Dr Dan Shepperd (Psychology)

I'm a social psychologist with interests in gender, sexual identity, friendship, and group prejudice. My background is in discourse analysis and I specialise in qualitative research methods to analyse interviews, focus groups and sets of media data. At Aston I convene undergraduate modules in Social Psychology and Human Aggression. I also teach and convene various postgraduate Qualitative Research Methods modules.

I gained my Human Psychology BSc from Aston (2002) before heading off to the University of Surrey where I studied for a Social Psychology PhD with Adrian Coyle, Peter Hegarty and Evanthia Lyons. In 2008 I won a place at the LGBT Psychology Summer Institute at the University of Michigan (USA). I taught qualitative research methods, critical psychology and social psychology at the University of Surrey. The University of Winchester offered me a position as an associate lecturer where I also taught qualitative research methods until returning to Aston in 2011. In 2012 I was made 1st Year Tutor, in 2014 I was Acting Final year Tutor, and in 2015 appointed Director of Undergraduate Studies for Psychology.

• Year 1: PY1125 Psychology Practicals - Qualitative Research Methods; PY1118 Social Psychology

• Year 2: PY2229 - Social Psychology 2 (Module Convenor)   

• Year 3: PY3003 - Human Aggression (Module Convenor); PY3352 - Critical Social Psychology (module for Joint Honours and Graduate Diploma Psychology students)

• Postgraduate (Health Psychology MSc) PYM701 Qualitative Methodology; PYM707a & PYM707b; PY4053 Qualitative Research Methods for Health Services

I supervise and examine qualitative psychological research at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. As a qualitative psychologist I don't normally supervise or examine quantitative projects (especially if they involve multivariate analysis). If you are considering me as your potential supervisor, here is a paper typical of my research (see below for more). These are examples of the type of things I've supervised in the last couple of years:

Previous Supervision (2010-11 at the University of Surrey):  

Doctoral examination:

Viva voce examination of Practitioner Doctorates in Psychotherapeutic & Counselling Psychology (PsychD) at the University of Surrey, September 2011.

Social psychology: sexual and gender identities, friendship, liberalism, consumerism and commodification, social media, intergroup conflict and prejudice.

Methods: Discourse analysis, thematic analysis, interpretative phenomenological analysis.