durham university anthropology phd

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PhD in Anthropology

Anthropology PhD students can take either a Sociocultural or Biological route. Both routes last three years and are examined by thesis. We encourage prospective PhD students to make informal contact with a member of the academic staff to discuss their application at an early stage.

PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology/ PhD in Biological Anthropology

Within the first few months of study, students will agree a work plan with their supervisors and identify any training needs, which may involve attending modules from our masters programmes as appropriate.

Students are encouraged to attend our writing seminars designed for research students. This seminar series brings together both pre- and post-fieldwork students to discuss reports of fieldwork in progress, draft chapters written by students and recent publications of relevance to students' work.

All PhD students are required to produce a 7,000 word progression report towards the end of their 1st year. This will be examined by two internal examiners who will hold a progression viva at which the student and examiners will discuss the progression script. Upon successfully passing their progression viva students will be permitted to proceed with their PhD research.

Students should aim to complete their research and write-up, and to submit their thesis by the end of their 3rd year.

Entry Requirements

The standard entry requirements for a PhD in Anthropology are usually:

• Master’s degree in Anthropology or a related discipline (although may not be required for some funding competitions – e.g. NineDTP 1+3)
• Two satisfactory academic references
• English language evidence – Band C (more information on English Language requirements can be found here and here )
• A viable research project supported by 2 supervisors within the Department (A list of academic staff in the Anthropology department can be found here )

Apply for postgraduate study

Previous PhD Theses

• Beautiful Mistakes: An Ethnographic Study of Women’s Lives after Marriage in a Rural Sinhala Village.
• Cultural Evolution of Material Knot Diversity.
• Sedentary time during pregnancy and gestational diabetes risk: a mixed methods approach among women in the UK.
• Establishing predictors of learning strategies; an investigation of the development of, and evolutionary foundations of, intrinsic and extrinsic factors influencing when we learn from others and from whom we learn.
• The evolution of brain size and structure in primates.
• To Love An(other): Narratives of Mixed Marriage Amongst British Pakistani Muslims.
• ‘Hands Up’: Female Call Centre Workers’ Labour, Protest and Health in the Seoul Digital Industrial Complex, Korea.
• A study of Wai Phra Kao Wat (Paying Homage to a Buddha Image in the Nine Temples) in Bangkok, Thailand.
• Faith, Fashion, Feminism: Interrogating the Islamic Veil in Contemporary Britain.
• Disease, Morality and Bioethics: An Ethnographic Study of a TB Vaccine Trial Site in South Africa.
• Childhood Obesity in Bangladeshi Immigrants: A biocultural investigation.
• Understanding the place and meaning of physical activity in the lives of young people: An ethnographic study with two youth centres in a low-income urban area of Northern England.
• The Indigeneity question: State Violence, Forced Displacement and Women's Narratives in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh.
• “From the Café We Went to War”: Political Manoeuvring and Protest in Pristina's Public Spaces.
• Human-primate conflict: an interdisciplinary evaluation of wildlife crop raiding on commercial crop farms in Limpopo Province, South Africa.
• Immunities at the margins: Negotiating health and bodily care among Haredi Jews in the UK.
• Entangling Molecules: an ethnography of a carbon offset project in Madagascar’s eastern rainforest.
• An Ethnographic Analysis of the Use of Schooling as an International Development Tool in Eragayam Tengah, Papua.
• Juvenile primates in the context of their social group: a case study of chacma baboons (Papio ursinus) in an afro-montane environment.
• The Influence of Red Colouration on Human Perception of Aggression and Dominance in Neutral Settings.

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Anthropology

Anthropology research degrees

We currently offer three different Research Degree qualifications in Anthropology and welcome applications from prospective students with either a first or upper second class degree in a relevant subject for a Masters degree or an appropriate Masters degree for PhD.

We provide research supervision leading to MA, MSc, and PhD qualifications, through both full- and part-time study. You will develop your skills through working closely with our academic staff and undertaking skills-based training. All postgraduates are encouraged to share their work with the department and wider community, by means of departmental seminars, afternoon workshops, postgraduate-led one-day conferences, and publications.

