Social Anthropology: University of Cambridge

Key research areas:

• The Department is actively involved in research in areas central to the concerns of social anthropology: kinship studies, religion, ritual and symbolic systems, and the economics, politics and law of societies across the world. Departmental teaching reflects the strength and depth of expertise in these fields.
• We are equally interested in research in new areas in the fields of medical anthropology, demography, urban anthropology, ethnicity and minority groups, nationalist and transnational politics, gender relations, Third World development, the study of colonialism and empire and the intensive study of industrial societies.
• We have pioneered work in historical anthropology, in the study of written and oral communication, and in the anthropological analysis of socialist and post-socialist societies, and we have a continuing interest in the social consequences of technological innovation.
• We are developing a new field of comparative ethics.

Research collaborations:

• The Department of Social Anthropology has a presence in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, which possesses extensive collections from all regions of the world.
• We also liaise closely with the Centres of African, South Asian and Latin American Studies, the Scott Polar Research Institute and the Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies Unit.

The geographical areas in which supervision can be offered include Europe (including Russia, the Balkans and Britain), West Africa, the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, Central, North and East Asia, South East Asia, Inner Asia, China, South America and the Pacific.

There is an established and lively pre- and post-fieldwork programme for doctoral students.

Further information:

• graduate studies and funding on the website