Postgraduate students benefit from personally tailored supervisory boards, and a thriving and supportive research culture indicated by the weekly School Seminar Series (in which major international figures provide presentations), the Professional Seminar Series (focused on developing an academic career), a fieldwork group, and various other study groups. In addition, both the Centre for Health Services Studies (CHSS) and the Tizard Centre offer seminar series in their respective areas of interest and expertise.

Health, social care and embodiment represent an extremely large field of research within the School, providing a focus for numerous academic teaching staff and researchers working in relevant research units, often involving collaborative work between them. For postgraduate students, this creates a vast range of expertise in terms of subject matter, methodology, and theoretical approach and hence ample opportunities for high-quality supervision. The School also has a strong network of international contacts and collaborations which can support and stimulate the work of research students in varying ways.

CHSS includes the Health and Social Survey unit, and South East Trials unit, as well as offering a Research Design service, while the Personal Social Services Research Unit and Tizard centre comprises two of the six founding members of the National School of Social Care Research. Collectively, the research units operate with a mixture of funding from government departments (notably the Department of Health), commissioned research and competitively gained research grants. All have a strong focus on assessing the quality of provision within health and social care services. Across the School, in addition to more independent research, work is thus undertaken for a very wide range of bodies – including central government departments (both UK and international), local authorities, health commissioners, third sector bodies/NGOs – and achieves significant impact on policy and practice. (See CHSS and PSSRU for details of current and recent research {insert weblinks}. The journal Health, Risk and Society is edited by staff within the School as is the Sociological Review Monograph Series, while the Tizard centre produces the Tizard Learning Disability Review, a major journal in the field of learning/intellectual disabilities.