MA or MSc by Research

The MA in Socio-cultural Anthropology by Research and the MSc in Biological Anthropology by Research are courses of supervised research. Research students work closely with a supervisory team to undertake a substantial piece of research which must be written up in the form of a thesis. Following one year of full-time or two years of part-time (plus up to six months writing up time) research and writing, you will produce a thesis of up to 50,000 words. In addition, research students are required to undertake research training, provided by both the University and the Department.

Course length 1 year full-time. 2 years part-time.

Anthropology PhD students can take either a Socio-cultural or Biological route. Following three years of full-time or six years of part-time research and writing, you will produce a thesis of up to 100,000 words. The subject of your thesis will be a substantial piece of original research where you demonstrate your ability to undertake independent research. We encourage prospective PhD students to make informal contact with a member of the academic staff to discuss their application at an early stage. If you are not sure which member(s) of staff to contact, get in touch with the Director of Research Students.

Course length 3 years full-time. 6 years part-time.

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Research and Impact

We are one of the largest departments of Anthropology in the UK, spanning social anthropology, evolutionary anthropology and the anthropology of health.

We use methods, theories and analysis from biological and social anthropology to understand the human condition in our rapidly-changing world and provide research for public benefit. From work concerned with development and health to energy and conservation, we believe that all our research can have positive effects in the wider world and we work actively to make sure this happens. 

Our anthropology of health research has been enthusiastically taken up and used in medical and domestic settings across the world. Our research has been cited and used by UNESCO, UNICEF, the NHS, the World Bank, and Mumsnet. Other instances where we reach beyond academia are the anthropology of ethics, energy efficiency and architectural heritage. Our regular research collaborators range from regional partnerships in Britain’s North East to NGOs in South Asia and Africa, hospitals, conservation groups and energy companies. Many of these collaborations have emerged from our work in Durham with the university’s interdisciplinary Research Institutes and Research Centres.

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The Faculty of Social Sciences and Health has an extensive global collaboration in research and education with partners across the world, promoting Social Science solutions to the world’s greatest challenges.

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PhD in Anthropology

Durham university, different course options.

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Course Summary

Tuition fees, entry requirements, similar courses at different universities, key information data source : idp connect, qualification type.

PhD/DPhil - Doctor of Philosophy

Subject areas

Anthropology

Course type

Anthropology PhD students can take either a Sociocultural or Biological route. Both routes last three years and are examined by thesis. We encourage prospective PhD students to make informal contact with a member of the academic staff to discuss their application at an early stage.

PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology/ PhD in Biological Anthropology

Within the first few months of study, students will agree a work plan with their supervisors and identify any training needs, which may involve attending modules from our masters programmes as appropriate.

Students are encouraged to attend our writing seminars designed for research students. This seminar series brings together both pre- and post-fieldwork students to discuss reports of fieldwork in progress, draft chapters written by students and recent publications of relevance to students' work.

All PhD students are required to produce a 7,000 word progression report towards the end of their 1st year. This will be examined by two internal examiners who will hold a progression viva at which the student and examiners will discuss the progression script. Upon successfully passing their progression viva students will be permitted to proceed with their PhD research.

Students should aim to complete their research and write-up, and to submit their thesis by the end of their 3rd year.

UK fees Course fees for UK students

To be confirmed

International fees Course fees for EU and international students

For this course (per year)

The standard entry requirements for a PhD in Anthropology are usually: Master’s degree in Anthropology or a related discipline; Two satisfactory academic references.

PhD Sociology and Anthropology and Gender Studies

University of hull, phd sociology and social anthropology, msc forensic anthropology, liverpool john moores university, demography and health msc, london school of hygiene & tropical medicine, university of london, mphil in anthropology and sociology, soas university of london.

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Our Mission

Evolutionary anthropology is the study of humankind's place in nature. The central questions of this unique discipline revolve around reconstructing how humans arose from our primate ancestors, interrogating the attributes that make us distinct, and investigating how our evolutionary past shapes human diversity, health, and society today.

