Medical Anthropology

The MSc in Medical Anthropology offers a fascinating opportunity to study contemporary global health and wellbeing issues from an anthropological standpoint, considering social and cultural influences, the relationship with the environment and how change and development take place over time. This biosocial approach to the anthropology of health, supported by cutting-edge research in the Department, contributes to a stimulating and fast moving learning environment and draws students from a wide range of backgrounds.

The course provides a strong grounding in the ethnographic approach to the study of health, looking at the impact of culture and custom, as well as the development of health as a political issue and the application of anthropology to modern public health concerns.

Central to the MSc is the development of strong research skills, which you will be encouraged to put into practice, including the opportunity to present your work at the Department’s annual postgraduate conference.

Much of the teaching on the course is carried out by academic researchers from the Department’s highly regarded Anthropology of Health Research Group, which brings together the areas of biological and social anthropology, community medicine, evolutionary medicine, social epidemiology and public health at local, regional and international levels.

The course consists of core and optional modules and a dissertation, undertaken over one year on a full-time basis or over two years part time and features a mixture of interactive lectures, seminars, practical sessions and workshops.

As an anthropology student, you will have access to the Department’s highly respected research laboratories including the Durham Infancy and Sleep Centre, Behavioural and Ecological Physiology Lab, Physical Activity Lab, the South Africa field station and to material culture and skeletal collections.

Course structure

Core modules:

Anthropology of Global Health examines a range of theoretical perspectives and approaches within medical anthropology and shows you how they can be applied to contemporary issues in global health.

Society, Health and Wellbeing sets out the theories and approaches within the social sciences which are applicable to health and identifies the social and political factors relating to health and health inequalities. You will then use the information to examine a range of contemporary health issues, primarily in industrial and post-industrial societies.

The Dissertation gives you the opportunity to carry out your own independent research on a subject of particular interest, applying your learning from the research methods modules. You will be expected to write a literature review, collect data through fieldwork activity, laboratory work or from published sources, conduct data analysis and put together a presentation of your findings.

Plus one from:

• Statistical Exploration and Reasoning
• Fieldwork and Interpretation

In recent years, optional modules have included:

• Anthropology, Art, and Experience
• Mediterranean Connections
• Social Anthropology of Hormones
• Anthropology of Sport
• Anthropological Skills for Climate Change Survival
• Capitalism in Ruins
• Power and Governance
• Violence and Memory
• Anthropology of Tobacco
• Anthropology of Health Inequality
• Anthropology of Physical Activity for Health
• Evolutionary Medicine: Maternal and Infant Health
• Human Reproductive Ecology
• Development, Conflict and Crisis in the Lower Omo Valley
• Evolution of Cooperation
• Comparative Cognition and Culture
• Cultural Evolution of Music
• Technological Primates
• Primates in Peril
• Primates, Predators and the Ecology of Fear
• Homo narrans: evolutionary anthropology of fiction
• Forensic Anthropology
• Palaeoanthropology and Palaeoecology
• Anthropology of Data and Quantification
• Anthropology of the Body
• Food Security, Nutrition and Sustainable Livelihoods
• Specialised Aspects in Evolutionary Anthropology
• Specialised Aspects in Health and Medical Anthropology
• Specialised Aspects in Social Anthropology
• Interrogating Ethnography
• Anthropology and Development
• Society, Energy, Environment and Resilience
• Thinking Anthropologically
• Climate and Energy - Intensive Study
• A language module offered by the Centre for Foreign Language Studies