The MSc Mad Studies at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh is the first postgraduate course of its kind in the world. Mad Studies is an emerging academic discipline that interrogates the mainstream mental health system and supports activism for and by people with lived experience of mental illness, trauma and/or emotional distress. 

When the course was established in 2020, the East Lothian Courier reported that

Dr Kathryn Church, a world-leading scholar in Mad Studies and Disability Studies, from Ryerson University in Toronto, said: “This proposal is the most exciting piece of curriculum development that I have seen in my 20 year career as an academic."

Despite its groundbreaking work and its receipt of the QMU STaR Award 2023 for Programme of the Year, the MSc Mad Studies course has been cancelled.

Without this postgraduate course, the world will lose a unique space where people with lived experience may pursue scholarship and activism with the weight of the academy behind them. It would also be a devastating loss to those for whom the programme has provided a space in which to redefine their lived experience.

We the undersigned request that the MSc Mad Studies at QMU be reinstated. 

This petition has been set up by current students on the Mad Studies course who invite you to sign the petition and share your testimony below.