Master of Science - Psychological and Psychiatric Anthropology

This course investigates psychological and psychiatric issues from an anthropological perspective, addressing issues at the forefront of debates in social policy, morality, personal identity, and mental health.

By considering cases from around the world students will explore how person, consciousness, and experience are shaped through cultural practices and political realities.

Examining world ethnography (including the UK), students will learn about selfhood, emotion, personality, and understandings of ‘madness’ and mental illness in cultural context.

Brunel students come from varied professional and academic backgrounds, many taking time out for professional development. If students haven’t studied anthropology before, they’ll be offered introductory modules in anthropological theory to help prepare them for the rest of the course.

Anthropology at Brunel is well-known for its focus on ethnographic fieldwork and students will be expected to get out of the library and undertake their own, original research – whether in the UK or overseas – and to present their findings in a dissertation.

Fieldwork can be taken anywhere in the world, locally, previous students have explored psychic training, Pentecostal churches, and mental health charities, and internationally, students have explored subjects like funerals in Iran, Amazon neoshamanism, and autism programmes in Belgium.