Well in a nutshell, anthropology is the
study of humankind in the broadest
possible sense. We're interested in what
unites us, what makes us very similar, but
also what makes us very different.
At Bournemouth we've got a wealth of
expertise in Biological Anthropology and
in Social Anthropology and a lot of
people who work on both sides of
the fence. We also have the
archaeological background so we have
vast collections of archaeological
skeletons for example that biological
anthropologists can study and learn from.
And we've also got the expertise in the
social anthropology side, all of our anthropologists
are engaged in work all over the world
that students can get involved with.
When I was looking to study anthropology I looked at a wide range of universities
to begin with, but I found that when I
attended the open day at Bournemouth
University the options for taking
placements and for practical work was
far superior to everywhere else I've
seen. So for me it was the right choice.
So focusing on anthropology as a single
honours degree allows you to go into much
more depth on the social and the
biological anthropology side of things.
Studying anthropology at Bournemouth you have access to a wide array of labs.
You have the zooarchaeology lab which
allows you to look at human
relationships of animals through time
and currently. As well as the
anthropological bone lab which we have a
huge array of skeletons that allow you
to look at pathology, death, life, any kind of human.
We also have access to the undergraduate and postgraduate labs which I use to do
chemical analysis as well as mass spec and loads different ranges of scientific techniques.
And one of the things that
Bournemouth offers that not many
universities do, is the chance to do a
four-year degree of which the third year
it would be an entire year's placement,
14 weeks of placement. You can do that as
one single long placement or you can do
that at several shorter placements and
strung together and they really offer
the students the opportunity to get out
there and practice the skills they've learnt.
Graduates can go on to do pretty much
any job that they wish afterwards.
A whole range of employers these days are waking up to the fact that it's a
globalised world. Students go into
graduate management schemes, they go into teaching.
They might go into much more
specific anthropologically focussed areas.
Non-governmental organisations,
international development charities.
They particularly like BU graduates we
find because we give them a real range of skills .
I also undertook two field
seasons estimating in Vietnam a world
heritage site named Trangan. We're
investigating human adaptation to
climate change over the past 60,000
years and I was able to get hands on
experience in excavating, surveying and
post excavation techniques.
Through my degree in anthropology I hope to advance my research and skills and hopefully
undertake a research master's following
on for a PhD. I'd love to work in media
production with a specific Natural
History content for documentary making.
