The UNH Anthropology Department emphasizes socio-cultural anthropology, archaeology, and biological anthropology. Our faculty members’ research is wide-ranging, but all ultimately explore how humans adapt or get by, die trying, and make sense of our complex, ever-changing world.
Faculty research topics include: human-environmental and multi-species interactions both past and present; human economic adaptation and its impact on environments; novel approaches to forensic and bioarchaeological analyses of human skeletal remains and decedent identification; the historic effects of epidemics and institutions on population health; cross-cultural communication around illness, aging, and death; the formation and politics of social identities, including ethnic, racial, gender and sexual; and applied approaches to anthropology, including business, nonprofit, and government applications, and community-based gallery and museum curation. Our faculty pursue deeply collaborative and interdisciplinary research with members of communities with whom they work, and also employ cutting-edge technologies. Our faculty have conducted research in and on collections from countries around the world, like Uzbekistan, Russia, Albania, Turkey, Israel, Uganda, Eswatini, South Africa, Brazil, Peru, Belize, Mexico, and the United States.
Our department provides a well-rounded education: it trains students how to ask critical questions about human behavior and its impacts on the world, conduct scientific analyses and interpretation, and how to effectively communicate to diverse stakeholders and publics. With faculty from a variety of backgrounds, we bring a strong international perspective to our classrooms, and the BA major in Anthropology provides students with a deep, evidence-based understanding of our communities and their connections to the world.
