Social Anthropology and Spanish

Social anthropology and Spanish is a combination that gives you both the intellectual tools to understand cultural diversity and the linguistic access to engage with one of the world's most widely spoken and culturally rich language traditions. Social anthropology investigates the enormous diversity of contemporary human experience, analysing what makes us similar and different from each other through ethnographic methods and theoretical frameworks that take other ways of life seriously on their own terms. Spanish opens the literatures, cultures, and social worlds of Spain and Latin America, a region of extraordinary cultural diversity and contemporary political significance.

At the University of St Andrews, the MA (Hons) in Social Anthropology explores this human diversity with rigour and sensitivity, developing your ability to move between cultures and to question assumptions that feel natural when seen only from the inside. The Spanish strand develops your language to a high level of proficiency alongside engagement with Spanish and Latin American literature, film, history, and culture. The year abroad element is an integral part of the degree, placing you in a Spanish-speaking environment and deepening both your linguistic fluency and your anthropological experience of living in a different cultural context.

The typical entry tariff is 184 UCAS points, and the degree is studied full time over four years.

Graduates from social anthropology and Spanish programmes go on to careers in international development, NGOs, journalism, the civil service, translation and interpreting, education, healthcare, community work, and cultural organisations. The combination of ethnographic sensitivity and linguistic competence is particularly valued in organisations that work across cultural and national boundaries. Further study options include postgraduate degrees in social anthropology, Latin American studies, development studies, and Spanish.