Our focus on these questions connects us with our colleagues in the other natural and social sciences and in the humanities – with everyone who is working at some level on what it means to be human. To address questions of human nature and human evolution, evolutionary anthropology focuses on morphology, physiology, genetics, ecology, behavior, and cognition of humans and non-human primates, as viewed from an evolutionary perspective. Central areas of research include evolutionary relationships among living and extinct groups of primates, the functional and adaptive significance of trait variation in humans and other primates, and the evolutionary mechanisms that have shaped human evolution.

Undergraduate Programs

We offer Bachelor of Science (B.S.) and Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degrees. You can pursue a concentration in either Anatomy and Paleoanthropology; Behavior, Ecology and Cognition; or Human Biology, or mix and match courses from different areas of interests within the discipline of evolutionary anthropology. You can also pursue a Comprehensive Science Teaching License, offered in collaboration with Duke's Education Program. Non-majors can pursue a minor in evolutionary anthropology.

Featured Courses

An introduction to the basics of human osteological analysis. Identification and siding of all the bones of the human body and the major osteological landmarks on each bone; basics of bone histology… read more about Human Osteology  »

Survey of field methods used to document primate behavior. Laboratory includes observations of free-ranging and captive primates at the Duke Lemur Center. Focus on the scientific process and writing… read more about Primate Field Biology  »

Covers evolutionary approaches to understand human health at a global scale. Integration of evolutionary thinking and medical science provides new insights to a wide array of medical issues including… read more about Evolutionary Medicine and Global Health  »

Graduate Program

The Department of Evolutionary Anthropology offers Ph.D. students diverse training opportunities for the study of primate behavior, ecology, genetics, morphology, phylogenetics, and evolution.

Our doctoral program provides students with foundational course work and guides them through the development of a dissertation project. The program is designed to be completed in five years, and our students are fully funded (tuition, fees, health insurance, and stipend) by the Graduate School for that interval.

Our Research & Labs

We focus on the evolutionary history of the mammalian radiation containing the human species and on the origins of human nature. By being taxon-based, evolutionary anthropology is inherently interdisciplinary, and brings techniques and concepts from a variety of traditional academic disciplines to bear on the core questions of who we are and where we came from. These disciplines include evolutionary biology, archaeology, geology, paleontology, behavioral ecology, genetics, developmental biology, psychology, economics and other social sciences.

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Ph.d. program.

Our doctoral program offers students solid training in theory, contemporary research methods, and proposal writing with the aim of enabling students to develop an anthropology sensitive to the challenges and complexities of human experience and of our times.

Two PhD Tracks

Students have the option, with permission of the dissertation committee advisor, of leaving for the field after five or after six semesters. If they leave after five semesters, they will take 15 courses in total (three per semester) and convene their committee for a Portfolio workshop in December of that fifth semester. At the workshop they will discuss their grant proposals, three annotated reading lists (with 25 citations each), and a course syllabus (for a class to be taught in the future). If they leave after six semesters, they will take 18 courses in total (three per semester) and convene their committee for a Portfolio workshop in April of their sixth semester. At the workshop they will discuss their grant proposals, three annotated reading lists (with 35 citations each), and a course syllabus (for a class they will teach in the future).

If students receive external funding for fieldwork, they can spend a year and a half in the field (with one semester covered by the department and two by their grant). If they do not receive external funding, they will remain in the field for one year (with the one year covered by the department).

Funding (tuition, fees and stipend) for each student is guaranteed for five years, or five and an half for those who receive external funding for their fieldwork. The department is not responsible for the financial support of those who do not finish within these time frames, but will work closely with each student who does not finish to find external funding to cover continuation fees, health insurance, and stipends.

Students who choose the 3-year (six-semester) plan are required to take 18 graded courses. The program’s required courses (two semesters of Theories, Fieldwork Methods, and Grant Writing) comprise four of these 18. An additional six courses must be graduate seminars with primary faculty in Cultural Anthropology. Two of the 18 courses must be in a discipline outside Cultural Anthropology. A student on this plan may take a maximum of five independent studies. 

