Postgraduate Study

Develop your understanding of social anthropology and the relationship between theory and ethnography under the guidance of our experienced faculty on our MSc Social Anthropology. With only one compulsory course, you can choose from a variety of option courses to develop your research interests. Teaching in the department is grounded in a strong tradition of fieldwork-based research, and you’ll benefit from the expertise and specialisms of our faculty. 

This programme is ideal for graduates with a degree in any discipline. Even if you have no prior knowledge of anthropology, you’ll enjoy developing a critical and comparative understanding of human societies and cultures over time.

Full programme details, including programme structure, and entry requirements can be found here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse/graduate/msc-social-anthropology

The MSc Social Anthropology (Religion in the Contemporary World) provides a unique interdisciplinary, broad social science perspective on the study of religion. It offers you the opportunity to investigate the increasing prevalence of religious and secular dynamics across the globe and how concepts of religion interweave with aspects of today’s society, in theory and practice.

Full programme details, including programme structure, and entry requirements can be found here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse/graduate/msc-social-anthropology-religion-in-the-contemporary-world

This MSc in Anthropology and Development provides a unique perspective on the complex challenges facing our world today. The programme offers you a comprehensive study of how anthropologists evaluate, criticise and contribute to development (whether "planned" or "unplanned"), and how they understand globalisation and other economic transformations.

Studying this programme will provide you with anthropological insights into these phenomena, as well as their historical backdrop and wider context. You'll gain a knowledge of how cutting-edge policy is formed and critiqued, and learn about the processes involved in overcoming poverty and creating healthy, wealthy and sustainable social change.

Full programme details, including programme structure, and entry requirements can be found here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse/graduate/msc-anthropology-and-development

Develop key skills such as comparative theory and critical thinking, while expanding your knowledge of China and its history, society, and culture.

This MSc China in Comparative Perspective programme will introduce you to comparative social-science frameworks, developing your knowledge of China and the contemporary world. It brings together LSE’s considerable multi-disciplinary expertise on China, drawing on a range of social science disciplines. You’ll compare Chinese politics, history, society, and culture, while developing key skills such as comparative theory, critical thinking, self-directed learning and professional communication.

Full programme details, including programme structure, and entry requirements can be found here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse/graduate/msc-china-in-comparative-perspective

Explore human-environment relationships, their historical and cultural contexts, and the political and economic factors affecting them.

The MSc in Culture, Justice and Environment offers a critical and qualitative understanding of human-environment relationships, how they are imagined in different historical and cultural settings, and the political and economic processes impacting them.

Drawing on analytical approaches and insights from anthropology, the social sciences and the humanities more generally, we consider how and why people’s relationship with their landscapes have transformed, how they experience and deal with environmental change, how they address new ecological and climate crises, and how this links to issues of inequality and justice.

Full programme details, including programme structure, and entry requirements can be found here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/study-at-lse/graduate/msc-culture-justice-and-environment

Our option course Research Methods in Anthropology introduces how anthropological knowledge is produced and trains students in collecting, analysing, and presenting qualitative data. Centred on participant observation, it explores key stages of the research cycle, including project design, ethics, observation, fieldnotes, interviewing, sensory methods, and narrative analysis. Students apply these approaches through fieldwork exercises, reporting on their findings in seminars and assessments.

Through research methods training you gain valuable transferable skills:

Critical thinking: analysing complex social issues and questioning assumptions

Qualitative research skills: interviewing, observation, and data interpretation

Communication: writing clear, compelling reports and presenting findings

Cultural awareness: understanding diversity and working across cultures

Problem-solving: applying insights to real-world challenges in business, health, development, and beyond.

"The MSc China in Comparative Perspective is a rare gem, an unflinching confrontation with the narratives we cling to and the preconceptions we hide behind. The comparative social science approach challenges the conventional boundaries of Sinology, revealing the nuances that defy any notion that China stands as a monolith. I have thus returned to China with a deeper, more restless understanding of this most perplexing place." - Casper Anwar

“I really enjoyed studying the MSc in Anthropology and Development. The combination of the two disciplines offered an interesting perspective on the development sector and provided me with a more holistic understanding of how cultural contexts and local realities shape development efforts” - Sofie Pultz

