MSc / MPhil in Visual, Material, and Museum Anthropology (VMMA)
The MSc and MPhil in VMMA offer students the chance to explore some of the most exciting issues in anthropology today. The programmes combine research strengths in the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography with those at the Pitt Rivers Museum (PRM), which houses more than 800,000 objects, photographs and manuscripts from all over the world.
Both the one year MSc and the two year MPhil degrees in VMMA focus on current themes and debates within visual anthropology, material culture theory, and museum anthropology, examining how these areas of enquiry are transforming the discipline of anthropology itself – together with our understandings of know knowledge is generated. The programmes develop, from anthropological perspectives, a critical approaches to the formation, histories, and politics of material and visual cultures, exploring their dynamic and diverse meanings and practices in a wide range of different and changing contexts.
The programmes in VMMA encourage students to think critically about the politics of knowledge making, including the history and contemporary practice of anthropology; power dynamics and inequalities; colonial histories; relationships and hierarchies in wider ecologies of human and non-human life. Teaching is designed so that students carefully examine the ethics and wider social implications and potential impacts of anthropological studies.
