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The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NZ, T +44 (0)1227 764000
Anthropology MA, MSc, MPhil, PhD
This is a research programme within the Anthropology subject area.
Key facts
- Subject area: Anthropology
- Location: Canterbury
- School: Anthropology
- Duration: MA/MSc one year full-time or two years part-time, MPhil two years full-time or three years part-time, PhD registration three to four years full-time or five to six years part-time.
- Start: At any time but preferably in September.
- Fees: More info
- Entry requirements: A good honours degree (2.1 or above) in anthropology or other associated fields. Please also check our general entry requirements (including English language requirements).
Outline
We welcome students with the appropriate background for research. If you wish to study for a single year, you can do the MA or MSc by research, a 12-month independent research project. Students interested in doctoral research usually register initially for an MPhil, which upgrades to PhD subject to satisfactory progress.
The first year of the MPhil includes coursework, especially methods modules for students who need this additional training. In general, you work closely with one supervisor throughout your research, although you have a committee of three (including your primary supervisor) overseeing your progress. If you want to research in the area of applied computing in social anthropology, you would also have a supervisor based in the School of Computing.
If you are interested in registering for a research degree, you should contact the member of staff whose research is the most relevant to your interests. You should include a curriculum vitae plus a short (1,000 word) research proposal, and a list of potential funding sources.
Programme structure
In Anthropology we pride ourselves on having a close-knit group of research students who know and can approach any member of staff for help and assistance. We have an ongoing staff/student research seminar with a varied programme of seminars given by members of the department and visitors. There is a special seminar for research students in which advanced training is provided (subject to discussion with each cohort of students), students practise upgrade presentations and later present chapters of their draft thesis.
Research students are encouraged to audit courses from the taught Master's (eg in field methods) and sometimes from the undergraduate programme. There are special training courses for research students run by the Graduate School, Information Services and Unit for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching. There is a departmental IT officer who can provide assistance and advice in IT matters, and a statistics helpdesk is available.
For further information see the School site.
Funding
University research studentships are available to the School of Anthropology and Conservation (including DICE), for the support of two PhD candidates in any one of three broad fields: social anthropology, biological anthropology or biodiversity conservation. These studentships are for three years and cover fees at the home rate and a stipend up to the UK Research Councils' level of £13,590 (2011/12 rate).
The School also offers scholarships in the form of Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTAs) whereby postgraduate research students receive financial support in return for teaching. The value of awards may vary, but often cover tuition fees at the home/EU rate and a substantial maintenance grant.
All postgraduate research students are eligible to apply for GTAs. See Graduate Teaching Assistantships The School of Anthropology and Conservation has been highly successful in attracting Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) student fellowships in the past and the University of Kent was selected as one of four universities constituting the ESRC South East Doctoral Training Centre (DTC). If you wish to be considered for ESRC funding through the DTC, please follow the application process outlined on our website.
Through DICE, we also have links to NERC studentships.
Details of all these funding opportunities can also be found on our website. For further information about sources of financial support for postgraduate students, see Postgraduate funding.
Further information:
Resources and facilities
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, 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 department.
Anthropology, together with the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) form the School of Anthropology and Conservation (see Conservation).
Further information:
Research groups
Social and Cultural Anthropology
The related themes of ethnicity, nationalism, identity, conflict, and multiculturalism form a major focus of our current work in the Middle East, the Balkans, South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, the United Kingdom, Oceania and South-East Asia. We have a continuing interest in post-socialist states and also work on national identity in the Middle East, and on European regionalism and identity. Our research extends to inter-communal violence, mental health, diasporas, pilgrimage, inter-communal trade, urban ethnogenesis and the study of contemporary religions and their global connections. We also research issues in fieldwork and methodology more generally, with a strong and expanding interest in the field of visual anthropology. Our work on identity and locality links with growing strengths in customary law, kinship and parenthood.
The reconstituted topic of ‘kinship' is presently a growth area for us, with work on adoption, fosterage, partible parentage, arranged and nonarranged marriages, polygamy and female-centred property transmission, as well as in evolutionary approaches to early motherhood. This is complemented by work on the language of relatedness, child health and on the cognitive bases of kinship terminologies.
In general, the study of language and of forms of representation constitutes a major area of attention, exemplified by our work on discourse analysis and speech ethnography, ethnopsychiatric diagnosis, social etiquette and self-presentation, dreams and personhood, endangered languages and the interconnections between language history, diaspora identity, visual media and ethnogenesis. It also features in our critical assessments of social description and representations of culture. A major aspect of our concern with representation is the image, and the domain of ‘image studies' is closely integrated with Anthropology's important work in Visual Anthropology.
A final strand of our research focuses on policy and advocacy issues and examines the connections between morality and law, legitimacy and corruption, public health policy and local healing strategies, legal pluralism and property rights, and the regulation of marine resources.
Staff
Dr Judith Bovensiepen, Glenn Bowman, Dr Melissa Demian, Professor Roy Ellen, Dr Michael Fischer, Dr Daniela Peluso, Dr Michael Poltorak, Dr Dimitrios Theodossopoulos.
Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology
Work in these areas is focused on the Centre for Biocultural Diversity. We conduct research on ethnobiological knowledge systems and other systems of environmental knowledge as well as local responses to deforestation, climate change, natural resource management, medical ethnobotany, the impacts of mobility and displacement and the interface between conservation and development. Current projects include trade in materia medica in Ladakh and Bolivia, food systems, ethno-ornithology, the development of buffer zones for protected areas and phytopharmacy amongst migrant diasporas.
Staff
Professor Roy Ellen, Dr Rajindra K Puri, Dr Anna Waldstein.
