Research students are welcomed to Brunel as valued members of our thriving, research-intensive community. A research degree provides the opportunity to investigate a topic in depth, and contribute new knowledge to your discipline.

A PhD involves demonstrating through original research or other advanced scholarship the creation and interpretation of new knowledge, a systematic acquisition and understanding of a substantial body of knowledge at the forefront of an academic discipline or professional practice, the ability to conceptualise, design and implement a project for the general of new knowledge, applications or understanding at the forefront of the discipline. Both full-time (3 years) and part-time (6 years) study routes are available.

MPhil degree option
An MPhil involves the exploration of a research topic and is typically studied over a shorter period of 1 year for a full-time student and 2 years for a part-time student. MPhil students are required to demonstrate a systematic understanding of knowledge and a critical awareness of current problems and/or new insights informed by the forefront of their discipline, field of study or professional practice.

Following the completion of the course students may follow several career paths:

• Career path within academia
• Career path within the international development sector or aid industry, working with non-governmental organisations (e.g., Oxfam, Save the Children, Green Peace) or with international governmental agencies (e.g . World Health Organisation, World Food Programme, UNESCO, etc.)
• Career path with cultural organisations: museum curator, education officer, independent researcher
• Career path in government or with the civil service (e.g., UK Department for International Development, the NHS, local Councils)
• Career path with local or international corporations, as organisational consultants (Intel, IBM, Saatchi and Saatchi, Nike)

Centre for Research in International Medical Anthropology - committed to alleviating inequality and suffering from disease whilst simultaneously contributing to broader theoretical debates in the arena of global health medical anthropology and Disability Studies.

Centre for Anthropological Research on Childhood, Youth and Education - consolidates anthropological research into how notions of the ‘child’, ‘youth’ and ‘education’ are understood cross-culturally. Our research is also concerned with children’s and youth’s own perspectives and engagement in their social worlds, and with how education and learning is understood as a lifelong practice.

Histories and Concepts of Anthropological Knowledge - brings critical and historical perspectives to bear on key theoretical concepts in the social sciences such as historicity, emotion, ignorance, and memory, as well as on the fundamentals of anthropology: ethnographic practice and writing.

Performance, Politics and Violence  - Ongoing field-based research from symbolic, mystical and structural violence to genocide and other forms of physical violence, and from far-reaching State and international political control to the micro-politics of everyday life, as well as the inter-connections between them. 

We welcome anthropological research in the following areas:  

• Medical Anthropology
• Psychological and Psychiatric Anthropology
• Anthropology of Education and Schooling
• Anthropology of Childhood and Youth
• International Development and Humanitarian Assistance
• Global Conservation
• Human/Animal Relations and Multi-Species Ethnography
• Anthropology of Food
• Anthropology of Emotion
• Collective Memory
• Suicide
• Biography and Life History
• Performance and Embodiment
• Landscape, Time and Temporality
• Religion and Ritual
• Anthropocenic Discourses and Ontologies
• Political Violence, the State, Nationalism
• Visual Anthropology, Materiality, Museology

• IELTS: 6.5 (min 6 in all areas)
• Pearson: 58 (51 in all subscores)
• BrunELT: 65% (min 60% in all areas)