Anthropology and Geography

Anthropology and geography are disciplines that share a fundamental interest in human beings and their relationship to the environments, societies, and spaces they inhabit. Anthropology examines human cultures, social structures, kinship systems, belief systems, and ways of life across the full diversity of human societies, past and present, using both ethnographic fieldwork and comparative analysis. Geography brings spatial and environmental thinking to bear on similar questions, asking how places are made and experienced, how environments shape and are shaped by human activity, and how spatial patterns of inequality and development are produced and reproduced.

At the University of Aberdeen this four-year programme brings the two subjects together in a combination that allows you to build your understanding of human societies while also developing a deeper appreciation of the Earth in which they live. You will engage with cultural and social anthropological theory and method alongside physical and human geographical frameworks, developing a truly interdisciplinary perspective on human life in its social and environmental dimensions. The programme includes a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to study at an international institution and to bring comparative experience to bear on the questions you are investigating.

Graduates from anthropology and geography programmes work in international development and aid organisations, environmental consultancy, urban planning, community development, social research, education, journalism, and the civil service. The combination of cultural sensitivity, fieldwork skills, and environmental understanding is particularly valued in organisations working across different cultural contexts or dealing with environmental and social challenges. Many graduates pursue postgraduate study in anthropology, geography, development studies, or related social and environmental sciences.