Social Anthropology

Entry requirements

Applicants for admission will normally be expected to hold a relevant Honours degree with a 2:1 standard from a recognised university or body.

Applicants without this qualification may be admitted subject to having an alternative qualification, or an approved level of work experience appropriate to the field of study. Also taken into careful consideration is the trajectory of results, an applicant without an overall 2.1 but with 2.1 results in their final two years of study may be admitted.

Months of entry

January, September

Course content

Anthropology is the comparative study of human societies in all their diversity. It seeks to understand cultural life broadly, in a wide range of social activities. Anthropologists carry out their research through long-term, in-depth fieldwork in different regions of the world.

We are interested in various aspects of people’s everyday lives, whether ordinary day-to-day activities or special festivals and events. Researchers observe these events and activities to learn more about other societies and to reflect on their own.

Such observations and analysis provided by anthropologists are important and generate knowledge about remote cultures or help address urgent issues in communities nearby.

Anthropology helps understand current developments in our changing world too and contributes to critical reflection on these processes, whether it is the refugee crisis or social consequences of a disease outbreak, for instance.

The MRes programme introduces students to the work anthropologists do, the methods they use to conduct fieldwork, to past and current anthropological research in perspective. The programme encourages critical reflection on the problems and possibilities entailed in and presented by anthropological research.

Students on the programme will learn how to access research material, conduct ethnographic fieldwork, apply research methods (participant observation, interviewing and recording), and adhere to the ethics of anthropological research.

Students who complete the programme are prepared to undertake further research towards the PhD in Social Anthropology or to enter employment as trained researchers in the public or private sectors.