Anthropology

The School of Human Evolution and Social Change is an excellent choice for students wanting to pursue a Ph.D. in the traditional fields of anthropology (sociocultural anthropology, linguistics, evolutionary anthropology or archaeology). It is also an ideal environment for students who want to combine these approaches and other disciplines to explore specific issues or research questions.

Our flexible graduate curricula are designed to encourage students to design innovative programs of study to pursue their interests, while receiving broad training in key areas. ASU's anthropology faculty actively engage with faculty in other disciplines, including environmental economics, formal modeling, urban planning, science and technology studies, and sociology. The school offers many exciting hands-on learning opportunities through laboratories and field-based research that focus on finding ancient human fossils; unearthing buried cities, villages, and hunter-gatherer camps; understanding the development of language; appreciating the cultures of such diverse areas as Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the Mediterranean Basin; disease and medicine; human-environmental interactions; and many other topics that explore humans of the past and present.

Students without a master’s degree apply to Phase I of the program, where they will receive a master’s degree in passing. During this phase, students develop a Research Skills Portfolio and present one of their papers in a school-wide research symposium. A formal evaluation is then completed to determine the student’s readiness to enter Phase II of the program. Students with an M.A. in anthropology or related field begin in Phase II of the Ph.D. program where they receive training to become expert scholars able to contribute not only to their chosen field, but to finding solutions to humankind’s greatest challenges.

Anthropology Graduate Program Approaches:

• Archaeology Graduate Program 
• Bioarchaeology Graduate Program 
• Complex Adaptive Systems Science Concentration 
• Evolutionary Anthropology Graduate Program
• Medical and Health-Related Anthropology Tracks 
• Museum Studies (M.A. or Certificate) 
• Sociocultural Anthropology Graduate Program 
• Urbanism Concentration