Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology

Photo of a female student observing baboons

Intake 2024-25

Unfortunately we are not able to offer the MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology for intake 2024-25.

If you are interested in applying for future years and want to be kept informed of latest updates, please leave your name and contact details with admissions@anthro.ox.ac.uk

Homo sapiens possesses remarkable capacities for language, culture, and religion. We are distinguished by our communication, beliefs, rituals, and performance, as well as our intelligence. What are the evolutionary foundations for these characteristics? Are they really as unique to us as we might believe? What is it about our evolution and our resulting cognitive equipment that makes us human? How might an understanding of human evolution help to address pressing modern challenges facing individuals and societies?

The MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology explores the current state of the art thinking on these questions, drawing together relevant advances from a broad range of research fields across the evolutionary, biological, psychological and social sciences, eg evolutionary biology, human behavioural ecology, palaeoanthropology, primatology, psychology and cultural evolution.