Social anthropology entails a profound understanding of how and why people do the things they do. As a Social Anthropology student at Kent, you explore how people work, use technologies and negotiate conflicts, relationships and change in different societies around the world.

The School of Anthropology and Conservation offers a friendly and cosmopolitan learning community with students from over 70 different nationalities and 45% of staff from outside the UK. Our flexible degree provides diverse and relevant module choices where you are taught by enthusiastic academics, who produce inspired field research.

Social Anthropology with French provides an excellent opportunity to develop your language competence throughout your degree as well as spending a year studying language and anthropology at one of our partner institutions. Students who undertake a year abroad often comment on how their experiences significantly shape their future plans, their academic insight and feel the opportunity enhances the overall university experience.

Our degree programme

In the first year, you take modules that give you a broad background in the subject. The programme begins with an introduction to the history of anthropology, the foundations of biological anthropology, anthropology and conservation, and global perspectives on relatedness. Additionally you take a compulsory module in French.

In your second and final years, you take compulsory modules that develop your language and specialised anthropological knowledge and skills. You can also choose further modules from a wide range of options.

Modules expand across the full range of our research expertise from traditional anthropology (The Anthropology of Amazonia; The Anthropology of Business) and current anthropological thinking (Theoretical Perspectives in Social Anthropology) to ideas impacting today's societies (Islam and Muslim Lives in the Contemporary World; The Anthropocene – Planetary Crisis and the Age of Humans).

Our degree also gives you the unique opportunity to study visual anthropology, with modules on the anthropological use of photography, film and video, including practical classes and visual anthropology projects. 

Year abroad

Your third year is taken abroad at one of our partner institutions where teaching is in French. Modules are primarily anthropology or related subject modules, however, you also undertake relevant language modules and are allowed the equivalent of one 'wild module' per term.

Alternatively, you can take our three-year Social Anthropology degree, our four year Social Anthropology with a Year Abroad or four-year Social Anthropology with a Year in Professional Practice.

Field trips

A number of our modules include opportunities for learning and experiences outside of the classroom through field trips in the UK and abroad. Potential excursions are: 

• Paris, the Musée du quai Branly and Musée de l'Homme
• The Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge
• London financial district
• Impact Hub Westminster
• Canterbury Cathedral and Canterbury Mosque. 

These may change from year to year and may incur additional costs. See the funding tab for more information.

For more details about field trips, including reports from students who went on our recent trips to Cambridge and Paris, visit Social Anthropology Field Trips.

Study resources

The School of Anthropology and Conservation has excellent teaching resources including dedicated computing facilities. Other resources include:

• refurbished computer suite with 32 PCs with HD screens
• an integrated audio-visual system to help provide stimulating lectures
• a state-of-the-art visual anthropology room
• an ethnobiology lab for studying human-related plant material
• student social spaces
• a teaching laboratory with first-rate equipment
• an excellent fossil cast collection with hundreds of casts, including multiple entire skeletons of extant and extinct primates and hominins.

Extra activities

The Anthropology Society is run by Kent students and is a good way to meet other students on your course in an informal way. There are also many national societies, which are a great way to meet people from around the world and discover more about their countries and cultures.

The School of Anthropology and Conservation puts on many events that you are welcome to attend. We host two public lectures a year, the Stirling Lecture and the DICE Lecture, which bring current ideas in anthropology and conservation to a wider audience. We are delighted that these events attract leading anthropological figures from around the world; in 2017 we hosted paleoanthropologist Professor Lee Berger, one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people.

Each term, there are also seminars and workshops discussing current research in anthropology, conservation and human ecology.