Students who choose the 2.5-year (five-semester) plan take 15 graded courses. The program’s required courses (two semesters of Theories, Fieldwork Methods, and Grant Writing) comprise four of these 15. An additional five courses must be graduate seminars with primary faculty in Cultural Anthropology, but the department strongly encourages taking six. Under exceptional circumstances, and with support of their committee chair, students on the 2.5-year plan may petition the DGS to allow 8 courses with primary faculty. Two of the 15 courses must be in a discipline outside Cultural Anthropology. A student on this plan may take a maximum of three independent studies.

Students on either plan have the option to take up to two graduate seminars in Anthropology at UNC-Chapel Hill. These may be counted towards the required courses with primary faculty in Cultural Anthropology.

Required Courses

• Theories:  The two-semester Theories course (CULANTH 801-802), taken in Fall and Spring of the first year, focuses on core debates and themes within the history of socio-cultural anthropology and related fields.
• Research Methods:  The Research Methods seminar (CULANTH 803), taken in the Spring of the second year, focuses on ethnographic methods, grant writing, and reading list annotation.
• Grant Writing:  The Grant Writing seminar (CULANTH 804), taken in the Fall of the third year (the fifth semester), focuses on the development of grant proposals for dissertation research support.

Other Requirements

• Plan of Study
• Portfolio of Work
• Foreign Language Requirement
• Research or Teaching Service
• Summer Field Research
• Department Colloquia
• Dissertation

Certificate Programs

Cultural Anthropology PhD students are encouraged to apply for a certificate in another department or field. Our students have acquired certificates in: Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies; African and African American Studies; Latin American and Caribbean Studies; Asian and Middle Eastern Studies; Documentary Studies; International Development Policy. 

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Durham e-Theses contains the full-text of Durham University Higher Degree theses .

All theses passed after 1 October 2009 (with a small number of exceptins) are available, or will be available following an embargo determined by the author. Durham University Library has also digitised its extensive collection of PhD, MPhil and Research Masters dissertations from 1899 onwards.

EThOS - The UK’s national thesis service which aims to maximise the visibility and availability of the UK’s doctoral research theses. EThOS aims to provide a national aggregated record of all doctoral theses awarded by UK Higher Education institutions, and free access to the full text of as many theses as possible for use by all researchers to further their own research.

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OAIster - A union catalog of millions of records that represent open access resources. It includes more than 50 million records that represent digital resources from more than 2,000 contributors. Results can be limited to just theses and dissertations.

Theses Canada - Launched in 1965 at the request of the deans of Canadian graduate schools, is a collaborative program between Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and Canadian universities. It strives to acquire and preserve theses and dissertations from participating universities, provide free access to Canadian digital theses and dissertations in the collection, and to facilitate access to non-digital theses and dissertations in the collection

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Cultural Anthropology: PhD Admissions and Enrollment Statistics

Following the people and events that make up the research community at Duke

Blueberrying and More: Expanding the History of Bennett Place

By Sophie Cox

On May 1, 2024

In Anthropology , Field Research , History , Science Communication & Education

Bennett Place , a North Carolina State Historic Site in Durham, is known for its role in a Civil War surrender, but a recent event focusing on the site’s natural history sought to broaden that story. Kalei Porter, a Graduate Liberal Studies student at Duke, led the event, which focused on changing land use at Bennett Place over time.

Jim Barrett, a volunteer tour guide, led a tour of Bennett Place focused on the more well known parts of its history. “The Civil War was a series of five military surrenders,” he explains. The first occurred in Appomattox Court House in Virginia, but while that marked a symbolic end to the war, technically only the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia surrendered there. Another surrender meeting occurred on the land now known as Bennett Place, where Union General Sherman and Confederate General Johnston met at the Bennett family’s small farm to discuss their terms of surrender.

