Master of Anthropology and Planetary Futures

Anthropology for a Future Planet This program provides a humanities and social science lens to understand overlapping threats to social, ecological, political, economic, and health systems. It offers Australia’s only combined biological and cultural approach to grasp these planetary scale problems while foregrounding anthropology’s unique ethnographic method, which centres grounded and people-focused perspectives and values. Anthropology equips students with skills, case studies, theories, and tools for social engagement to grasp our planetary crises, understand their cultural histories, and fight for a better future. The Master of Anthropology and Planetary Futures engages critical social thought and research methods to step back from crisis-thinking to consider the political and social work that these threats justify and enable, and provides evidence bases for advocacy and public debate. The degree equips students to describe and theorise how planetary emergencies came about precisely due to human social engineering and the dominance of particular sets of cultural values, while also recognising that they are shaped by the creative responses of people responding to rapid transformations on their own terms. Why study Anthropology at the ANU? The Master of Anthropology and Planetary Futures emphasises rigour in research methodologies to develop key analytical skills for systems thinking alongside cutting edge qualitative, fieldwork-based, and applied skills that provide solid empirical and critical foundations for future research careers. Training in methods from biological anthropology is combined with cultural anthropology’s ethnographic exploration of human diversity. Together, these research-led frameworks and applied anthropology provide unexpected and badly needed alternatives.