Digital Anthropology: Cultural Informatics, Social Invention and Computational Methods
Since 1985, we have been exploring and applying new approaches to research problems in anthropology – often, as in the case of hypermedia, electronic and internet publishing, digital media, expert systems and large-scale textual and historical databases, up-to a decade before other anthropologists. Today, we are exploring cloud media, semantic networks, multi-agent modelling,dual/blended realities, data mining, smart environments and how these are mediated by people into new possibilities and capabilities. We conduct IT projects in conjunction with conventional ethnographic or archival research, and stress adapting computational techniques and resources to anthropology, rather than the other way round. Since 1995, our major developments have included advances in kinship theory and analysis supported by new computational methods within field-based studies and as applied to detailed historical records; qualitative analysis of textual and ethnographic materials; computer- assisted approaches to visual ethnography; modelling, simulation and research based on artificial societies; and methods of user-friendly dissemination, particularly of field data. We are extending our range to quantitative approaches for assessing qualitative materials, analysing social and cultural invention, the active representation of meaning, and the applications and implications of mobile computing, sensing and communications platforms and the transformation of virtual into concrete objects, institutions and structures.
Staff
Professor Michael Fischer.
Biological Anthropology
Biological Anthropology is the newest of the University of Kent Anthropology research disciplines. We are interested in a diverse range of research topics within biological and evolutionary anthropology. These include bioarchaeology, human reproductive strategies, hominin evolution, primate behaviour and ecology, modern human variation, cultural evolution and Palaeolithic archaeology. This work takes us to many different regions of the world (Asia, Africa, Europe, the United States), and involves collaboration with international colleagues from a number of organisations. We have a dedicated research laboratory and up-to-date computing facilities to allow research in many areas of biological anthropology. Currently, work is being undertaken in a number of these areas, and research links have been forged with colleagues at Kent in archaeology and biosciences, as well as with those at the Powell- Cotton Museum, the Budongo Forest Project (Uganda) and University College London. Kent Osteological Research and Analysis (KORA) offers a variety of osteological services for human remains from archaeological contexts.
Staff
Dr Sarah Johns, Dr Stephen Lycett, Dr Patrick Mahoney, Dr Nicholas Newton-Fisher, Dr Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel.
Show all
|Staff research
Dr Judith Bovensiepen: Lecturer in Social Anthropology
Anthropology of South-East Asia; East Timor; place and landscape; kinship and reciprocity; colonial history; conflict; conspiracy talk; post-conflict healing and reconstruction.
Glenn Bowman: Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology; Academic Head (Anthropology)
West Bank Palestine and Former Yugoslavia; shrines, monumentalisation, pilgrimage, intercommunal relations, identity politics, nationalism, walling; Orthodox and heterodox Christianity, Sufism; anthropological and psychoanalytic approaches to identity; fieldwork theory.
Dr Melissa Demian: Lecturer in Social Anthropology
The Suau Coast of south-eastern Papua New Guinea; the anthropology of law and legal pluralism; property theory; the concepts of cultural patrimony and ‘culture loss'; ‘cultural defence' in American and British courtrooms.
Professor Roy Ellen: Professor of Anthropology and Human Ecology
Eastern Indonesia; ethnobiological knowledge systems; knowledge transmission and the reproduction of systems of practices; inter-island trade; environmental anthropology; culture and cognition.
Professor Michael Fischer: Professor of Anthropological Sciences
The representation and structure of indigenous knowledge; cultural informatics; the inter-relationships between ideation and the material contexts within which ideation is expressed.
Dr Sarah Johns: Lecturer in Biological Anthropology
Evolutionary psychology and behavioural ecology; timing of life-history events; human reproduction, especially variation of the age at first birth and the evolved psychology of reproductive decision making.
Dr Stephen Lycett: Senior Lecturer in Biological Anthropology
Palaeoanthropology; Biological Anthropology and Palaeolithic Archaeology, especially cultural evolution; cultural transmission theory and material culture; morphometrics; lithic analysis; hominin dispersals; hominid phylogenetics; species identification in the fossil record.
Dr Patrick Mahoney: Lecturer in Biological Anthropology
Evolutionary developmental biology of hominoid dentition; bioarchaeology, especially prehistoric human diet; palaeopathology.
Dr Nicholas Newton-Fisher: Lecturer in Biological Anthropology
Evolutionary ecology and behaviour of mammals, with an emphasis on primates, in particular chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), including male-female aggression and sexual coercion, hunting behaviour, social behaviour, feeding ecology, ranging patterns.
Dr Daniela Peluso: Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, Amazonia
Gender; exchange theory; kinship; development; indigenous urbanisation; medical anthropology; indigenismo; hybridity; personhood and identity; anthropology of business.
Dr Mike Poltorak: Lecturer in Social Anthropology
Tonga; Oceania; New Zealand; Brighton and Hove; Rajasthan; India; visual anthropology; mental illness; medical anthropology; transnationalism; ethnopsychiatry; vaccination; applied medical anthropology; cultural politics; indigenous epistemologies and modernities; the medical/visual/development anthropology nexus.
Dr Dimitrios Theodossopoulos: Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology
Political and environmental anthropology; Panama; Greece; ethnic relations and stereotyping; globalisation and indigeneity; sustainability.
Dr Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel: Lecturer in Biological Anthropology
Evolutionary anthropology; past hominin dispersal; geometric morphometrics; comparative shape analysis of Palaeolithic stone tools; microevolutionary analysis of carniometric variation within modern humans.
Dr Anna Waldstein: Lecturer in Medical Anthropology and Ethnobotany
Medical anthropology; ethnopharmacology; Mesoamerica and migration; the effects of migration and acculturation on health; the use of traditional medical knowledge as an adaptive strategy among migrants; the nutritional consequences of mass-produced food; biocultural constructions of addiction.
Further information:
Contact details
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: anthro-office@kent.ac.uk
Further information: