Taught programmes

• Anthropology of Ethnicity, Nationalism and Identity - MA
• Environmental Anthropology - MA, MSc
• Ethnobotany - MSc
• Evolution and Human Behaviour (taught jointly with the School of Psychology) - MSc
• Social Anthropology - MA
• Social Anthropology and Computing - MA
• Visual Anthropology - MA
• Anthropology and Conservation - MA

Research programmes

• Anthropology - MA, MSc, PhD
• Ethnobiology - MSc, PhD

Anthropology prides itself on its inclusive and interdisciplinary focus. It takes a holistic approach to human society, combining biological and social perspectives. Kent has pioneered the social anthropological study of Europe and the Mediterranean, the use of computers in anthropological research, and environmental anthropology in its widest sense (including ethnobiology and ethnobotany). It maintains an active research culture, with staff working in many different parts of the world.
Our regional expertise covers Europe, the Middle East, South East and Southern Asia (especially Indonesia), Amazonia, New Guinea, and Polynesia. Specialisation in biological anthropology includes forensics and paleopathology, osteology, evolutionary psychology and the evolutionary ecology and behaviour of great apes.
Higher degrees in anthropology create opportunities in many employment sectors including academia, the civil service and non-governmental organisations through work in areas such as human rights, journalism, documentary film making, and international finance. An anthropology degree also develops interpersonal and intercultural skills which make our graduates highly desirable in any profession that involves working with people from diverse backgrounds and cultures.

The School has a lively postgraduate community drawn together not only by shared resources such as postgraduate rooms, computer facilities (with a dedicated IT officer) and laboratories, but also by student-led events, societies, staff/postgraduate seminars, weekly research student seminars and a number of special lectures.

The School houses well-equipped research laboratories for genetics, ecology, visual anthropology, biological anthropology, anthropological computing, botany, osteology and ethnobiology. The state-of-the-art visual anthropology laboratory is stocked with digital editing programmes and other facilities for digital video and photographic work, and has a photographic darkroom for analogue developing and printing. The biological anthropology laboratory is equipped for osteoarchaeological and forensic work. It curates the Powell-Cotton collection of human remains, together with Anglo-Saxon skeletons from Bishopstone, East Sussex. The ethnobiology laboratory provides equipment and specimens for teaching ethnobiological research skills, and serves as a transit station for receiving, examining and redirecting field material. It also houses the Powell-Cotton collection of plant-based material culture from South-East Asia, and a small reference and teaching collection of herbarium and spirit specimens (1,000 items) arising from recent research projects.

Kent has outstanding anthropology IT facilities. Over the last decade, the Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing has been associated with many innovatory projects, particularly in the field of cognitive anthropology. It provides an electronic information service to other anthropology departments, for example by hosting both the Anthropological Index Online and Experience-Rich Anthropology project. We encourage all students to use the Centre's facilities (no previous experience or training is necessary). The Centre has its own website: lucy.kent.ac.uk, which was the world's first anthropology website (and one of the first 400 websites in the world).

Anthropology at Kent has close links with the nearby Powell-Cotton Museum, which has one of the largest ethnographic collections in the British Isles and is particularly strong in sub-Saharan African and South-East Asian material. It also houses an extensive comparative collection of primate and other mammalian material. Human skeletal material is housed at the Kent Osteological Research and Analysis Centre within the School.

Anthropology, together with the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) form the School of Anthropology and Conservation.

Admissions enquiries
T: +44 (0)1227 827272
E:information@kent.ac.uk
Subject enquiries
School of Anthropology and Conservation,
University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NS, UK
T: +44 (0)1227 827928
F: +44 (0)1227 827289
E: sacoffice@kent.ac.uk