Undergraduate Anthropology 2025-2026

Anthropology explores ways of life in societies and cultures around the world. Through fieldwork in the places people live, anthropologists connect global issues with everyday lives. In this course you’ll learn about the key topics of anthropology and its research methods. Lectures introduce anthropological research topics such as ritual, climate change and indigenous rights. Small group tutorials will allow you to debate the issues and share your perspectives.

In this course students will be offered an extended introduction to social anthropology and will focus on topics: language and culture, belief and religion, gender and sex, kinship, and race. Students will develop and refine their understanding of major issues in the discipline of social anthropology through staff lectures, tutorials, and ethnographic films. 

This course explores some of the key questions that anthropologists have debated: what it is to be human, the nature of human interaction with other humans and with other species, the role language plays in thought and culture, and the different ways that people perceive the world and act within it. Themes that will be discussed in this course include rationality, language, species difference, race, and place and community.

This course will explore contemporary colonial expressions from an anthropological perspective. It will be split into two main themes: Material Histories; and Mediated Histories. Within these themes it will address topics such as the "capturing" of cultures in museums, kinship and politics, gendered colonialism, economic development, media, aboriginal rights and contemporary resistance movements.

This course explores theoretical issues and key debates in contemporary anthropology. We begin with the questioning of the central concepts of culture and society in anthropology during the 1980s. Following this, we ask: how can anthropology proceed if the targets of its investigation can no longer be understood as objective entities? How can anthropology proceed if the anthropologist themselves is inevitably implicated in and part of those very targets? To look for possible answers, the course examines current anthropological interest in power and history, political economy and phenomenology, experience, embodiment and practice, ontology and things that speak.

This course examines museums as sites for the production and dissemination of anthropological knowledge. Through seminars, museum visits, and access to the University Collections, students will consider the legacies of historic collecting practices and the challenges of ethically engaging with collections in the present. Students will gain hands-on experience of museum environments, learn about the limits of material culture as a source for researching anthropological topics, and engage with theoretical and methodological frameworks for working with collections and people.  They will also become familiar with how museums are taking on contemporary challenges, such decolonisation and the climate crisis. Assessment is based on an Artefact Study Portfolio and an essay.

This course examines different social scientific approaches to economic ideas and practices, and global processes of economic transformation. We will critically examine key theories and debates (particularly from economic anthropology and economic sociology) concerned with how different societies around the world produce, distribute, and consume resources. Through examples, we will look at and how people around the globe think about and experience the economy in everyday life.

This course acquaints students with the practical, methodological and theoretical issues involved in anthropological research. It is particularly useful for students planning a fieldwork-based dissertation. The course focuses on methodological approaches and the relation between fieldwork experience and ethnographic production. It is taught through lectures, tutorials, class discussions and practical workshops, and covers research planning, fieldwork techniques and ethnographic interpretation. 

Anthropology and art have much to offer each other. Taking historical and contemporary perspectives, students in this course will debate the cultural significance of art and the nature of creativity. We will focus particularly on questions of place, landscape and materials through a combined art-anthropology approach. The course will use the University of Aberdeen’s own art and ethnographic collections, and we will also work with Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen.

What is religion? What does ritual do? Does ritual have effects, in the persons performing them, in society, or the world? How might ritual be a means or medium for political action? This course is an ethnographically grounded discussion of how anthropologists have addressed the concept of religion, the interface of religion and power, and is a critical interrogation of the concept of belief.

This course examines museums as sites for the production and dissemination of anthropological knowledge. Through seminars, museum visits, and access to the University Collections, students will consider the legacies of historic collecting practices and the challenges of ethically engaging with collections in the present. Students will gain hands-on experience of museum environments, learn about the limits of material culture as a source for researching anthropological topics, and engage with theoretical and methodological frameworks for working with collections and people.  They will also become familiar with how museums are taking on contemporary challenges, such decolonisation and the climate crisis. Assessment is based on an Artefact Study Portfolio and an essay.

In this course students will write a dissertation based on scholarship in Anthropology (e.g. library research) but not on primary fieldwork. The course is available to single honours students who decide not to do a fieldwork-based dissertation and to joint honours students who wish to do a dissertation in Anthropology. This dissertation can be taken by joint honours students who have not previously taken AT3538: Anthropological Research Methods and Research Design.

What is ethnographic writing and how do we learn to write ethnographically? This course seeks to familiarise students with the craft of ethnographic writing through a series of lectures, seminars, reading and writing exercises.  

This course examines different social scientific approaches to economic ideas and practices, and global processes of economic transformation.  We will critically examine key theories and debates (particularly from economic anthropology and economic sociology) concerned with how different societies around the world produce, distribute, and consume resources. Through examples, we will look at and how people around the globe think about and experience the economy in everyday life.

Anthropology and art have much to offer each other. Taking historical and contemporary perspectives, students in this course will debate the cultural significance of art and the nature of creativity. We will focus particularly on questions of place, landscape and materials through a combined art-anthropology approach. The course will use the University of Aberdeen’s own art and ethnographic collections, and we will also work with Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen.

This course involves a dissertation based on anthropological fieldwork. It builds on the research proposal developed in AT3538 Anthropological Research Methods and Research Design.

What is religion? What does ritual do? Does ritual have effects, in the persons performing them, in society, or the world? How might ritual be a means or medium for political action? This course is an ethnographically grounded discussion of how anthropologists have addressed the concept of religion, the interface of religion and power, and is a critical interrogation of the concept of belief.

In this course students will write a dissertation based on scholarship in Anthropology (e.g. library research) but not on primary fieldwork. The course is available to single honours students who decide not to do a fieldwork-based dissertation and to joint honours students who wish to do a dissertation in Anthropology. This dissertation can be taken by joint honours students who have not previously taken AT3538: Anthropological Research Methods and Research Design.

This is an interdisciplinary course that critically examines state and society in the contemporary Middle East. Themes covered in the course include colonialism and post-colonialism, state governance and political movements, group identification in religious, ethno-national, and other terms, and gender.