EDCMA

Studying Medical Anthropology

We offer two MSc programmes, the Taught and Research MSc in Medical Anthropology. Both can be taken as routes into our dynamic PhD programme in Social Anthropology. In addition, Medical Anthropology is also a key component of our undergraduate MA programme in Social Anthropology, in which we offer a number of health related option courses.

Undergraduate

There are currently a range of courses that students interested in medical anthropology can take, including:

Masters
Why study Medical Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh?

The MSc in Medical Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh is a research-led programme for students who want to understand health, illness, medicine, care, and wellbeing as deeply social, cultural, political, and ethical phenomena. 

Through a combination of core training, specialist options, ethnographic approaches, and an independently designed dissertation, students develop the conceptual and methodological tools to study how health is lived, governed, contested, and transformed across diverse settings. 

The programme is housed within the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology, one of the largest and most vibrant communities of medical anthropologists in the UK, and offers students the chance to learn within an active research environment shaped by scholars, practitioners, and students working across global contexts.

Choosing an MSc in Medical Anthropology is also about finding an intellectual home: a place where your questions will be taken seriously, where you will be supported to develop as a researcher, and where you will become part of a community thinking critically and creatively about health, illness, care, medicine, wellness, and social life. At the University of Edinburgh, our MSc in Medical Anthropology offers exactly this.

Our programme is designed to be intellectually rigorous, personal, and genuinely bespoke. As a student here, you will have a real hand in shaping your degree and dissertation, and there is no one standard curriculum. When you come to Edinburgh, you are joining an active community of medical anthropologists, with opportunities to participate in seminars, workshops, master classes, writing retreats, public events, and small-group conversations with researchers and practitioners from Edinburgh and around the world.

A bespoke programme for a changing world

Medical anthropology has never been more urgent. From global health interventions and humanitarian crises to mental health, chronic illness, environmental change, care, disability, diagnostics, and digital life, anthropologists are asking vital questions about how health and illness matter today.

Our MSc is designed for students who want to think deeply about these questions and develop the skills to study them rigorously. The programme offers a strong foundation in medical anthropology while also encouraging students to explore how anthropological thinking travels beyond the discipline: into public health, global health, clinical spaces, policy, activism, design, development, and interdisciplinary research.

From 2026/27, the programme will include a refreshed curriculum that gives students both a strong shared foundation and room to pursue their own interests. Students will take three required courses, three option courses, and complete a dissertation that they design, with a real focus on carrying out research that matters.

The required courses are designed to build a coherent intellectual journey across the year.

  • In Anthropology of Health and Illness, taught by our MSc Director Dr. Jessica Cooper, students will work together in a dedicated cohort-only seminar. This course offers a focused space to engage with some of the central debates, concepts, theories and methods that have shaped the field.
     

  • In From Public Health to Global Health: Critical Studies of Health Intervention, taught by Professor Alice Street, students will examine the histories, politics, and lived effects of health interventions. This course asks how public and global health projects are imagined, implemented, experienced, and contested across different social and political worlds.
     

  • In Research Design in Medical Anthropology, students will develop their own research projects over the course of the year. This course will bring MSc students into the wider EdCMA research community through seminars, ethics training, and dissertation workshops. Students will hear from staff and PhD researchers about works in progress, gaining insight into how medical anthropological research is designed, developed, and actually carried out.

Learning ethnographic methods beyond the discipline

We are also especially excited to offer Using Ethnographic Methods in Interdisciplinary Health, taught by the Director of the Edinburgh Centre for Medical Anthropology, Dr Laurie Denyer Willis. This is a new option course that explores how ethnographic methods can be used in conversation with other fields, beyond anthropology.

This course is designed for students interested in what medical anthropology can do beyond anthropology itself. How can ethnographic methods contribute to clinical research, public health, global health, policy, community work, design, technology, and interdisciplinary collaborations? What happens when anthropologists work with doctors, nurses, patients, activists, engineers, policymakers, artists, or data scientists? How do we preserve the depth, care, and critical force of ethnography while working across institutional and disciplinary boundaries?

For students who want to use medical anthropology in applied, collaborative, or interdisciplinary settings, this course offers an important opportunity to think with ethnography as both a method and a mode of engagement with the world beyond disciplinary boundaries.

