The Anthropology of Childhood, Youth and Education MSc was the first degree of its kind in the world when it was established and is still unique in its thoroughgoing anthropological perspective on what it is to be a child or to be young. Its key organising principle is that understanding children requires the study of how their relations with others - peers, older and younger children, parents, teachers and other adults - inform their practices, identities and world views. This course addresses the following issues from an anthropological perspective: Do children of ‘different cultures’ live ‘different worlds’? How does education impact upon children’s worlds and upon social and cultural practices more broadly? How do everyday processes of learning – both formal and informal - help to shape children’s ideas of and engagement with society at large? What is the role of schools in the transmission and acquisition of cultural values to children and youth? And why are adults’ ideas about childhood and youth so important for what children learn and aspire to become? The distinctiveness of this degree derives from an anthropological approach that focuses on the importance of children’s and youth’s perspectives, and on the role that education (formal and informal) plays in children’s learning processes and in the transmission and acquisition of cultural knowledge.

Candidates will acquire analytical and research skills that can be used in a wide range of careers. In addition to providing a firm grounding for doctoral research on childhood and youth, graduates will find that the degree enhances professional development in fields such as teaching, social work, counselling, educational and child psychology, health-visiting, nursing and midwifery, paediatric specialisms, non-governmental agencies and international development. Every year, some of our graduates also go on to do further research for a PhD in child-focused anthropology as members of the Centre for Child-Focused Anthropological Research (C-FAR).