Research

Welcome to the home page for research in The Open University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

The Faculty has a vibrant and broad-based research culture. Our work includes rich historical perspectives on subjects such as classical Greek poetry, Byzantine art, the First World War, and experiences of reading and listening to music alongside engagement with current issues such as migration, community divisions, violence against women and girls, and improving treatment guidelines for depression.

Our research is supported via our three Research Centres. Please visit our centre webpages to find out more about the innovative and significant research we do to meet societies challenges around sustainability, equalities and living well whilst informing our latest learning and teaching.

• Centre for Global Challenges and Social Justice (GCSJ) – Research Centre for Social Sciences and Global Studies
• Open Arts Research Centre (OpenARC) – Research Centre for Arts and Humanities
• Open Psychology Research Centre (OPRC) – Research Centre for Psychology and Counselling

FASS staff submitted 28 Impact Case Studies to the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF) across 12 Units of Assessment, two-thirds of which were assessed as 3* (internationally excellent) or 4* (world-leading), including a first-time submission to Psychology. Our research is recognized by numerous grants from funders including the European Commission (EC / Horizon), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the British Academy, and the Leverhulme Trust.

We also support a community of nearly 200 PhD students, including both full and part time students, many of them funded by UKRI through our prestigious doctoral training partnerships, such as OOC (Open-Oxford-Cambridge), and Grand Union (with Brunel and Oxford Universities). The UK-wide presence of The Open University gives a distinctive quality to our research and we have recently also introduced a new distance learning PhD programme to make our programmes even more accessible.