Psychology at UKZN is an interdisciplinary and transformational space where mind, society, culture, history, and healing converge. From first-year undergraduate to doctoral research, we are committed to developing ethical, reflective, and contextually grounded graduates who can serve, question, and reimagine the role of psychological knowledge in South Africa, across the African continent, and the wider world.
Rooted in the University’s vision of African scholarship, our teaching and training embrace a pluriversal approach, valuing multiple ways of knowing and being, and rejecting one-size-fits-all models.
We prepare students to engage in psychology as the study of behaviour and mental processes and as a socially and historically embedded discipline shaped by power, inequality, and cultural diversity. Students learn to interrogate whose voices psychology centres, to integrate global insights with African realities, and to design approaches that advance social justice and collective wellbeing.
Our curriculum draws on:
- Grounding knowledge in African-centred worldviews and indigenous knowledge systems.
- Recognising the interplay between biology, psychology, social structures, history, and environment through the biopsychosocial model.
- Interrogating power and inequality, while fostering critical engagement with domination, compliance, resistance, and pathways to transformative change.
- Intersectional perspectives on how race, class, gender, sexuality, culture, and ability shape mental health, identity, and lived experience
- Responding to urgent psychosocial challenges, including poverty, unemployment, violence, trauma, inequality, educational inequities, and organisational wellbeing.
In a world shaped by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), our graduates leave with solid disciplinary knowledge and the transferable skills, adaptability, creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration needed to navigate the world of work. At the same time, they bring something unique: a pluriversal orientation that values multiple ways of knowing, African-centred perspectives, and critical engagement with global and local realities. Whether they exit after undergraduate study, pursue Honours, or progress to professional Master’s training, our graduates leave with intellectual agility, ethical grounding, and a sense of community responsiveness, equipped to navigate and contribute meaningfully across diverse workplaces.
History
Mission
What we Offer
From Curiosity to Career: Psychology at Every Level
Undergraduate:
At the undergraduate level, students are introduced to foundational psychological knowledge encompassing areas such as human development, social identity, cognition, motivation, intelligence, psychopathology and research methods; each examined through the lens of South Africa’s socio-political history and the diversity of African life worlds. This grounding invites students to move beyond Western individualism, question colonial hierarchies of knowledge, and cultivate a reflective, ethically engaged approach to psychology.
From the first year, students may select Psychology as a major in either General Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology, or both. First-year Psychology is uniform for all students, providing a shared academic foundation. After completing this foundation, students enter their chosen stream(s) from the second year until they complete their degree in the third year.
Honours in General Psychology:
The Honours programme in General Psychology provides a critical and contextually grounded foundation for further postgraduate study or applied roles in diverse organisational and community settings. The programme deepens students’ theoretical knowledge while cultivating analytical, digital, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills relevant to the demands of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Firmly grounded in a decolonial and pluralist ethos, the programme challenges dominant psychological frameworks by critically engaging with global North scholarship and centring African and Global South perspectives. All core and elective modules encourage students to question universalist assumptions, engage with culturally situated knowledge systems, and apply psychological principles to real-world issues.
Honours in Industrial and Organisational Psychology:
The Honours programme in Industrial and Organisational Psychology provides a critical foundation for students intending to pursue further postgraduate study or enter the world of work as ethically grounded, socially conscious practitioners. The programme centres on the interface between social psychological processes and organisational systems, exploring how these dynamics inform and impact psychological functioning, assessment practices, workplace equity, leadership, employee experience, and organisational effectiveness across diverse contexts. Anchored in a pluralist and decolonial lens, the programme critically engages with dominant paradigms in Industrial and Organisational psychology by drawing on African-centred and global south scholarship. In doing so, it promotes a critically reflexive and context-sensitive understanding of work and organisational life that is responsive to the complexities of South African and broader global realities.
Postgraduate Diploma in Psychological Counselling:
The Postgraduate Diploma in Psychological Counselling is a professionally oriented qualification that equips students with the foundational knowledge, applied skills, and supervised experience required to register with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) as Registered Counsellors. The programme emphasises early intervention, preventative care, and psychoeducation, focusing on psychological assessment, applied psychopathology, developmental psychology, counselling practice, and research. Through a blend of block contact sessions, online learning, and practicum-based training, students develop competence in conducting basic psychological assessments, delivering individual and group interventions, and facilitating community-based mental health initiatives. Rooted in African-centred and decolonial perspectives, the programme critically engages with dominant counselling paradigms while centring culturally relevant knowledge systems and local realities. The PG Dip serves both as a professional endpoint and a potential bridge to further postgraduate study in psychology.
Masters Professional Programmes:
UKZN offers five professional Master’s programmes in Psychology, each leading to registration with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA). These include Clinical Psychology, Counselling Psychology, Educational Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology (IOP), and Research Psychology. Each professional programme comprises coursework, a supervised internship spanning one full year, and a research dissertation. The training is designed to develop technical competencies, promote reflective practice, foster ethical leadership, and cultivate socially engaged critical thinking.
Masters by Research: In addition to these professional tracks, UKZN also offers a Master’s by Research, which involves the independent design and execution of a dissertation under supervision, culminating in a dissertation that contributes knowledge to the field of psychology.
PhD in Psychology:
The PhD in Psychology at UKZN offers doctoral students the opportunity to work under the guidance of experienced scholars as they develop original contributions to the discipline. Research often explores themes such as mental health justice, decolonial knowledge production, psychoeducation and inclusive learning, gender and sexuality, indigenous healing and psychology, labour, leadership, and organisational change, as well as transformative research methodologies. Students are supported in pursuing disruptive, reparative, and impactful scholarship, advancing theory and practice that are firmly rooted in African and Global South realities.