Experiential Learning Opportunities for Students

This course is designed for students eager to participate in, and reflect on, on-going advocacy on climate and environmental justice. Students will be placed, either as individuals, in partners, or in teams, with a government, non-profit or community advocacy group to collaboratively address a specific problem or need of the organization. In classroom discussions, and in assignments students will have an opportunity to reflect critically on their experiences, explore social and ethical issues, and integrate placements with course readings in ways that mobilize or perhaps challenge academic knowledge. The application form is posted on the following website: https://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/undergraduate

This summer course provides students with a partnered field experience by conducting ethnographic research on tours in partner organizations in Toronto with faculty’s supervision. The project will be developed in collaboration with the partner organizations to offer students partnership-based experiential learning opportunities. Students will produce detailed ethnographic descriptions of tourist experiences, analyze how media representations and tourism infrastructure shape diverse visitor experiences, explore how existing infrastructure can be potentially repurposed for a decolonial or inclusive tour, and develop skills to communicate their findings to the broader audience.

This year-long, partnership-based course examines the role of archaeological and historical places and objects in the modern world. In other words, how the past is understood in, and connected to, the present. Some of the topics we will look at in class include the politics of archaeology; working with Indigenous groups and descendant communities and their perspectives on history and archaeology; the past and identity; managing archaeological collections, their sustainability, and repatriation; memorializing controversial historical events and people; historic houses and development; tourism and interpreting sites/excavations for a public audience; historic landscapes; forgeries and fakes; and the archaeology of recent events. Throughout the year, students work with and learn from people working in public heritage institutions within the city of Toronto.

On-campus field school. Lab fees: $25.The details and application form are posted on the following webpage: https://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/undergraduate/curriculum-course-information/field-schools-and-research-opportunities. 

Practical field training through six weeks of excavation on an archaeological site. Basic principles of artifact handling and classification. (Offered only in the Summer Session).

Excursions to paleoanthropological localities of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens, and excavation at a hominoid site. The details and the application form are posted on the following webpage: https://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/undergraduate/curriculum-course-information/field-schools-and-research-opportunities. The application form should be submitted by the deadlines indicated on the website. (Joint undergraduate-graduate).

Opportunity for students participating in non-degree credit archaeological digs to submit reports, field notes and term papers for degree credit. Instructions on how to obtain an application form are posted on the following webpage: https://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/undergraduate. Additional fees may apply.

This summer course provides students with a partnered field experience by conducting ethnographic research on tours in partner organizations in Toronto with faculty’s supervision. The project will be developed in collaboration with the partner organizations to offer students partnership-based experiential learning opportunities. Students will produce detailed ethnographic descriptions of tourist experiences, analyze how media representations and tourism infrastructure shape diverse visitor experiences, explore how existing infrastructure can be potentially repurposed for a decolonial or inclusive tour, and develop skills to communicate their findings to the broader audience.

Students carry out original ethnographic research projects on some aspect of life in the University of Toronto: its students, staff and faculty; its hierarchies and habits; and the everyday practices in classrooms, labs, dining halls, offices, clubs, and residence corridors. Class time is used for collective brainstorming, feedback and analysis.

This course is an opportunity to apply acquired knowledge in anthropology or archeology in a work placement environment. Opportunities may include local community organizations, international development organizations, museum or heritage projects, or media production projects. Please contact Josie Alaimo, Undergraduate Administrator for the application form.

Supervised independent research on a topic agreed on by the student and supervisor before enrolment in the course. Open in exceptional circumstances to advanced students with a strong background in Anthropology. Course Supervisor must be a member of the Anthropology faculty. A maximum of one year of Independent Research courses is allowed per program. The application form should be submitted at least one week prior to the beginning of classes.
Prerequisite: A minimum of 10 credits, permission of Supervisor and Undergraduate Coordinator.

Laboratory or practical research on an archaeological project that emphasizes methods and research design in archaeology. Students must obtain the consent of a supervisor before enrolling. Students are required to give an oral presentation of research results to an open meeting of the Archaeology Centre at the conclusion of the course.  Application must be made to the Anthropology Department.
Please contact Josie Alaimo, Undergraduate Administrator for the application form.

What do the Great Lakes mean to people living here? Especially Indigenous people? When and how do people care about the Great Lakes? Poems, stories, social science offer perspectives on the water from anthropology and arts. Field trips including paddling on a river, hiking; talks with local activists and artists. Restricted to first-year students.

This course focuses on the archaeology and deep history of what are today eastern Canada and the United States, a vast and diverse area of the North American continent. Local and regional field trips (through the A&S ICM program) are common for this course, though the details may change from year to year.

Introduces the problems, methods and some of the material culture of colonial and industrial archaeology with emphasis on Canada and colonial America. Covers the use of documentary evidence, maps, architecture and a variety of artifact classes. Field trips are common for this course, though the details may change from year to year.

This course integrates a substantial experiential learning component through a semester-long mini-ethnography project and a commodity chain analysis. Students conduct fieldwork for their mini-ethnography and write a paper that traces a raw material, mineral, fruit, or vegetable from its site of extraction, production, or cultivation to its point of consumption in Toronto. Drawing on corporate data, activist accounts, autoethnography, and first-hand observation, students engage with complex and often contradictory sources to explore global interdependence, inequality, and systems of power. These experiential components foster reflexive inquiry and critical engagement with themes such as globalization, neoliberalism, and racial capitalism.

