Criminology DPhil

University of Oxford

The DPhil Criminology is offered as either a full-time three to four year degree, or a part-time six to eight year degree. The DPhil entails researching and writing a thesis of between 75,000 and 100,000 words under the guidance of at least one supervisor who will be an acknowledged authority on your chosen topic. After three or at most four years (no later than eight years for the part-time pathway), you are expected to submit your final thesis.

As a first-year full-time student, or in your first two years as a part-time student, you will follow courses of instruction in criminological research methods to develop your research skills, unless you have acquired sufficient methods training on a master's degree.

The Criminology DPhil programme is offered by the Centre for Criminology to develop academic and transferable skills. You must complete both modules during your DPhil and you can choose which term/academic year it would be most useful for you to take each.

Module One, Intellectual Foundations will help you think theoretically about criminological research and engage with the intellectual foundations of criminology in order to assist you in developing theoretical and conceptual frameworks for your own projects.

Module Two, Professional Development will help you with your professional development and to give you opportunities to present your own work ‘in progress’ and learn to critique the work of your peers.

The Faculty of Law and Social Sciences Division also offer skills training as appropriate to different stages of the graduate career. There are also opportunities to access advanced and specialist research methods training.

The areas in which members of the Centre for Criminology may be able to offer supervision include:

• policing and security
• crime and the family
• border control and the criminalisation of migration
• the death penalty
• the politics of crime and justice
• youth justice
• sociology of punishment
• psychology, law and criminal justice
• crime, risk and justice
• sentencing
• victims
• prisons
• restorative justice
• public attitudes and responses to crime
• race and gender in crime and justice
• miscarriages of justice
• crime, criminology and social/political theory.

In addition to the DPhil Programme and methods training, you will be encouraged to attend the Oxford criminology and informal research seminars organised by the centre and get involved in the various criminology discussion groups. Research seminars bring you and other students together with academic and other research staff in the department to hear about ongoing research and provide an opportunity for networking and socialising.

Further information about studying part-time

The faculty's research degrees are not available by distance learning. Although there will be no requirement to reside in Oxford, part-time research students must attend the University on a regular basis (particularly in term-time: October and November, mid-January to mid-March, and late April to mid-June) for supervision, study, research seminars and skills training. This is also to ensure a comprehensive integration into the faculty's and University's research culture and with your full-time peer groups. In addition, you will sometimes ‘meet’ with their supervisors online.

As a part-time student you will be required to attend classes in research methods (unless completed as part of the MSc Criminology and Criminal Justice), doctoral seminars, supervision meetings and other obligations in Oxford.