justice
• poverty
• Social welfare policy
• Relations between the state and civil society
• Advocacy
• aging
• Disability studies
• to delegate
• Ethical issues in social policy
• Children and children’s rights
• Family
• Communities and social care
• Social policy roles of the third sector
• Co-production
• Service outcomes for children, youth and families
• Rights of excluded groups (e.g. asylum seekers, Roma families, traveler families)
• Inclusive practices in social care research
• Experiences of the care system
• Experiences of care leavers
• Sexual and social care
• Preserving and protecting children
• the elderly

Funding suspension

The ESRC-funded scholarship covers tuition fees and an annual tax-free living stipend in line with the UKRI minimum rates (currently £20,780 for 2025/26). Students can also access a Research Training Support Grant.

If you have a disability, you may be entitled to Disabled Student Allowance (DSA) in addition to your studies. Disabled Students Allowance (DSA)