"Studying Social Anthropology (Religion in the Contemporary World) at the LSE opened fascinating doors of inquiry for me. My professors gave invaluable support and always pushed for excellence and critical thinking. I look forward to propelling into my future with the strong groundwork I was able to build during my time here." - Selin Civil

"Studying Anthropology at LSE reshaped how I see the world—not just through theory, but through learning with a warm, diverse cohort whose perspectives continually challenged and enriched how I understand what it means to be human.” - Nadia Wibisono

"What I valued most about the MSc Anthropology and Development at LSE was its grounded, critical approach to development as lived experience rather than abstract policy. The programme challenged how I think, and the great people I met through it have genuinely shaped me - both academically and personally." - Mariia Malytska 

by Prachyadeep Dasgupta, MSc Anthropology and Development, LSE

People live their lives, organise at work, plough their farms, or plan their finances between the realms of global economic and political systems and the mundane, minute events of the everyday. Anthropology is perhaps the only social science that can truly grasp this complex life in the context of large-scale issues affecting the world. As a freshman in university, I was troubled by the simple question of how villages transform into cities: how and why do people stop farming their land and build real estate ventures? How does one experience this profound change in rural life in their personal lives? Over my undergraduate studies in Anthropology and my master’s programme at LSE, I began to appreciate Anthropology’s capacity to hold the small and the grand in tension—to reveal how global issues like neoliberal capitalism, agricultural distress, and climate change interact with local power and social relations to animate real life. At LSE, Anthropology becomes a way of understanding the totality of human life in the throes of the world as a discipline that truly fulfils the promise of social science to bridge theory with practical life.

What LSE Anthropology brings to the world—and to you

LSE’s Anthropology has a long history of defining and revolutionising how the world is understood. Given the centrality of human life to the discipline, Anthropology has come to be defined by its methodology of immersive, long-term ethnographies through participant observations. Bronislaw Malinowski, the Anthropologist credited with developing and refining the method of participant observation, taught at LSE and trained an entire generation of Anthropologists through his Friday seminars. Since then, a host of Anthropologists have studied a range of fascinating phenomena around the world from LSE. Delving into research as diverse as religion and mythology in Papua New Guinea, cryptocurrency and gambling in the Middle East, and land reforms in South Africa, Anthropologists at LSE continue to strengthen the foundations of Anthropology while extending its theoretical and practical boundaries into multiple directions.

Master’s programmes in Anthropology at LSE combine the breadth and depth of the subject. For students who are new to Anthropology, the MSc in Social Anthropology serves as a point of entry into the debates that define the discipline and the practical interventions that Anthropologists have made to change the world through activism, teaching, and writing. The MSc in Anthropology and Development develops a specialisation in economic and political anthropology combined with a training in Development Studies to help you know how global developmental policy paradigms are shaping lives, how the capitalist political-economic order encounters challenges from communities around the world and, in struggling with them, changes them. The MSc in China in Comparative Perspective combines the multidisciplinary expertise of professors at LSE’s Anthropology department with a regional focus to train students to understand China’s past, present, and pathways into the future through political, economic, linguistic, and historical insights. Regardless of whether you are an experienced student in the field or new to it, Anthropology programmes at LSE will ensure that you develop a holistic understanding of the world and find your interest within the discipline to deepen your training. The engaged teaching methods in the programmes, which combine lectures, seminars, and participatory learning, will make sure you remain fascinated with the world while pulling at each strand that makes it. Professors and researchers in the department work at the cutting edge of contemporary issues and organise regular events to present their research and exchange knowledge with students. No matter where your interests lie, you are bound to find a community of teachers and fellow students to help you navigate it in the best way possible.

The Horizons of a student of Anthropology at LSE

Anthropology’s force lies in the potential of ethnographic fieldwork that involves living among the people being studied to produce critical theoretical knowledge that challenges mainstream beliefs. In my own fieldwork, for example, I was surprised to find out that often, small farmers themselves do not want to hold on to their ancestral lands and prefer to sell it to realtors because of falling profits and disputes over inheritance. With this evidence, I could challenge assumptions about farmers’ willingness to retain land and provide new insights into how a global farming crisis is intensifying property disputes within families. Anthropology at LSE is defined by its focus on long-term, immersive fieldwork, and its methods courses develop an in-depth understanding of participant observation and ethnography. You will also have the opportunity to carry out fieldwork yourself for methods courses and your master's dissertation. The valuable guidance of professors and your academic mentor, enriched with years (often decades) of experience in conducting ethnographies, will best prepare you to dive into the social world with an Anthropologist’s eye.