The course uses tourism as a lens to examine global connections. Particular focus will be on the politics of cultural encounters. Drawing examples from diverse ethnographic materials, the course explores how different visions of the world come into contact, negotiated and transformed, and how tourist encounters shape peoples’ everyday lives. The course includes an autoethnographic research assignment. Students conduct participant observation of a tourist site in Toronto and develop skills to ethnographically observe and analyze how the site is constructed by visual and discursive representations, infrastructure, material and spatial arrangements and analyze how particular social and cultural values and norms are expressed and negotiated. 

This course includes a substantial experiential learning component through a semester-long mini-ethnography project. Students attend commemorative events in Toronto—such as the Indigenous Legacy Gathering or Orange Shirt Day—and engage in layered fieldwork that emphasizes observation, reflection, and delayed analysis. Through iterative assignments—fieldnotes, instructor feedback, and a final ethnographic paper that incorporates autoethnographic reflection—students critically examine memory, atmosphere, and political symbolism. The experiential nature of the project encourages deep engagement with course themes and fosters grounded, reflexive inquiry.

Presents anthropological perspectives on provision of healthcare as a complex social and cultural phenomenon. Examines hierarchies and division of labour among health care providers, and how social groups come to occupy particular positions. Considers how knowledge and skills are gained through formal training and/or lived experience, how they are recognized and valued, and may become sources of identity. Examines local variations within biomedicine as practiced in different settings around the world. Course assignments include an ethnographic interview and analysis of it; students will be provided guidance on all stages of designing and carrying out this project.

This course introduces students to the skills they need to conduct ethnographic research, in particular, participant observation, in-depth interview, as well as writing fieldnotes and research proposals. The emphasis is on interactive, workshop-style small group learning.

Field Linguistics provides practice in language analysis based on elicited data from a native speaker of an Indigenous or foreign language, emphasizing procedures and techniques. (Given by the Departments of Anthropology and Linguistics)

This course is designed around a series of experiential flint knapping, ground stone making, and lithic analysis workshops. Students learn core reduction strategies, replication, experimental archaeology, use-wear, design approaches, and how archaeologists infer behaviour from lithic artifacts.

Virtual anthropology is a set of new methods that allow us to digitize objects, analyze, reconstruct and share them digitally, and bring them back into the real world. After a theoretical introduction, students will use surface scanners, photogrammetric software and 3D printers to digitize and study archaeological and anthropological specimens.

Students learn about photogrammetry through a series of tutorials and first-hand experience creating their own models of various subjects, such as historical architecture and public art in Toronto, and museum objects on campus. They will also learn how to analyze and present 3D content, while thinking critically about the impact of how digital tools are currently being employed by and shaping the agendas of researchers in archaeology, art history, and related fields.

Introduces anthropological perspectives on the life course and aging, with particular attention to health challenges and care needs, the social and cultural arrangements around these, and the impacts of population aging, global migration, technological change and other broad scale transformations. Emphasizes questions, concepts, and insights from sociocultural medical anthropology. Readings present ethnographic research based in many different parts of the world. Course assignments include an ethnographic interview and analysis of it; students will be provided guidance on all stages of designing and carrying out this project.

This course integrates significant experiential learning through a guided museum-based fieldwork assignment. As part of their term paper, students visit the Daphne Cockwell Gallery at the Royal Ontario Museum to observe and reflect on practices of Indigenous representation. The assignment unfolds in stages: students begin with ungraded fieldnotes emphasizing attentiveness to sensory and symbolic details without rushing to interpretation. They then submit annotated drafts, receive feedback, and build toward a final paper that critically engages museum display practices in relation to Indigenous histories, rights, and representation. Students are encouraged to examine museums not only as sites of display, but as political spaces shaped by institutional silences and contested narratives.

Techniques for making archaeological data meaningful after excavation or survey. Archaeological measurements, compilation of data, database design, archaeological systematics, and sampling theory in the context of lithics, pottery, floral, faunal and other archaeological remains.

This lab-oriented course describes and compares the diverse behavioural and anatomical adaptations that are characteristic to this order of mammals.

Exploration of the development and maintenance of the human skeleton and dentition, with emphasis on application to archaeological, forensic and biomedical sciences. Students will learn to identify all human skeletal and dental elements, as well as the bone microstructure and metabolism. Students learn how to conduct basic osteological analysis including measurements, inventory and osteobiography, preliminary palaopathological analysis, all conducted using protocols applied in professional contexts.

Through a series of labs and lectures, students will learn to identify skulls, teeth and limb bones, explore hundreds of casts, and learn how researchers understand human origins and trends in the development of human anatomy and behavior.

This course will investigate human movement and physical activity patterns through the lens of evolutionary anthropology. The evolution of hominin physical behaviours, such as bipedalism and tool use, will be explored alongside the morphological traits associated with these behaviours. We will also examine social and cultural factors that may moderate physical activities among diverse human groups, including subsistence strategy variation and contemporary views on activity and exercise. Students learn to identify major musculoskeletal components of the human body and participate in interactive activities that incorporate research tools and datasets like public health information about activity patterns and health.

Over the semester, students will gain experience in identifying, classifying, and analyzing artefacts from Ontario that date to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition to learning these applied skills, students will hone their inference skills by using artefacts and archives to develop research-based interpretations of daily life in the Toronto-area which will be presented publicly through a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) Storymap. 

Students learn how to identify animal bones, to determine the species, age, and sex of the animal, as well as modifications such as signs of burning. The final assignment involves identifying a collection of bones from an archaeological site, and interpreting what they can tell us about past peoples’ lifeways. The application form is posted on the following webpage: https://www.anthropology.utoronto.ca/undergraduate. 

Advanced exploration of the life histories of past populations, through the application of palaeodietary analyses, palaeopathology and other appropriate research methods. Students further their skills in osteological analysis, and we delve deeper into palaeopathological analysis, differential diagnosis, bioarchaeological analysis, and statistics