Welcome

Yale University’s Department of Anthropology was officially founded in 1937 and traces its origins of research and teaching to work done within the Peabody Museum of Natural History (1866) and the Institute of Human Relations (1928). The Department is home to over 30 faculty and nearly 120 graduate students and undergraduate majors.

The Chair of the Deparment of Anthropology is Anne Underhill. The Director of Graduate Studies is David Watts. The Director of Undergraduate Studies is William Honeychurch. Contact information for Academic Directors can be found here. 

View the Anthropology Department’s Commitment to Anti-Racism

Anthropology Department Phase 2 Reactivation Plan

News

Ph.D. Candidate Lav Kanoi awarded Wenner-Gren Fieldwork Grant

April 14, 2021
Congratulations to Lav Kanoi, a 3rd-year student and PhD candidate in the combined doctoral program between Anthropology and the School of the Environment, who has been awarded a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research to support his project titled “... Read more

Ph.D. Candidate Jacob Welch's collaborative restoration with Mexico's National Conservation of Cultural Patrimony

April 13, 2021
Mexico’s Coordinación Nacional de Conservación del Patrimonio Cultural (CNCPC) recently published a bulletin (also reviewed in the Smithsonian Magazine)  highlighting the conservation of a “human-sized” stucco sculpture first identified and researched by graduate student Jacob Welch. The ancient... Read more

Congratulations to Amy Johnson

February 24, 2021
Dr. Amy Johnson, who graduated in December 2020 with a PhD in the combined program in Anthropology and the School of the Environment, has accepted a three-year appointment as Research Fellow, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Northumbria... Read more

Drawing on Panter-Brick’s research, Short Documentary wins at Raw Science Film Festival

February 8, 2021
The pioneering work of an interdisciplinary team, led by our own Catherine Panter-Brick, was featured in Terror and Hope: The Science of Resilience which took Best Documentary Short at the Raw Science Film Festival. Research was conducted in partnership with Mercy Corps, We Love Reading,... Read more

Catherine Panter-Brick publishes on Humanitarian Action on the U.S.-Mexico border

February 8, 2021
Catherine Panter-Brick’s recent ethnographic work on solidarity, faith, and social justice on the US-Mexico border was published in the Journal of Refugee Studies.  It shows how anger, courage, and faith in social action drives everyday humanitarianism at the border, a site of civic and faith-based... Read more
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