Social Sciences

The Gender Studies Department at Queen’s University teaches feminist, anti-racist, and queer theories and methods that centre activism for social change. Gender Studies is an innovative interdisciplinary field that investigates social life and creative works by examining gender, our key category of analysis, through its interdependence with race, nationality, class, sexuality, disability, religion, colonization, and globalization.

Global Development Studies offers students critical insights into development theory and practice. They explore contested meanings of ‘development’ and analyze the institutions that are integral to the apparatus of development at local and global levels. They provide students with the analytical perspectives needed to understand how inequality is produced and reproduced, how resources are distributed, and how hierarchical relationships are maintained and challenged over time. Our courses cover economic and political systems, cultural norms, physical environments, and status differences. The nature of interactions between and within the countries of the North and the South extend to issues such as poverty, cultural imperialism, human rights, social policy, and trade relations. Courses on Aboriginal communities in Canada further help students appreciate ‘development’ as a relationship rather than as a characteristic of particular places and people.

Our vibrant interdisciplinary degree programs in Kinesiology/ Physical and Health Education, as well as Arts programs in Health Studies, all emphasize prevention rather than treatment as the best route to health. From the structure of the cell to the structure of society, your studies will expose you to the complex factors which influence health and wellness. Your courses might explore social determinants of health, the biomechanics of movement, or approaches to health promotion. You might learn ways of measuring body composition, analyzing human motion or evaluating local public health initiatives. Whether you pursue the social or the physical sciences, you will definitely learn how to think and be challenged to expand your perspectives by faculty who are among the world's experts in their field.

Psychology can be divided broadly into two branches: natural science and social science. In the natural science branch, you will learn about basic processes of cognition and behavioural neuroscience, including the effects of brain damage or drug-induced changes on behavior, how various neurochemicals affect normal and abnormal behavior, mechanisms of memory, motor control, and how we solve problems. The social science branch of psychology focuses on child development, personality differences, how people act in groups or organizations, health-related behaviours, and various aspects of normal and abnormal behavior.