Program Overview

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This mutually enriching joint programme equips students in identifying historical and contemporary patterns of social organisation, ethnic and cultural divisions, varieties of inequality, and patterns of change over time across diverse societies.

Anthropology is the study of human diversity around the world. In studying anthropology, you will learn how different societies live together and think about such topics as family, sex, religion, art, and economics and gain skills increasingly in demand in a globalized and automated world.

Issues addressed in anthropology modules include:

Does globalisation mean the end of cultural difference?

Can a post-conflict society heal?

How do ritual traditions, musical performances, and art shape cultural identities?

How do some people become willing to die for a group?

Through classroom modules, optional placements, and your own anthropological fieldwork, you will also gain valuable skills in critical thinking, cross-cultural understanding, researching, interviewing, writing, and presenting.

History explains the modern world by tracking phenomena like gender, race, class, religion, the state, empire, or capitalism back through time. Our historians are able to reach back to the Roman empire, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the great modern revolutions across all of Europe, North America, Africa, and Asia, in order to account for our lives today. From their first year, we trust our students to make choices and range widely across all these histories to understand where we have come from. And from the beginning of your degree you will be taught in small groups by expert historians. Our range in time and space, our trust in you to explore and make good choices, and our small group teaching from the first year of the degree, mark us out among our peer universities.

Anthropology and History Degree highlights

In the Guardian University Guide 2021, Anthropology was ranked 2nd in the UK overall.

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Global Opportunities

Undergraduate anthropology students, as part of their training, have carried out ethnographic field research around the world. Projects have focused on orphanages in Kenya; AIDS in southern Africa, education in Ghana; dance in India, NGOs in Guatemala, music in China, marriage in Japan, backpacking in Europe, and whale-watching in Hawaii.

This joint programme also offers students opportunities to travel and study at universities in Europe and North America. Short-term (two weeks) and longer-term (up to one academic year) exchanges are on offer.

Possible examples include:

• George Washington University (Washington DC, USA)

• Aarhus Universitet (Denmark)

• College of Charleston (South Carolina, USA)

• Institut d’Etudes Politques de Bordeaux (France)

• University of Oslo (Norway)

• Universiteit Utrecht (Netherlands)

• Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee, USA)

History field trips may also be offered in particular years or as part of certain modules.

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Career Development

In Anthropology, through the different stages of the dissertation module (preparation and research design, fieldwork itself, and post-fieldwork writing-up), students develop a range of skills (organizational skills, interpersonal skills, information-handling skills, and project management skills) that prepare them for later employment. Many of our students work with NGOs and other organisations (e.g. Operation Wallacea; Belfast Migration Centre) as part of their fieldwork.

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World Class Facilities

The Performance Room includes a variety of musical instruments from around the world, a collection that has grown since the 1970s when Ethnomusicology was first established as an International Centre at Queen’s by the late Prof John Blacking. These instruments, together with the sprung performance room floor, facilitate music and dance ensembles, enabling our unit to remain one of the leading departments in Ethnomusicology.

The McClay Library brings together library, computing, and media services in one excellent, modern building. It can accommodate more than 2000 readers at a time, and boasts a collection of more than 1,200,000 volumes: books, manuscripts and periodicals collected over 160 years. It is a superb study-space for anthropologists and historians.

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Internationally Renowned Experts

Anthropology at Queen’s has international renown in the following areas: Ethnomusicology and performance; Conflict and borders; Religion; Cognition and culture; Migration and diasporas; Irish studies; Material culture and art; Human-animal relations; The cross-cultural study of emotions.

History at Queen's enjoys a concentration of excellent expertise in Ancient History, the medieval, early modern, and modern history of Britain, Ireland and continental Europe, the history of the American South from the seventeenth century, the history of twentieth-century Africa and China.

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Student Experience

Studying Anthropology and History together brings together the study of human diversity with the study of change over time.

Studying these at Queen’s means you benefit from the Anthropologists' commitment to fieldwork, and the Historians' commitment to small group teaching.

Year after year, our history students tell the NSS that they are more than 90% satisfied by their teaching.

We offer a wide-ranging history curriculum, that attends to historical phenomena like racism traditionally neglected by British and Irish universities.

Students play an active role in making their own curriculum.

Our historians teach in small groups even at Level 1.

The School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics received an overall student satisfaction score of 90% in the 2019 National Student Survey.

Queen's currently has over 3,000 international students from 85 different countries.

‘’Recently the dissertation experience has been really useful in my job search. Because it involves different research methods and demonstrates good written and verbal communication skills, it's great for the CV and even better for coming up with examples for competency questions in interviews. It's also brilliant for networking because it provides easy conversation and an awareness of social issues etc.”

Lucy Proudlock

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