Hello, ya’ll. I have been searching the internet for an answer to this question and have come back with nothing; thus, I am here to ask you guys.
I am about a year out from graduating with my BA and because of that, am trying to line up all my ducks with respect to graduate school preparation. I am narrowing down my interests to what seems to be mostly the realm of social psychology: the self, interpersonal relations, etc. However, I am more acutely interested in the ‘self’ more specifically as it pertains to dissociative disorders and self-awareness.
So the question is: where am I to look for specific interests such as this? Perhaps I am going about this all wrong, but in any case, any guidance would be appreciated! Thank you!
The best way to find these programs is to look up scientific articles that have been published in this area recently (think < 5-10 years) and see who’s writing them. Looking up some seminal work in the area is good, too, then triangulate. Who are the experts in the field? (These are the people who are still actively writing but have a long history of research in this area, and have maybe written some book chapters or a book on it). Who are the rising stars? (Look at prolific young and mid-career scholars who may have just started publishing in the last 5-10 years but have published a lot in top journals).
Then find out what departments they teach in.
The key to this kind of research, though, is that you have to have a relatively specific area of inquiry. If you just type in “dissociative identity disorder” you’re going to get a lot of hits. But if you do something more specific, you’ll get closer to what you want.
For an example, I went to Google Scholar and did a search for “dissociative identity disorder interpersonal relationships.” On the first page, I noticed that an author who showed up a couple times is BL Brand. Clicking on a title revealed to me that is Bethany L. Brand. Clicking on her name in the Taylor and Francis link I was given from that title revealed that she has many articles exploring treatment of dissociative identity disorders, many of which were published very recently. I then do a search for her on Google and find out that she teaches at Towson University.
Now, this is a pretty rudimentary way to go about it - ideally, you’d read the abstracts of these articles and get a little familiar with the field, start recognizing the same names over and over again, and start putting together a picture of what the field looks like in this area. For example, While Dr. Brand does research on treatment of DID, she actually doesn’t do any research on the social relationships of people with the disorder. You may find yourself switching back and forth between more recent research and the “any time” search so you can find more hits and get a better view of the field.
The other thing is you might want to zoom out, so to speak. You may not find someone who does exactly what you want (which is actually a good thing - if someone already does it, they’ve taken your niche) but you may find someone who gets close enough. For example, you could go work with a psychology who does studies on the self, self-awareness, and interpersonal relations - and your contribution to their lab research could be the DID angle.