Course summary

Possible start dates are January 2023, September 2023, January 2024. Please see the programme page on our website for more information. The Department of Anthropology and Archaeology has an international 'four-field' approach, combining archaeology with evolutionary, social and linguistic anthropology. Our key strengths lie in our integrated approaches to understanding cultural, biological and social change: the spread of peoples, their ideas and material artefacts. We focus particularly on adaptation, adversity and globalisation. Our research spans from earliest prehistory to the modern day. Field research takes place in the UK, as well as Brazil, Ethiopia, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Singapore, Slovenia, Tanzania, Turkey, Venezuela, Vietnam, and elsewhere. We are well equipped to undertake anthropological and archaeological fieldwork, including excavation, and we have world-class radiocarbon dating, isotopic and micro-imaging laboratories on site. We foster partnerships with professional institutions nationally and locally to provide additional collaborative opportunities for our students (for example, with the Royal Anthropological Institute Ethnographic Film Festival, UNESCO City of Film, and Bristol Museum and Art Gallery). In addition, we draw on expertise and facilities from across the University (such as the Brigstow Institute; Cabot Institute for the Environment; Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research; Jean Golding Institute). We also work closely with institutes and centres in the Faculties of Social Sciences and Law (Migration Mobilities Bristol; the Centre for Environmental Humanities; and the Centre for Health, Humanities and Science), as well as the Faculty of Science (Bristol Isotope Group; Organic Geochemistry Unit). 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.