In Anthropology, social science reaches its most developed state, and at LSE, Anthropology finds its strongest theoretical and practical expression. The depth and breadth of the courses in the department will help you familiarise yourself with the defining arenas of Anthropology while finding your own interests. The engaged teaching and learning in the programmes will allow you to intervene in large-scale economic and environmental issues and global policy debates with insights into how they actually play out in human life. The dual focus on theory and practice by LSE’s professors will enable you to understand the totality of the social world by showing you paths no other programme does.

by Sofia Gambetta, MSc Social Anthropology, LSE 

Deciding to study social anthropology at the LSE was a leap of faith. I had never studied anthropology before, my undergraduate degree was in other areas of social sciences, and I had a two-year gap between my studies during which I worked. But for a long time, I had a suspicion that anthropology was for me, and I could not be happier that I took that leap.

While it may sound hyperbolic, I say this with complete sincerity, this course has changed the way I will see the world forever. Coming from a different academic background, I walked in skeptical, but skepticism was pleasantly overturned at every step of the way.

One of the best things about the programme is the range of modules available and the depth they go in: from Environmental Anthropology, which completely reshapes the way you think about 'nature', to Research Methods, where you have the opportunity to head into the field yourself and ethnographically explore a pocket of society that interests you. You may also have the chance to take Digital Anthropology, where you will learn digital ethnographies and explore the online self and collective. This course constantly pushes you to rethink assumptions you did not even realise you had.

Beyond the teaching itself, the Department of Anthropology is warm and welcoming. The professors are incredibly encouraging when it comes to attending office hours, asking questions and engaging with ideas beyond the seminar rooms. Every Friday, students are also invited to the departmental research seminars, where anthropologists from within the department and from institutions around the world present their work and answer questions. It is one thing to read anthropology, but hearing contemporary researchers discuss their work in action makes the discipline feel alive.

Anthropology, unfortunately, may carry the reputation of being ‘unemployable’. In reality, that could not be further from the truth – especially now. As AI increasingly reshapes industries and ways of working, the skills anthropology develops are becoming more valuable.

Anthropology can teach you how to understand people: how they think, change, adapt, communicate and make meaning in rapidly changing environments. These are skills that AI cannot replicate. Recent discussions in The Washington Post have highlighted how anthropology graduates have gone on to careers in research, think tanks, health consultancy, refugee management and academia. Importantly, many of these roles do not have “anthropologist” in the job title, but they absolutely required anthropological ways of thinking.

Even in the corporate world, employers are increasingly looking for people with these skills. Business anthropologist Drew Jones argued that anthropologists are uniquely equipped to translate insights into human behaviour into strategic decision-making insights. As debates with AI swing between utopian optimism and apocalyptic fear, anthropology offers something more grounding and focuses on lived human experience and social reality.

Whether you want to stay in academia and continue exploring what makes humans different and what makes them the same; whether you want to contribute to research that drives social change; or whether you want to apply your skills in the corporate world, this master’s gives you the tools to do it.

My mind has been opened by this degree, and I hope to keep it that way.

And finally, a note of encouragement: the first female and current chief of MI6, Blaise Metreweli, studied anthropology too.

by Janecia Jones, MSc Social Anthropology, LSE

My Background and Why I Chose LSE?

Before coming to LSE I worked as a kindergarten teacher in China for eight years. I absolutely loved what I did! The ability to shape the minds of our future generations provided me with a profound sense of purpose. As the sole foreigner in our classroom, I worked diligently with my co-teachers to instill in our students a sense of compassion, open-mindedness, and curiosity about the world around them. Teaching was my passion, yet I felt limited by the tender ages of my students. I wanted to do more! The educators who left a lasting impact on me did so during my formative years, when I began cultivating my own values, principles, and academic interests. Ironically, it was during the 2022 Shanghai Covid lockdowns, when I had ample time to reflect on my future goals, that I realized I wanted to pursue my master’s in anthropology. For the next couple of years, I researched potential master’s programs and saved up my money. As a mature student, I was attracted to the short duration of UK master’s programs because my goal was to use my degree to better position myself for a job in higher education.

