MA Social Anthropology / Course details

Our Social Anthropology master’s course will empower you to examine differences and similarities between cultures, so we can better understand the essence of what makes us human.

This course sets out the key classical and contemporary debates in the field. It also explores the diversity of human cultural and social experience around the world.

Via mandatory course units, you’ll develop your research skills. You’ll gain significant, expertise in modern and traditional ethnographic research methods.

You can also to tailor the programme to fit your interests, with optional course units including:

• Anthropology of Displacement and Migration: Why and how do people move
• Ethnographies and Adventures in Manchester
• Food and Eating: The Cultural Body
• Anthropology of Human Learning: Childhood and Education
• Anthropology of Humanitarianism and Development

Throughout the course, you’ll develop transferable skills in research, critical enquiry and creative thinking, preparing you for a stimulating and worthwhile career.

You’ll complete your own ethnographic research project as part of the core module Images, Text, Fieldwork. This is ideal preparation if you choose to undertake research for your dissertation project. you’ll also have the opportunity to learn about how to incorporate visual methods in their research projects.

You will take four 15-credit core course units to a total of 60 credits, including Key Approaches to Social Anthropology, Ethnography Reading Seminar, Contemporary Debates, and Image Text and Fieldwork, and a selection of optional units that you choose shortly after arrival.

Many elective units are worth 15 credits.

In total, you are required to achieve 120 coursework credits.

Over the Summer holidays, you are required to write a dissertation which is worth a further 60 credits.

Part-time students complete the full-time course over two years.

There are no evening or weekend course units available on the part-time course.

You must first check the schedule of the compulsory units and then select your optional units to suit your requirements.

Updated timetable information will be available from mid-August and you will have the opportunity to discuss your unit choices during induction week with your course director.

Most units are assessed by means of an extended assessment essay. Typically, for 15 credit units, these will be 4000 words, whilst for 30 credit courses, they are normally 6000 words.

Certain options involving practical instruction in research methods, audio-visual media or museum display may also be assessed by means of presentations and/or portfolios of practical work. In addition, all MA students are required to write a 15,000 word dissertation.