Faculty of Social Sciences and Health

The Faculty of Social Sciences and Health supports state of the art, collaborative research that stretches across disciplines and sectors, and has a positive impact on the North-East of England, the UK and across the globe. As well as the innovative research undertaken within each of our eight Departments, the Faculty also promotes interdisciplinary approaches to research through research centres and institutes, such as:

The Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing: . Our vision for health is for people to thrive in the places they live. We embrace physical, mental, social and environmental wellbeing, and envision health as a synergy of beliefs, culture, family, community and environment. As such our work here is supported by Wolfson, which is a major interdisciplinary unit within Durham University that fosters research on human health and wellbeing in both developed and developing countries

The Behaviour, Ecology and Evolution Research Centre (BEER): BEER draws together a critical mass of leading researchers and integrates a diverse set of methodological expertise and disciplinary perspectives to enhance research and collaboration at the cutting edge of behaviour, ecology and evolution.

The Centre for Criminal Law and Criminal Justice (CCLCJ): CCLCJ fosters contextualised, theoretically grounded, and empirical research on criminal law, laws of evidence, and their social applications, as well as on the processes, structures, actors, and principles of criminal justice.

The Durham University Evidence Centre for Education (DECE): DECE promotes, evaluates and monitors the impact of high-quality education research. The members of the Centre, and their networks, provide a rich blend of perspectives - including educational sociologists, psychologists, economists, geographers, health scientists, methodologists, and practitioners.

The Centre for Social Justice and Community Action (CSJCA): CSJCA is made up of academic researchers from different departments and disciplines and community partners. Its aim is to promote and develop research, teaching, public/community engagement and staff development (both within and outside the university) around the broad theme of social justice in local and international settings, with a specific focus on participatory action research. 

The Faculty of Social Sciences and Health also seeks to ensure our research is of the highest methodological quality. To that end, we host the Durham Research Methods Centre (DRMC). DRMC provides an interdisciplinary environment for the development and use of research methods and for methods training. Activities are co-ordinated by a team of Core Staff and delivered by over 40 DRMC Fellows. 

We undertake our research with the purpose of contributing to transformative change both locally and globally. To ensure our research leads to real-world positive difference, our impact work is strongly supported by our Economic and Social Research council funded Impact Acceleration Account, which has funded some impact sixty projects, five secondments/placements with external partners and has provided impact related training and mentorship for over 250 participants since 2019.