Research-led teaching in a vibrant community

One of the strengths of studying medical anthropology at Edinburgh is the size and energy of our community. EdCMA brings together a large group of scholars working across many areas of medical anthropology, including global health, mental health, pharmaceuticals, epidemics, care, humanitarianism, environmental health, science and technology, disability, diagnostics, ageing, reproductive health, and more.

Our teaching is research-led, which means students learn from people actively shaping the field. Staff bring their own ethnographic research into the classroom, and students are invited into live conversations about what medical anthropology is and how it matters.

This also means that students are supported to develop their own independent research. The dissertation is an opportunity to craft a project that reflects each student’s interests and future ambitions. Throughout the year, students receive guidance on research design, ethics, methods, writing, and analysis as they develop their dissertation projects.

Masterclasses, workshops, and conversations beyond the classroom

The MSc experience at Edinburgh extends well beyond formal teaching. Students have the opportunity to participate in master classes with academics, researchers, and practitioners from around the world, often in small-group settings that allow for sustained discussion and exchange.

These sessions offer students the chance to engage closely with leading scholars and practitioners, ask questions about research and writing, and think through the practical and ethical challenges of medical anthropological work. They are part of our commitment to creating a programme that feels personal, community-focused, and intellectually alive.

Students also benefit from the wider activities of EdCMA, including visiting speakers, research seminars, publishing workshops, public events, student-led initiatives, and opportunities for writing retreats in the Scottish Highlands. These spaces help students develop their academic voice and form connections with peers and colleagues across the medical anthropology community.

Key resources

 

PhD

Our Taught and Research MSc can be continued into the PhD in Social Anthropology programme.

Examples of recent and current PhDs include:

  • An ethnography of care and community among compulsive hair pullers in the United Kingdom
  • For the Good of the Breed: health, heredity, and the ethics of breeding pedigree dogs
  • "It just opens up their world": Autism, equine therapy and enacted intersubjectivities
  • Pandemic Parenthood: Care and Kinship in a Time of AIDS
  • Practicing Public Health: Health Workers and Tuberculosis Control in Contemporary China
  • Transnational Conceptions: Displacement, Maternity, and Onward Migration among Somalis in Nairobi, Kenya
  • Chronic Illness at the Margins: Turkish Immigrant Experiences of Type 2 Diabetes in Germany
  • Mapuche Healing Cosmologies
  • Bodies of Memory, States of Health: Disability in Post-conflict Serbia

More information - PhD in Social Anthropology

Intercalated Degree in the Anthropology and Sociology of Medicine

It is widely recognised that social and cultural factors play an important role in shaping medicine and healthcare. The intercalated year in the Anthropology and Sociology of Medicine is designed to give aspiring medical practitioners a critical scholarly understanding of the social dimensions of modern medicine. This includes: the social meanings of healthcare, health and illness; the role and limits of biomedical science and technology; and what healthcare can deliver for individuals and societies in resource-rich and resource-poor settings. Students will develop a theoretical and practical appreciation of the different concepts and approaches used within anthropology and sociology, with a particular focus on how they can contribute to pressing debates about the role, aims and organisation of contemporary biomedical research, healthcare practice and policy-making.

The programme will provide students with a well-rounded academic grounding in anthropology and sociology as distinctive scholarly disciplines with their own approaches, histories and traditions. Students will be encouraged to apply social scientific thinking to issues of particular relevance and interest to them. This could include, for example: what counts as ‘good’ healthcare in different settings; how culturally specific understandings of health and healing might influence infection control; how medical innovation is shifting understandings of disease and illness; how the role of medical professionals is changing with the rise of digital technologies. The programme is particularly well suited to students who enjoyed the Health and Society Course and the Social Science and Public Health vertical theme of the University of Edinburgh’s MBChB programme.

Students will develop valuable transferable skills in critical thinking, written and verbal presentation, and project management. They will be exposed to a range of different types of social science research, case studies, and data, and will learn to make effective use of different forms of evidence in their personal, professional, and community life. The programme aims to enhance students’ ability to proactively adapt to different social and cultural contexts, while maintaining their personal and intellectual autonomy.

More information - Intercalated Degree in the Anthropology and Sociology of Medicine