Social Anthropology and African Studies

Studying undergraduate Social Anthropology and African Studies will enable you to develop a distinctive set of skills and attributes, which will really help you to stand out from the crowd.

The range of African societies today and in the past are enormous: from egalitarian communities to elaborately hierarchical empires. There are extremes of wealth and poverty; ancient oral cultures exist side by side with old traditions of literacy and state-of-the-art electronic media; successful local exploitation of Africa’s massive pools of biodiversity contrasts with the famines we are all too familiar from the news. The staff who teach our undergraduate Anthropology and African Studies degree have lived and taught in countries beyond Western Europe, and have a range of language skills acquired through intensive ethnographic fieldwork.

In Social Anthropology, you will learn how to search for, select from and evaluate sources of information, weigh up arguments, and present your findings effectively. As an anthropologist however, you will also become sensitive to the assumptions and beliefs that underlie behaviour in a range of social and cultural contexts.

After a thorough grounding of modules in the first year of your degree, we offer a wide range of optional modules to study in subsequent years. In the final year, you develop a dissertation on an anthropological topic based on your interests, in consultation with a supervisor with relevant expertise.

Why study this course?

Immerse yourself in a unique perspective - The Department of African Studies and Anthropology is the only one of its kind available at both undergraduate and postgraduate level allowing you to explore the disciplines in entirely new and exciting ways.

Exceptional learning resources – You will have access to a range of learning resources including environmental and material culture teaching collections at the University of Birmingham; the Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology Museum; the Eton Myers Collection and the Danford Collection of African art and artefacts

Taught by the very best – You will study alongside some of the finest minds at university. Times Higher Education ranked the Department of African Studies and Anthropology 2nd in the country for its performance in the latest Research Excellence Framework exercise, whilst our Department of Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology was ranked in the Top 10.

Top 15 for Anthropology in the Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2023

Top 10 for Anthropology in the Guardian University Guide 2023

2nd Times Higher Education ranked the Department of African Studies and Anthropology 2nd in the country for its performance in the latest Research Excellence Framework exercise

First-year modules cover a broad base of the subject and are designed to introduce you to ways of studying at university. By the final year the modules you take will become more specialised and reflect the research expertise of the academic staff. More detailed module information can be found on the ‘Course detail’ tab on the University of Birmingham’s coursefinder web pages.