iBSc Medical Anthropology

About the course

How would you deal with the fact that someone’s housing is exacerbating their diabetes or that global market forces are fuelling your patient’s isolation? What would you do if your patient refused a blood transfusion on religious grounds or a COVID-19 vaccine because of their mistrust of doctors?

If you want to understand how social, cultural, economic and political issues shape health and well-being across the world, then this IBSc is for you.

If you want to prepare yourself for working in the real world as a medical practitioner in diverse cultural contexts with different patient populations, then this IBSc is for you.

If you’re excited about exploring a wide range of healing practices that include everything from new reproductive technologies to coming-of-age-ceremonies, then this IBSc is for you.

Join us if you want to immerse yourself in a different world of knowledge and understanding and take a journey of discovery into what it means to be a doctor with fresh eyes.

Medical anthropologists explore the nature of health and healing in diverse cultural settings ranging from genomic laboratories to ritual ceremonies to ask questions about how life, death, health and sickness relate to factors such as culture, religion, ethics, gender, environment, politics and economics. The IBSc in Medical Anthropology at UCL is uniquely designed to provide medical students with knowledge and skills that will enhance medical practice by providing them with life-long learning skills that they can use throughout their medical career. Students will be taught key concepts in Medical Anthropology and examine how health and well-being are socially and culturally shaped in contexts of cultural diversity.

Medical Anthropology at UCL provides a comprehensive and innovative teaching, learning and research environment with an active student society. The department offers one of the best and most exciting course of broad-based anthropology for graduate and undergraduate study in the UK. We are committed to developing medical anthropology at the intersection of, and in dialogue with clinical practice, primary care, public health, psychiatry, demography, genomic science and technology.

Beyond this core syllabus, students are able to select from across the full range of disciplinary options in the topics that cut across social and cultural anthropology, evolutionary anthropology and human ecology and material and visual studies. 

Learning objectives

Having completed the IBSc students will have:

• gained an in-depth knowledge of a range of ethnographic material, theories and concepts that deal with topics relevant to medical practice, health and well-being and beyond;
• developed a range of research and communication skills relevant to UG level including research design, investigation, analysis, evaluation, writing, presentation and implementation;
• obtained a good understanding of how theory and practice are integrated in anthropology;
• employed key critical skills concerning reflexivity, positionality and ethics in relation to anthropological research;
• produced a substantial piece of anthropological research in the form of a written dissertation.

Course structure

Students complete 60 credits of compulsory and 60 credits of optional modules. The core module, Anthropology for Medical Students (ANTH0033), is exclusive to iBSc students and assessed through a dissertation. Other modules are assessed by essays, exams, presentations, or practical work.

Core modules

• Medical Anthropology (15 credits)
• Anthropology for Medical Students (30 credits)
• Introduction to Social Anthropology (15 credits)

Optional modules

Students choose 4 optional modules, each one is worth 15 credits. The optional modules to choose from are:

• Anthropology of Crime
• The Anthropology of Social Media
• Anthropology of Technics and Technology
• Human Behavioural Ecology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Primate Behaviour and Ecology
• People and Conservation
• Experimental Cinema and New Media: Form and Narrative
• Documentary Radio: A Practice-Based Introduction
• Documentary Film Making: Intermediate Practical Skills
• Anthropology of the Body: Multisensory Experience in Sickness and Health
• The Anthropology of Fashion
• History and Aesthetics of Documentary
• Evolutionary Medicine
• Extra Terrestrial Anthropology
• Visualizing Others: Colonial and Postcolonial Visual Culture
• Anthropology of Platform Economies
• Queer Anthropology

Dissertation

Students will also have the opportunity to focus on a topic of their choice in more depth through a dissertation project (with guidance and support of a supervisor).

Student experience

Essential course information

This course is delivered by the Faculty of Social & Historical Sciences.

Location: London, Bloomsbury, London, Stratford

Contact hours: Typical timetabled contact hours for this programme vary between 9 and 24 hours per week, depending on the year of study and chosen modules. In addition, students are expected to undertake 12–30 hours of independent study per week, including reading, preparation for classes and project work.

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