Anthropology - PhD

Anthropology at Kent is renowned for its dynamic postgraduate community and its contribution to emerging and established anthropological fields. Our regional expertise and breadth of thematic interests enables us to offer supervision across a wide range of topics within the fields social, biological, and visual anthropology.

Overview

PhD Social or Biological Anthropology research

The PhD is a three-year full-time and five-year part-time programme. You research and write a thesis of a maximum of 100,000 words under the supervision of an academic team. Students participate in the vibrant seminar-culture of the School and have opportunities to meet and interact with researchers who lead major anthropological fields.

The first year includes training in research methodology and, in the case of social anthropology, in the art of writing ethnography. The remaining years involve field or library research and writing up. In general, you work closely with two supervisors throughout your research, although you have a committee of three (including your primary supervisor) overseeing your progress.

We also offer a PhD in Ethnobiology

Choosing a topic

Although sometimes we have specific PhD research projects such as ESRC-funded CASE awards in which the PhD project has already been specified, most of our research students choose their own research topics. Once you have decided on the nature of your project, you should then contact the member of staff in the School whose expertise and interests most closely match your area of research and ask them if they will act as your supervisor.

You then work with your proposed supervisor on refining your research proposal which provides the starting point for your subsequent research. Usually each student has one supervisor but occasionally particular projects require two supervisors. Sometimes co-supervision is provided by a lecturer in another discipline, such as Film, Sociology, or International Relations, but usually the co-supervisor is another member of the School of Anthropology and Conservation.

Supervision

Postgraduate research can take place in any subject area that qualified members of the School are able to supervise. For further information, please refer to staff details on our web pages.

Students meet (or, while in the field, make contact) with their supervisor(s) several times over the course of each term. These meetings involve intensive discussion of the way your project is developing, the readings that have been done and that need to be done, and the way field research and writing-up is progressing. There is, in addition to your supervisor(s), a supervisory committee that, while not intensively involved in the routine development of the research, provides backup, ensures appropriate progress, and handles some of the administration.