University of Toronto, Anthropology Department

Anthropology is concerned with the unity and diversity of humanity (and related primates) and of human culture and society from a comparative and global perspective. For nearly 150 years, aspects of Anthropology have been taught at the University of Toronto. The Department of Anthropology was established in 1936 and has included many of the most prominent figures in Canadian Anthropology. The first M.A. degree was awarded in 1949, the first Ph.D. in 1956.

The University of Toronto is comprised of three campuses: the University of Toronto St. George (UTSG) in downtown Toronto, the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) to the west, and the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC) to the east; undergraduate Anthropology programs are delivered on all three. Although the campuses themselves are separate, their academic communities are linked through common research interests and tri-campus graduate programs.

Members of the department conduct research on present and past human societies, cultural knowledge and practice, evolutionary antecedents, and closely related species. We offer graduate training in socio-cultural, medical, evolutionary/biological, linguistic, and archaeological branches of the field. Anthropology students at the University of Toronto can study human biology and evolution; human behaviour from its first appearance in the archaeological record to the first appearance of writing; language and society; Anthropology of health, and the diversity of human culture in today’s world. In that Anthropology concerns the diversity and commonality of humans over time and around the globe, faculty and graduate research is broadly international and varies in method and theoretical frame. It nonetheless coheres in the quest to understand past and present human experience in social, cultural, and evolutionary contexts.

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