That meeting ultimately led to the preservation of the farm as a historic site, but the history of Bennett Place “should not be an exclusive Civil War story,” Porter says. She has a degree in environmental biology, and her work at Bennett Place combines her interests in ecology and history.

For the past two academic years, Porter has been involved with the North Carolina Lives and Legacies Project , which uses research to tell more nuanced, inclusive stories about land use at sites like Bennett Place. The project, which is based in Duke’s Information Science + Studies , has also received support from Bass Connections in the Vice Provost’s Office for Interdisciplinary Studies and Duke University Libraries . This summer, Kalei will continue her research as a Graduate Project Manager in a History+ team.

James Bennett and his family were small-scale, yeoman farmers . They had about 200 acres, Porter says, “sustaining four to ten people.” They grew most of their own food and sold handmade clothing and crops like watermelons and vegetables at a local market, Barrett says. The site was preserved by civil leaders, including one of Washington Duke ’s sons, according to Barrett. The original house was destroyed in a fire in 1921 but was rebuilt in 1962 with material from a similar house, Porter explains. On Barrett’s tour, he mentioned that Sherman brought an illustrator to the surrender meeting, and the pictures from that day still exist, so we know what the house originally looked like. The new house was rebuilt to resemble the old one.

Porter’s event included a display of plants from Duke’s herbarium . The dried plants she chose were collected in North Carolina in different decades, preserving important information about flowering time and native flora in specific sites. “You have a little slice of spring from as far back as the 30’s,” Porter says about the plants she chose.

The exhibit at the event includes other items, too, like a list of who has used this land at different points in history. Before 1782, according to a sign at the event, several Native American tribes inhabited the area, including the Seponi, Cheraw, Catawba, Lumbee, Occaneechi, and Shakori. In 1782, Jacob Baldwin purchased the land, and it changed hands at least twice again before James Bennett bought it in 1846.

There is also a detailed soil map from 1920 on display. Such surveys can make farming more profitable since different crops do best in different soil conditions. Porter says the first geological survey in North Carolina was conducted in the 1850s, making North Carolina only the third state—and the first state in the South—to do soil surveys.

Porter has been working on transcribing Bennett’s ledger papers, which she describes as “a cross between a diary, a planner, and a credit card log.” They provide a record of daily life for a small farmer in North Carolina. Porter says Bennett made a lot of notes about fixing his tools.

Later in the day, Porter led a tour of the site with a focus on natural history. We start on a path lined with fences. Historically, it was a road that went from Raleigh to Hillsborough, and it also “roughly lines up with some of the Native American trading routes that predated the property,” Porter says.

We stop at the Unity monument, built in the 1920s soon after the Bennett house burned down. Robert Buerglener , Research Associate, Duke Information Science + Studies, explained to me earlier that the Unity monument may have survived because its meaning is more ambiguous than many Confederate monuments. Porter says the monument incorporated stone from the North, West, and South to represent the theme of unity.

We tour the house and separate kitchen. Both give glimpses into the lives of the Bennett Family. A ladle made from a dried gourd. Jars of persimmon seeds and other items that, according to Barrett, were used as wartime replacements for more typical ingredients. Wood siding on the house that Porter says dates from the 1850s.

It’s not just the buildings that reveal the story of this land. Porter points out trees, shrubs, and fences as well.

Before the Civil War, she says, livestock here roamed free. Buildings and gardens would have been fenced to keep the livestock out. After the war, however, fencing became more expensive, and people started creating fences around the livestock instead and building cheaper, less sturdy fences.

As we walk toward a nature trail at the back of the property, Porter draws our attention to the pine trees. Both loblolly and shortleaf pines grow here. Historically, shortleaf would have been more common in this area, but places that have been recently managed for timber tend to have loblolly. Most of these pines are still relatively young; they were not here when the Bennetts lived on this land.

In the forest, many of the low-growing plants we pass are species of blueberry. Porter has searched through digitized North Carolina newspapers for records of the word “blueberry.” It was first mentioned in the 1880s as a verb, blueberrying (women going out to pick wild blueberries) but wasn’t grown commercially in this area until the 1930s.

