Postgraduate

Postgraduate life

Postgraduates in the Social Anthropology, Ethnology and Cultural History Graduate Programme are fully integrated into academic life in Aberdeen. All graduate students are normally provided with personal computers, office space and access to an excellent central computing service. Postgraduate students also have access to the University's well stocked library, as well as rare manuscript and printed materials in Special Collections. Aberdeen University's Marischal Museum holds nationally and internationally significant ethnographic collections. The Elphinstone Institute holds rare collections of books and audio recordings from North East Scotland.

Training workshops are held at regular intervals throughout each academic year for postgraduate students and staff. Pre- and post-fieldwork events are organised jointly with other Anthropology departments in Scotland under the ESRC Scottish Training in Anthropological Research programme (STAR). Students at Aberdeen also take part in the University's ASPIRE programme of training in generic skills.

All these provide excellent opportunities for research training and the transfer of ideas, knowledge and experience between students in a mutually supportive environment.

The Graduate Programme organises a weekly research seminar to which visiting speakers are invited, as well as occasional lectures by distinguished academic visitors. Postgraduate students also present their work to a student-led seminar and attend and present at the full Departmental seminar. International conferences are organised by staff in the Graduate Programme. These focus on key research areas and postgraduate students are encouraged to participate.

The Graduate Programme is closely linked with:

• Marischal Museum, offering research opportunities in the field of material culture studies;
• School of Divinity, History and Philosophy, which has research strengths in the anthropology of religion;
• Northern Studies Centre, which brings together ecologists, social anthropologists and environmentalists involved in research in Scotland, the sub-Arctic and the High Arctic.
• The Elphinstone Institute, undertaking research into the language, tradition and history of North and North-East Scotland.
• Centre for Early Modern Studies, which promotes interdisciplinary research on the long-term processes that have shaped, defined and represented the early modern world.

Postgraduates are encouraged to think about career planning with the help of the University's Careers Service who have a dedicated staff for postgraduates. Some destinations of PhDs from the Department are on the recent theses page, or you can check our own careers page.

Some photos from around the Department, including postgraduates, are in the photo gallery.