Welcome to the UW Department of Anthropology

Anthropology Department Events Calendar This brand new feature allows you to quickly see anthropology related events and export them into your personal calendar. More information Palawan, Phillipines Archaeology Field School Spring Quarter 2010 Apply Now! Announcing that the UW and University of the Philippines will be conducting a joint fields school in spring 2010. Learn archaeological excavation, survey, mapping and artifact analysis on northern Palawan Island in the Philippines. More information

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The Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington was launched in the 1920s by Leslie Spier and Melville Jacobs. Both were students of Franz Boas, as was Erna Gunther who took the reins in 1929 and under whose lively leadership the department grew for a quarter of a century.

Today, we are a large, and still lively, department that includes 35 faculty members and houses three academic subdisciplines into which our undergraduate and graduate programs are apportioned: archaeology, biocultural anthropology, and sociocultural anthropology. In addition we offer a concurrent MPH/PhD program, and specializations in environmental anthropology and medical anthropology and global health.

While pursuing a wide range of theoretical and methodological approaches, we all work toward a common goal, namely to document and understand our many interconnected ways of being human in a world now inhabited by six billion people speaking five thousand languages.

For a brief summary of our program view the Department of Anthropology Fact Sheet.

At the heart of anthropology research, theory and practice lies a shared appreciation of and commitment to understanding all aspects of human difference. View the Department of Anthropology Diversity Mission Statement.

Anthropology makes a world of difference.