Porter ends her tour by asking us to look at the sky. Even the sky could have changed in the centuries since the Bennetts farmed this land. Today it’s clear and blue, but modern pollution could make it less blue than it used to be, Porter says, and some days we might see airplane contrails, which the Bennetts would never have seen back then. “Sometimes the sky is even asynchronous with time,” Porter says.

Post by Sophie Cox, Class of 2025

Navigating the Complex World of Social Media and Political Polarization: Insights from Duke’s Polarization Lab

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Following a national search, Elizabeth S. Chilton, a native of the Northeast who most recently served as chancellor of Washington State University’s Pullman campus, has been appointed the 21st president of the University of New Hampshire, effective July 1, 2024.

Chilton will succeed James W. Dean Jr., who is retiring after six years leading UNH. She was appointed the inaugural chancellor of Washington State’s Pullman campus in 2022 after joining WSU in 2020 as provost and executive vice president of the WSU system.

“UNH is a leading public university with strong student outcomes, a large and diverse research portfolio, and dedication to the state of New Hampshire, and I am honored and humbled to have the opportunity to serve as president of this incredible institution,” Chilton says. “I’ve long admired UNH’s history, vibrant and engaged community, and commitment to student success and scholarship. I look forward to returning to the Northeast to join the Wildcat family and help UNH serve our students and society in pursuit of a prosperous future.”

WSU Pullman is the system’s flagship and Washington State’s land grant university, serving about 18,000 students. Prior to becoming chancellor, her role as chief academic officer included oversight of research functions across the six-campus system, a role she continued in while serving as chancellor for the last two years.

A first-generation college student and a graduate of public universities, Chilton is a champion for public higher education, deeply committed to access and liberal arts education. She values UNH’s unique position as a leading, public research institution that maintains a sharp focus on undergraduate education, inspired by the university’s research mission while also remaining a strong believer in the power of a transformational undergraduate experience.

“Dr. Chilton has shown tremendous leadership and strategic vision across the academic and research enterprise, and her career is a testament to the mission of public higher education,” said Jamie Burnett ‘95, ‘96G, ‘98G, the vice-chair of the University System of New Hampshire Board of Trustees and chair of the presidential search committee. “She cares deeply about the student experience and is committed to advancing student success at UNH. She has a record of collaboration, lifting up her peers, building partnerships and creating opportunities. The UNH community and the state should have a high degree of confidence in Elizabeth’s appointment.”

Chilton’s appointment concludes a search launched last fall after Dean announced his intention to retire. A 16-member search committee, comprised of representatives of the Board of Trustees, faculty, staff and students across UNH’s three campuses, led the search.

Chilton will visit all three UNH campuses from May 9 to 11. She will spend May 9 and a portion of May 10 in Durham before visiting the Manchester and Concord campuses on the afternoon of the 10th.

“Elizabeth is a proven and versatile leader devoted to the mission and values of public land grant universities,” said USNH Board Chair Alex Walker. “She brings the experience, track record and capabilities to lead a multi-campus institution that is part of a larger, well-coordinated public higher education system. She distinguished herself among a very strong pool of candidates as the right person to lead the University of New Hampshire in these dynamic and challenging times in higher education.”

From 2017 to 2020, Chilton was dean of the Harpur College of Arts and Sciences at Binghamton University, part of the State University of New York system. Prior to that she spent 16 years at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, serving in a variety of roles including professor, anthropology department chair, and associate vice chancellor for research and engagement.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University at Albany, SUNY, and then her master’s and Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her academic work focuses on the pre-colonial archaeology of Northeast North America, as well as paleoecology, cultural resource management, heritage studies and materials science. She is the author of dozens of peer-reviewed book chapters and journal articles.

Chilton is an avid hiker, kayaker and canoeist, as well as an enthusiastic choral singer. Her husband, Michael Sugerman, is also an anthropology professor. The couple has an adult son and three lively dogs.

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