Anthropology and Archaeology

MPhil: a standalone, one-year (full-time) research degree. Students will undertake their own research project, concluding in the submission of a 25,000-word dissertation. Students may have the option to audit units from our taught master's programmes if they are relevant to their research.

PhD: a research project undertaken across four years (full-time, minimum period of study three years), culminating in an 80,000-word thesis. As well as having the option to audit taught units, there may be the potential for PhD students to teach units themselves from their second year of study onwards.

The MPhil and PhD can be studied via distance learning.

MPhil: A mid-level upper second-class degree or international equivalent, with evidence of first class research. Please note, acceptance will also depend upon evidence of your readiness to pursue a research degree.

PhD: A master's qualification, or be working towards a master's qualification, or international equivalent, with evidence of first class/distinction-level research. Applicants without a master's qualification may be considered on an exceptional basis provided they hold a first-class undergraduate degree (or international equivalent). Applicants with a non-traditional background may be considered provided they can demonstrate substantial equivalent and relevant experience that has prepared them to undertake their proposed course of study.

See international equivalent qualifications on the International Office website.

Ecologies: Our research coalesces around critical issues of the human relationship with the environment and our long-term planetary futures. Our research on ecologies ranges broadly in time, with projects on human evolutionary pasts including the origin of sociality in primates, adaptation and extinction in apes, prehistorical changes in human societies and the evolution of cultural traits, and subsistence and dietary changes over millennia. We also focus on contemporary societies and how people respond to and live in the shadow of climate disasters. Research ranges broadly in terms of region, with projects in East Africa on fungi and food security and human behavioural ecology in relation to reproductive health; in South America on children and their relationship to both forest and urban environments in Peru and resource extraction and environmental destruction in Amazonia; in Asia exploring how people navigate and adapt to an international landscape of borders; and in the Pacific and Europe on the cultural uses of plants. We also bring this theme home to the southwest of England with archaeologies of changing landscapes and landscape usage from Prehistory to the present day.

Liveable Futures: What is needed for life to be sustained? What conditions must be in place if we are to occupy a world that is habitable, and a society that enables human and non-human life to flourish? What challenges must we overcome to realise this vision of a hopeful and thriving future? Asking and answering such questions has always been at the heart of human experience, but we live at a moment where they are being posed anew in light of unprecedented contingencies and opportunities. Ecological emergencies. Faltering confidence in liberal democracy. Ever-accelerating technological transformations. These encounters shift our perceptions on what the future holds, as they provoke a collective "soul searching" on what it means to secure a liveable future for humanity, and even for life as such. Our research into Liveable Futures demonstrates how an anthropological perspective can contribute to and reshape this conversation.

Turbulence and Transition: Whether affected by disease, drugs, changing diets, migrations, trauma, extractive practices, hurricanes, political shifts, or conflict we are interested in how humans live through and make sense of world altering events and everyday lived experiences. Our work is concerned with keeping pace with global changes – actively reflecting on, and reshaping anthropology and archaeology's approaches to, and impacts on our changing world. Our research projects track the challenges faced by human beings past and present, exploring how lives and material cultures are impacted by technological, social, and environmental change. Our research projects explore themes such as survival and resilience in the Caribbean in the face of destructive storms; the impacts of anarchy, civil war and rebellion in the southwest of medieval Britain; educational and linguistic transitions amongst ethnic groups in contemporary China; and how we can best support the survivors of sexual abuse.

Connections & Creativity: Here we explore the possibilities for new forms of discovery and methodological engagement with past and contemporary societies. We are initiating, creating, and caretaking large-scale datasets that drive new forms of understanding, interpretation, and integration. We also have a growing expertise in multi-modal anthropological approaches and the deployment of visual and creative methods of engagement and cultural production. Our expertise foregrounds opportunities for collaboration, co-production and participatory methods, placing our department at the heart of contemporary issues.