Anthropology with Placement Year

Anthropology is the holistic study of human beings: their biology, cultures, histories, social organisations, and the extraordinary diversity of ways in which people have made and continue to make their lives. As a discipline, it offers a unique and powerful means of understanding cultural and social diversity in the modern world, generating what its students sometimes describe as mind-expanding revelations about how individuals and cultures experience life differently. Anthropology is simultaneously an empirical and a reflective discipline, asking you to engage seriously with evidence from across the range of human societies while also examining the assumptions that observers bring to that evidence.

At Brunel University London, this four-year programme includes a placement year, giving you the opportunity to apply your anthropological knowledge and skills in a professional context alongside your academic studies. The placement might be with an NGO, a public sector organisation, a cultural institution, a development agency, or another context where anthropological perspectives are valuable. This professional experience develops both your practical skills and your understanding of how anthropological thinking translates into action in the world.

Through the degree, you will engage with the major traditions of anthropological thought and with ethnographic method, the distinctive approach of immersive, long-term fieldwork that allows anthropologists to understand how people live from the inside. You will examine topics including kinship and social organisation, religion and ritual, economics and exchange, politics and power, globalisation and migration, and the anthropology of health and the body.

Graduates from anthropology degrees move into careers in international development and NGOs, health and social care, education, journalism, cultural organisations, market research, public policy, the civil service, and community development. Postgraduate study in anthropology, development studies, global health, or area studies is a natural route for those who wish to pursue research or more specialised roles.