Integrative themes
Our graduate program distinguishes itself by a pedagogical approach that connects students’ learning across the traditional anthropological subfields of cultural and biological anthropology, and archaeology.
Our approach brings together faculty and graduate students to probe research theories and approaches that transcend anthropology’s traditional sub-disciplinary boundaries, and connect to wider academic interests and social concerns.
Our program’s curriculum is built around four cross-cutting research foci:
Evolution and Ecology
This research theme connects the traditional subfields of archaeology and biological anthropology to address questions of how humans and non-human primates relate to their environments over both short and long-term time scales.
Space, Place, Knowledge and Power
This research theme works across anthropological and archaeological approaches to see the significance of social spaces, meaningful places and the situated nature of knowledge, through ideas of belonging, cultural landscapes, displacement, borders, land tenure, and built environments—in shaping human life.
Culture, Health and Inequality
This research theme recognizes the significance of understanding the role of social inequality and cultural interpretations in shaping human experience and addressing pressing global issues.
Visual Anthropology and Materiality
This research theme connects the work of visual and cultural anthropologists with archaeologists who are investigating human visual communication and the cultural effects of the production, circulation and consumption of images and objects.