Graduate Department Information

The Department of Anthropology was officially established at the University of Toronto in 1936. The first M.A. degree was awarded in 1949; the first Ph.D. in 1956. Since that time, more than 170 Ph.D. degrees and 400 Masters degrees have been conferred in the Department. In the 2007-08 academic year, the Department had a total graduate enrollment of 133 students; 87 Ph.D., and 46 Masters students. 

Over half of all our Ph.D. graduates, are employed in tenure-stream or tenured positions in universities in Canada, United States, Egypt, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, South Africa, Japan,  Philippines, Italy, Malaysia, and Australia. About a quarter of our Ph.D. graduates are employed in museums, government agencies, or research and consulting groups in Canada and abroad.

The Department offers instruction and research training in the fields of archaeology, evolutionary anthropology, social-cultural and linguistic anthropology, and medical anthropology. Environmental perspectives and culture and construction of meaning in historical perspective are general areas of emphasis. M.A., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees are offered in all fields. Collaborative Programs also form part of the curriculum.

The geographic areas of strength in archaeology include Canada (Ontario, the Arctic, and British Columbia), Asia, Africa, Latin America, and France. Topical areas include human ecology, ethnoarchaeology, lithic analysis, archaeometry, archaeozoology, and palaeoethnobotany.

Area strengths in social-cultural and linguistic anthropology include sub-Arctic Canada, the Caribbean, Latin America, North America, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Guinea, Africa, and the Middle East.

Topical areas include sociolinguistics and semiotics, political economy, gender and sexuality, religion, modernities, transnationalism, environment, development, new technologies and media, colonialism, postcolonial states, subjectivities and personhood.

Evolutionary anthropology's strengths in the department include palaeoanthropology and human evolution, primatology, forensic anthropology, molecular anthropology, human skeletal biology, historical demography, and health.

Strengths in Medical Anthropology include bio-social factors influencing human disease and nutrition, gender and sexuality, and HIV/AIDS.