Degrees

We develop first-rate anthropologists to accept positions in higher education, museums, business, and applied fields. We provide doctoral-level training in archaeology, biological anthropology, and sociocultural anthropology. In addition, we offer some seminars in linguistic anthropology. The department also offers a graduate minor in anthropology. The department has affiliations with the Heritage Studies and Public History graduate program offering a master's degree (including a track in archaeological heritage) and a graduate minor, with an emphasis on professional non-academic practice.

Because our discipline studies peoples and cultures around the world and across time, we especially value the conversations and ideas produced by a diversity of voices. We encourage applicants who are willing to contribute to this conversation. 

Our graduate students produce high-quality research and regularly secure funding from prestigious granting foundations including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Social Science Research Council, and the Leakey Foundation. Our faculty prioritize working with their students to secure external funding to support students' dissertation research.

We require that PhD students develop a minor field of study as part of our commitment to developing strong interdisciplinary perspectives. Research projects in our department are routinely developed through relationships and collaborations with faculty and graduate students in other departments and centers in the University including the Departments of Geography, Environment & Society; Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior; Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature; History; Sociology; Philosophy; Geology; and the Immigration History Research Center; the Institute for Global Studies; the Jane Goodall Institute Research Center; the Institute for Advanced Study; the Anthropological and Mathematical Analysis of Archaeological and Zooarchaeological Evidence consortium (AMAAZE), Department of Mathematics, and the University of Minnesota Medical School.