PhD studentship

Professor Rupert Brown (Psychology) and Dr Mark Walters (Law) have been awarded a grant from the The Leverhulme Trust to investigate “The indirect experience of hate crime: the victim group response”.

Hate crime is a particular concern to the coherence of Britain’s multicultural society, not least because of its deleterious effects on those targeted, but also because it is likely to have harmful indirect impacts on other members of the victim’s identity group. This mixed-methods interdisciplinary project will examine those indirect effects in quantitative (surveys and experiments) and qualitative (interviews) studies conducted with two commonly targeted groups - Muslim and Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual (GLB) people. In particular, it will provide tests of social psychological theories of social identity, intergroup emotions, and threat. The study will also engage with the study of criminology and law by examining group responses to different types of justice intervention.

Attached to this project is a PhD studentship whose focus will be on Victims of cyber-hate crime.

The internet is the source of much contemporary hate communication. This growth in extremist websites and the material they generate is becoming a matter of concern to policy-makers in government and is increasingly attracting the interest of legal scholars and social psychologists. Very little attention has been paid to the wider impact of cyber-hate messages on the targets of their abuse, members of various religious and sexual orientation minorities. Yet, with the exponential growth of social networks there is a growing risk of members of such groups being exposed to hate-motivated offensive messages. It is thus important to understand the psychosocial consequences of being a recipient of such electronically mediated material. It is this issue that forms the focus of the linked PhD studentship application. It dovetails neatly with the main application, yet it is sufficiently distinct to allow a clearly independent contribution from the successful recipient of the studentship.

Applications should be made by 5.00pm, on 15^th May, 2013. The award of the studentship will be based on a competitive process. This is a full-time PhD studentship (funded for a duration of three years) and is awarded as a tax-free bursary (currently £13,590 per annum), plus a contribution to University fees (currently £3,828 per annum) which covers 100% of the UK/EU fees.

Eligibility requirements for potential candidates:

• Candidates must have, or expect to obtain, a First or a high Upper Second Class Honours undergraduate degree, or equivalent qualification, and/or a Master’s degree in Psychology or a related discipline.

Guidance for applicants:

• Please send your initial enquires by email for the attention of ‘Postgraduate Coordinator’ to: psychology@sussex.ac.uk
• If you wish to discuss the details of this PhD project, please contact Prof. Brown (r.brown@sussex.ac.uk)
• Application procedures can be found at:  http://www.sussex.ac.uk/study/pg/applying/
• The full advert can be viewed on the University’s funding web page:

Candidates should provide:

• A research statement that briefly outlines our current state of knowledge, hypotheses that could be addressed, and an outline of potential methods. Your answer should not exceed 2 pages including references, with a minimum 10 font type with 1 cm margins
• A current transcript with full details of performance on all completed courses.

Interview date: It is anticipated that interviews will be held on May 29, 2013.