International and Cross-Cultural Counselling Studies (Taught)

Programme Description
This programme equips students with critical perspectives and cultural awareness in relation to counselling and psychotherapy practice in our increasingly globalised and diverse world. Counselling and psychotherapy are growing in popularity across the globe; however, not enough attention has been paid to how this discipline might work in differing contexts and with diverse populations.

As a primarily Western area of study, there are inherent biases and cultural viewpoints present in this field. In this programme students will be encouraged to question the colonial, ethnocentric, and heteronormative assumptions that underlie many psychotherapeutic practices. Drawing on contemporary perspectives, post/de-colonial approaches, and social theory, students will challenge traditional discourses of suffering and healing.

Staff members in the programme come from different parts of the world and bring with them both their diverse lived experiences and academic and professional credentials to foster a climate of dialogue and encounter with difference. Interdisciplinary, arts-based, experiential, and embodied pedagogic and research practices are integral to the programme.

The programme will engage with critical perspectives and psychosocial approaches to Counselling Studies, drawing on theories from within psychotherapy as well as from other disciplines within social sciences, cultural studies and philosophy. Further, the programme will offer students the flexibility to engage with a wide variety of optional courses to tailor and enrich their learning for both professional and research endeavours.

Students will be trained in qualitative, creative and relational approaches to research and inquiry. Exploring and working with different research paradigms, they will examine approaches that resist the established rigidity in research practice. The course will culminate with the undertaking of an original research project.

This MSc is not a full professional practice training in counselling and psychotherapy. The latter is offered through the Master of Counselling (Interpersonal Dialogue), two years full-time, or the Master of Counselling, four years part-time, or the Doctor of Psychotherapy and Counselling, which may be taken full-time or part-time.

Programme Structure

Teaching and learning methods include lectures, theory seminars, experiential group work, practice-skills workshops, research supervision and independent study. Assessment is through essays, presentations and the research dissertation.

The programme involves four compulsory courses, two option courses and the research dissertation. The compulsory courses are:

• Counselling Across Borders

• Decolonising Counselling and Psychotherapy

• Counselling across languages and cultures

• Between Counselling and Research 1: Approaches, Issues and Debates (L12)

There are a wide range of options from Counselling and Psychotherapy, Global Mental Health Studies and other relevant disciplines. They include practice, theory and research courses. Options from Counselling and Psychotherapy include:

• Queering Counselling and Psychotherapy

• Rethinking subjectivity in practice and research

• Counselling Children and Young People

• Creative Therapies with Children and Young People

• Body Talk: Embodiment, Physical Dialogue and Authentic Movement

• Autoethnographic Research Methods in the Social Sciences

• Humanities and Arts-informed Research Methods in the Social Sciences