Study Details: MSc 1-year full-time; 2.5 years part-time
Medical anthropology can be described as the study of cultural beliefs and behaviours associated with the origin, recognition and management of health and illness in different social and cultural groups.
Despite the name conventionally given to this area of study, medical anthropology is not simply concerned with practices of healing or systems of diagnosis and treatment such as biomedicine. It deals with the more informal systems of health care that exist worldwide (such as self-treatment, folk healers, shamans, traditional birth attendants, and alternative practitioners), as well as those associated with professional Western science-based medicine and caring practices.
Additionally, medical anthropology is also concerned with issues which relate to different cultural views of the ‘self’ in health and disease, as well as shared beliefs, images and practices associated with perceptions of the human body and mind.
The Brunel MSc addresses the above issues in a lively and challenging way. The Brunel MSc addresses medical anthropology issues in a lively and challenging way.
A number of scholarships are available to help students with their field research – further details can be found under Special Features.
It was the first taught Master’s degree dedicated to medical anthropology in Europe; and it is the largest MSc medical anthropology programme in the UK.
We also have the largest number of dedicated and internationally known medical anthropology staff in the country teaching the degree; and around 350 students have graduated with an MSc in medical anthropology from Brunel University. They are now working all over the world in a variety of settings.
Normally a good Honours degree from a UK institution; an equivalent overseas qualification; or an equivalent professional qualification (eg from a health background or similar). Candidates not fully meeting these criteria may nevertheless be considered.
Brunel also offers our own BrunELT English Test and accept a range of other language courses. We also have a range of Pre-sessional English language courses, for students who do not meet these requirements, or who wish to improve their English.
Home/EU students: £5,060 full-time, £2,530 part-time; International students: £11,330 full-time, £5,665 part-time
Students will acquire analytical and research skills that can be used in a wide range of careers. For instance, graduates will find that the degree enhances professional development in fields such as midwifery, general practice, sexual health, psychiatry, nutrition, psychotherapy, public health, non-governmental agencies and international development. Some of our graduates also go on to do further research for a PhD in medical anthropology.
The main objectives of the course are to provide a rigorous grounding in key topics and perspectives in medical anthropology, and to equip candidates with a range of research skills to enable them to successfully complete research (either individually or part of a team).
Students have undertaken a huge range of important studies for dissertations in Britain, Europe and worldwide. Many have been used by NGOs, primary care trusts and UN agencies to assist their work as well as giving excellent demonstrations of the anthropologist’s craft. Some recent examples of students’ dissertations include:
Modules are subject to variation and students are advised to check with the School on whether a particular module of interest will be running in their year of entry.
Medical Anthropology in Clinical and Community Settings
Main topics of study: Theoretical framings: Nature-nurture/culture-biology debates and the concept of local biologies; clinically and critically applied medical anthropology; risk perception and discourse on risk; narrative, suffering and subjectivity; biomedicine, population sciences and medicalisation; political economy of health and development; governance and politics of international aid; rights-based approach to health and bioethics; thematic examples: ‘adolescence’ and the life-cycle; cross-cultural psychiatry and community-based mental health; alternative therapies and medical pluralism; doctor-patient interactions; evidence-based medicine and policy-making; childbirth and maternal health; sexuality and reproductive health; genetics and biotechnology; medicines and pharmaceutical industry.
Anthropology of biomedicine and psychiatry
Main topics of study: history of science and biomedicine; diagnostic technologies and classification; biotechnology and the modern self; ethics of bio-experimentation; epistemologies of statistics, epidemiology and the population sciences; medicalisation of the life cycle, case studies in menopause and adolescence; politics of aid, development and post-colonial science; the rise of evidence-based medicine; biomedical psychiatry and bio-colonialism; culture and critical neuroscience; challenges in the ethnography of science; implications of anthropology of science for clinical practice and population health
Anthropology and Global Health
Main topics of study: changing conceptions of public health; constructing public health problems: the case of female circumcision; the social construction of epidemics; constructions of health and sickness in war zones; the changing relationship between anthropology and epidemiology; targeting people, targeting places: the limits of HIV prevention strategies; neglected tropical diseases and the case for targeted disease control programmes; public health and healing in the aftermath of war; evaluating public health policy; human rights and public health; ethical aspects of public health policy and practice.
Ethnographic Research Methods
Main topics of study: the centrality of fieldwork to anthropological research; theoretical and practical issues of participant observation, open-ended unstructured interviews and semi-structured interviews; the advantages and disadvantages of using questionnaires during fieldwork; different styles of ethnographic writing; gaining access in ethnographic research; ethical clearance and ethical dilemmas arising in the course of fieldwork; constructing a research proposal.
Dissertation
The specific topics and/or research problems discussed in the dissertation are a function of the student’s particular research interest in the domain of medical anthropology, and the data generated by the student’s own fieldwork.
Recent examples of dissertations by students taking this course include:
Kinship and New Directions in Anthropology
Main topics of study: descent and alliance, the household, the incest taboo, new reproductive technologies, kinship and the state, gay kinship, the abortion debate, conceptions of social reproduction, kinship and migration, the social and cultural construction of paternity.
Anthropology of the Body
Main Topics of Study: The social body; embodiment, ‘habitus’ and phenomenological approaches to the body; cross-cultural perceptions of the body; the body in parts; sex and gender; childhood and the body; bodily norms, beauty and ideas of the perfect body; biomedicine and the body; death and the dying body.
Anthropology of the Person
Main topics of study: theories of the person; the notion of ‘normality’; the emergence of memero-politics; classifications, kinds, and kind-making; ‘looping effects’; cultural bound syndrome and ‘ecological niche’.
Anthropology of Disability and Difference
Main Topics of Study: A critical overview of the medical and social models of disability that have framed discourse on disability; ethnographic and phenomenological alternatives to such approaches; conducting fieldwork with cognitively and physically impaired people; disability across the life course, with a focus on childhood disability; identity and disability; social policy, development, the state and disability; ethical dilemmas and the new genetics.
History and Theory of Social Anthropology
Main topics of study: evolutionary’ anthropology; ‘race’, ‘civilisation’; diffusionism and the Boas school; the development of ethnographic research; functional, structure and comparison; structuralism; neo-evolutionism; culture and the interpretation of cultures; critiques (Marxism, feminism, post-modernism).
Issues in Social Anthropology
Main topics of study: kinship; gender; religion; anthropology of the body.
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