I discovered LSE while attending an academic conference at Fudan University. I met a professor who worked in the Political Science department, and talked to her about the LSE experience. I knew instantly that I wanted to go here.  I did my own research about LSE afterward, which only reinforced my decision to go here. Firstly, LSE is a prestigious school with a rigorous academic reputation and a strong professional network. My goal for studying my master's was to gain experience that could help me pivot into a new career; therefore, this was a vital factor in my decision-making process. Secondly, I was drawn in by this Department’s rich history of notable alumni, such as Bronislaw Malinowski and David Graeber, who not only revolutionized anthropology as a whole but also helped shape the educational framework of the LSE Social Anthropology department. Also, who wouldn’t want to say that they learned at the same institution as the Father of Anthropology?

Starting the Next Chapter in My Life

Moving to London was no easy feat. I had to leave behind the beautiful life that I built while living in China. What I found most difficult was living 9,000km away from my husband. This meant that I wouldn’t be able to see him for months at a time. Furthermore, I didn’t know anyone in London, so I would essentially need to make this huge life transition all on my own. I had lived abroad before, so I felt less culture shock about the logistical aspects of my new life, including opening a bank account, signing up for a phone plan, and registering with the NHS. What caused me the most anxiety was having to make new friends at my big age of 31. I was at least 10 years older than the other students around me. The generation gap was almost palpable. However, I was determined not to let this stop me from making the most out of my experience. London is a large metropolitan city, so you can meet many different people while participating in local activities. LSE is also located in the center of London, so there are plenty of things to do nearby! Additionally, despite being a relatively small school, LSE has a plethora of societies for every interest. I highly recommend you join one that you like! I joined LSE’s acapella group, where we participated in two national competitions!  I also joined the Drama Society, where I got to perform in the musical “Rent”! This is where I made the bulk of my friends! Not to mention, I had a lot of fun! Yes, I was the “Aunty” of the group, but everyone was so friendly that I simply learned to embrace this title!

My Experience Studying Anthropology

Friendly Professors and Staff

One of the best things about studying under this program is how open and friendly the professors and staff are towards the students. Our department is quite small compared to the other LSE departments. This allows for a more intimate feeling amongst students and staff.  It is very easy to meet up with every professor, including the department heads. They are constantly encouraging us to attend their office hours, whether to assist us with various quandaries or simply to chat. This includes professors you have not attended class with, as well as professors outside of the department. This can be quite helpful when working on your dissertation because each professor will have different strengths and specialties. There is no limit to how many meetings you can book, so feel free to use this feature to your heart’s desire. Additionally, it is not a secret that master’s degrees aren’t cheap, so I encourage you to take advantage of every benefit while you still can!

Our department has some of the brightest names in anthropology, which might make you feel a bit intimidated, but I can assure you they are all very approachable. They want you to succeed, and therefore, they are willing to go out of their way to help you get there. The advantage of being an older student is that I felt less pressure when speaking to people closer to my own age, although this type of rapport is not exclusive to those mature in age J  

Engaging Lectures & Seminars

The typical class structure is broken up into two parts: 1-hour lectures and 1.5-hour seminars. Lectures are pretty straightforward. The professors teach you the core material for that week, each guided by articles and ethnographies that help to break down these key concepts. The seminars are my favorite part! Firstly, they are largely student-led. In some courses,  the students curate the discussion questions.  We are also given the freedom to organize the seminars however we prefer. This flexible teaching style challenges us to think independently and allows us to tailor our learning to our specific interests and needs. For most of the sessions, our professors sat back and let us lead the conversations; however, they still chimed in with comments and questions that challenged our ideas, helping us think more critically about the topic we were discussing.

One of the best things about LSE is its diversity. Over 70% of its students are international, representing over 140 countries. Each student brings their own unique perspectives to the table. This often leads to others challenging your positionality about a subject, however isn’t this exactly what anthropology is all about? This is honestly my favorite part about this program! Such oppositions allow us to cultivate stronger critical thinking skills. The professors do a great job of creating a learning environment where every student feels safe speaking their minds, which includes challenging our professors' statements lol.

Would I choose LSE again?

If I had to choose where I would complete my master’s degree again, I would definitely choose LSE! Overall, I have learned so much through my studies and made so many new friends along the way. Most importantly, I feel well prepared to tackle any challenges I may face when re-entering the job market!