Minor: Anthropology

Are you fascinated by the rich variety in how and why people regulate social life all over the globe? Are you interested in archaeology? In the biological development of humankind throughout the ages? Would you like to know how language and culture are related? In short: do you want to find out what it means to be human? Then join this inter-faculty university minor programme in Anthropology!

Anthropology addresses humans as social and cultural beings. All over the world, people organize themselves empirically – giving rise to various forms of social structure, which anthropologists study under rubrics such as kinship, age, gender, caste and class. Such structures are continually expressed, reproduced and modified in meaningful ways. Not only do people arrange themselves in various ways, they also devise a wide array of rules to regulate social interactions in the natural and supernatural (spiritual) worlds.
Anthropologists study and compare how all of this is achieved – and contested – around the globe, in the present as well as in the past.

Holistic anthropology

This inter-faculty university minor programme offers students an intensive engagement with the discipline of anthropology in the form of a holistic 'four-field' approach, unique in Europe. It combines the fields of:

1. cultural anthropology
2. linguistic anthropology
3. anthropological archaeology, and
4. physical (or biological) anthropology.

Exposure to such varied—though, deeply interrelated—elements of human cultural development provides students with comprehensive insights into the complexities of the human condition at the interface of:

• the socio-cultural grounding of human thought and action;
• the biological and evolutionary factors of human development;
• the material dimensions of human life-worlds, and;
• the crucial, ever-changing impacts of language on cultures and societies

Four core modules orienting students to the main concepts, methods and themes within four-field anthropology are taught by specialists in each respective subfield; instructors hail from different UG faculties and maintain active anthropological field research in diverse regions of the world, including South Asia, the North American Arctic and Latin America.

A variety of elective modules allow students to further explore themes introduced in the core modules; such electives include Inhabiting Cultural Worlds Research Projects, Anthropology of Religion, Rituals in Theory and Practice, Religion in South Asia or Arctic Archaeology, among others. Both core and elective modules make use of a variety of teaching and assessment methods, such as lectures and seminars, written exams, oral presentation, research papers and other shorter written assignments, individual and group assignments.

Would you like to specialise further in the field of anthropology? We also offer a MA programme in Anthropology of Religion and Culture. When you have completed the minor, you have direct access to this MA, without the need of completing a pre-master's programme first.

Programme Options and Study Scheme

1. 30 ECTS (preferred): Core Modules 1, 2 and 4 are mandatory + three electives, of which Core Module 3 is recommended (but due to travel limitations for students from Groningen not obligatory)
2. 15 ECTS: Core Module 1 is mandatory + one other Core Module. The third course can be a Core Module or an elective.

Core Modules (obligatory: 2 in 15 ECTS, and 3 in 30 ECTS - see above)

Electives

Please note:

• Not all combinations of electives will be possible. So consult the schedule regularly.

• Select the correct academic year at the top of the page on the timetable website. And some courses may not be visible yet in the timetable.

More information and contact

If you have any questions about the minor, please contact Dr Peter Berger or Dr Sean Desjardins, coordinators of the minor Anthropology. And please visit the University of Groningen minor page for more information about the information events, registration procedure and frequently asked questions.

Are you a student from either another university or a university of applied sciences (hbo)?

Please contact the Study Advisor for more information and registration.