Course overview

BA Experimental Psychology BA Psychology & Philosophy BA Psychology & Linguistics

Typical intake: 3

All courses offer considerable flexibility in the choice of subjects from psychology and from related disciplines.

In every case, the psychological studies are related to experimental psychology and not to clinical, philosophical or analytic psychology. Thus, for example, the Perception paper is concerned with how eyes and ears work, the Developmental Psychology paper with the development of perception and reasoning and language in children, and most papers with the underlying physiological mechanisms. Because of the biological orientation of the Department of Experimental Psychology all of the courses allow for specialization in cognitive and behavioural neuroscience, as well as important areas of overlap between psychology and philosophy, for example those that can be found in the study of language, its structure, development and use.

"Without having studied the subject very much before, it might be difficult to know whether Psychology is the right course for you. The main thing to know about Psychology at Oxford is that the course has a strong scientific basis and pretty much everything you learn and discuss is centred around what can be concluded from experimental evidence."
Lucy, second-year Experimental Psychology student

Tutors

Fellow & Tutor in Psychology, Dean & Steward of the Senior Common Room

Dr Paul Azzopardi

Dr Paul Azzopardi

Fellow & Tutor in Psychology, Dean & Steward of the Senior Common Room

Lecturer, Department of Experimental Psychology

Education

MA (Oxford), PhD (Victoria University of Manchester)

Dr Azzopardi’s research field is the neural basis of visual perception and conscious awareness, and his interests include cortical magnification factors, face perception, motion perception, the neural basis of blindsight, mechanisms underlying perceptual decisions, and disorders of conscious awareness such as found in patients with blindsight and visual neglect.

Headshot of Paul Griffiths

College Lecturer in Psychology

Dr Paul Griffiths

Headshot of Paul Griffiths

Dr Paul Griffiths

College Lecturer in Psychology

Education

BSc PhD (Liverpool)

I have spent all my working life in Oxford within the collegiate University. For the majority of the time I was based in the University Computing Services (now IT Services), where I ran a statistical consultancy and was responsible for delivering training to University staff and students in the use of a variety of statistical software.

I am a Chartered Statistician and Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, and have served on the Society’s Working Party on Statistical Computing and on the Committee of its General Applications Section. I have also been the Algorithm Editor of its Applied Statistics journal, and co-edited the book Applied Statistics Algorithms. I am the Statistical Advisor to the Oxford Institute of Clinical Psychology Training, a member of the Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG) and an Associate of Ashridge Management College.

Joint honours tutors

Headshot of Janine Guhler

College Lecturer in Philosophy

Dr Janine Gühler

Headshot of Janine Guhler

Dr Janine Gühler

College Lecturer in Philosophy

Education

MA (HU Berlin), PhD (St Andrews)

I studied Philosophy and Computer Science at the Humboldt University in Berlin and then moved to Scotland to pursue a PhD in Philosophy at the University of St Andrews. My doctoral studies were supported by PETAF (Perspectival Thoughts and Facts), as part of the FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network (European Commission Funding). I graduated with a thesis on Aristotle’s Philosophy of Mathematics under the supervision of Sarah Broadie and Katherine Hawley. In 2015, I moved to Oxford to start as a stipendiary lecturer in philosophy at Wadham and St Hilda’s Colleges while also maintaining a part-time position as “Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin” (≅ fixed-term lecturer) at Bonn University, Germany. My research focuses on the nature of mathematical objects in Aristotle and Plato, with a particular interest in how their views tie in with their more general views in epistemology and ontology.

College Lecturer in Linguistics

Dr Charlotte Hemmings

Dr Charlotte Hemmings

College Lecturer in Linguistics

Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Linguistics, Philology & Phonetics

Organising Tutor in Linguistics

Education

BA, MA, PhD

I am a post-doctoral researcher in the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics at the University of Oxford, and Linguistics Organising Tutor at Worcester College.

Hinton Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy

Dr Michail Peramatzis

Dr Michail Peramatzis

Hinton Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy

Clarendon Associate Professor of Philosophy

Education

BA MA (Athens), MA DPhil (Oxford)

Dr Peramatzis’ specialities are ancient philosophy, especially Aristotle’s metaphysics, logic and epistemology and Plato’s metaphysics and epistemology.

David Mitchell Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy

Dr Natalia Waights Hickman

Dr Natalia Waights Hickman

David Mitchell Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy

Associate Professor of Philosophy

Education

MA (Reading), MA DPhil (Oxford)

My work falls mainly within contemporary philosophy of language, epistemology and philosophy of action. Most of my research relates either to linguistic (especially semantic) knowledge or to practical knowledge and skill, and sometimes to connections between these. More broadly, my work engages with theories of normativity in relation to skill, factual knowledge, thought and reasoning, and linguistic communication. I also have a general interest in the work of Gilbert Ryle, especially his relatively neglected work on thinking and improvisation.