School of Social Science and Public Policy

The School of Social Science & Public Policy comprises the departments of Education & Professional Studies, Geography, Management,Political Economy, Defence Studies, War Studies, Social Science, Health & Medicine (including the Institute of Gerontology) and King's Policy Institute to form one of the largest UK university groupings focusing on policy-orientated research and teaching. It is this variety of specialisms and our approach to working in multidisciplinary teams, which enable us to develop insights from a wide range of perspectives to tackle some of the most important social, political and ethical issues of our time.

These include: urban sustainability and climate change, new security uncertainties and risks, the changing nature of war and conflict, age and ageing, the ethics of biomedical innovation, scientific literacy and cultural inclusion, social cohesion in multi-faith societies, inequalities in health and education, public service reform and the future of the professions.

Our excellence is consistently recognised in national and international league tables and research awards, and in the appointment of staff to influential positions within their wider international scholarly communities, eg as editors of some of the major social science journals and members of Research Council review panels.

As part of our long-standing commitment to influential policy-relevant scholarship the School maintains close and productive links with key national and international policy, practitioner and activist communities. The School’s London based departments are on the Waterloo and Strand campuses of the College, both of which are in the heart of London with easy access to the policy community and the cultural and intellectual heart of the city. The School’s Defence Studies Department is housed within the UK Defence Academy at Shrivenham and at the RAF College in Cranwell.

The School’s constituent departments each run a tailored induction and training programme for new students. Postgraduate research students also benefit from a series of induction events and the researcher development programme organised by the College’s Graduate School. Research students will agree and review a programme of training with their supervisor at the start of each academic year.

The departments of Geography and War Studies are housed in the south range of King’s College London’s Grade I listed building on the Strand Campus. The building underwent a £40 million refurbishment in 2006, which included the addition of high quality, dedicated postgraduate teaching and research space; and new social and dining facilities for students. The Department of Geography has two laboratories dedicated to the work of the Environmental Monitoring & Modelling research group, and some of these facilities are also used within the department’s postgraduate teaching programmes. The department has a dedicated Experimental Hydrology and Geomorphology Laboratory, equipped with a sand fall flume, and 8m3 soil test facility and a cloud-chamber for simulating moisture conditions within tropical cloud forests. The Department has an extensive range of field equipment for atmospheric, land surface and sub-surface investigations. Students in the Department of War Studies have access to the collections at the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, a leading repository for research into modern defence policy in Britain. There are Graduate Lounges at the Strand and Waterloo Campuses which are exclusively for the use of postgraduate students and offer a study area, social area, PCs and lockers (at Waterloo). Additional study space is available in the Graduate Zone in the Franklin-Wilkins Building.

For students coming to the School to undertake a postgraduate degree programme sources of funding are diverse, and in some cases disciplinespecific. All of the doctoral programmes, and a number of taught postgraduate programmes within the School are eligible for funding by the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC). In addition, our students are funded by the ESRC to undertake projects in collaboration with non-academic partners. Our students are also funded by several other UK research councils (including NERC, EPSRC and AHRC), as well as by major charities (eg Wellcome Trust, Leverhulme) and through research grants held by staff from a wide range of organisations including UK and overseas governments, the European Union, NATO, and the US National Science Foundation. Overseas students are often supported by British Council scholarships, Commonwealth Studentships, as well as by their home governments and the Commonwealth Foundation. Each year, a significant number of new students within the School are awarded funding by the College’s Graduate School.