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Anthropology and Sociology

Entry requirements


A level

B,B,B

Access to HE Diploma

D:30

Pass with 45 Level 3 credits including 30 Distinctions and a number of merits/passes in subject specific modules

International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme

33

With three Higher Level subjects at 655

Leaving Certificate - Higher Level (Ireland) (first awarded in 2017)

H2,H2,H2,H2

Pearson BTEC Level 3 National Extended Diploma (first teaching from September 2016)

DDM

Scottish Advanced Higher

B,B,C

Scottish Higher

B,B,B,B,C

T Level

M

Each application will be considered on its individual merits. Where the T Level subject area does not directly match the degree programme being applied for, the personal statement and reference will be particularly important in demonstrating interest, enthusiasm and suitability for the subject.

UCAS Tariff

120-136

We've calculated how many Ucas points you'll need for this course.

About this course


Course option

3years

Full-time | 2024

Subjects

Anthropology

Sociology

Anthropology and sociology deal with human behaviours in their social context. This degree gives you a comprehensive grounding in these converging subjects, so you'll develop an understanding of their shared traditions and differences in perspective.

**Why study BA Anthropology & Sociology at Goldsmiths**

- The degree is divided evenly between anthropology and sociology, so you'll get a solid grounding in both subjects.

- The dynamic nature of the degree means you’ll be able to bring an interdisciplinary angle to any problem, whether that’s arguing your perspective in an essay or coming up with novel solutions in your future career.

- Our graduates have gone on to work for the UN, World Bank, as well as various NGOs, law companies and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) consultancies.

- In your third year, you’ll be able to choose from a range of option modules, tailoring your learning in a way that suits your interests and aspirations. You might choose to explore topics like gender theory, environmental anthropology, or borders and migration.

- Our academics are responsible for actively shaping disciplines – they are pioneers in their fields, playing key roles in developing awareness of society and culture.

Modules

Year 1
In your first year, you'll learn the main theories within social anthropology, and will be introduced to ethnography and anthropological methodological practice. You'll complete five compulsory modules and one optional module.

Compulsory modules
You'll complete the following compulsory modules:
Being Related
Approaches to Contemporary Anthropology
Anthropological Methods
Modern Knowledge, Modern Power
Critical Readings: the Emergence of the Sociological Imagination 1A

Optional modules
You'll take one of the following three optional modules:
Critical Readings: the Emergence of the Sociological Imagination 1B
Culture and Society B
Imaginative Criminology

Year 2
In your second year, you'll take the following compulsory modules:
Thinking Anthropologically
Critical Ecologies: black, indigenous and transnational feminist approaches
Philosophical and Methodological Issues in Sociology and Anthropology
Governing Everyday Life

You'll also take the following optional modules:
15 credits of optional modules from a list provided annually by the. This includes the option to take a Sociology Work Placement.
15 credits of optional modules from a list provided annually.
A further 15 credits from either the Department of Sociology, the Department of Anthropology, or the Goldsmiths Social Change module or Goldsmiths Elective.

Year 2
Recent second year Anthropology modules have included:
Anthropology of Religion
Anthropology and Public Policy
Indigenous Cosmopolitics, Anthropology and Global Justice

Year 2
Recent second year Sociology modules have included:
Social Change and Political Action
Sociology Work Placement
The Body: Social Theory and Social Practice
Sex, Drugs & Technology
Leisure, Culture and Society
Organisations and Society
London
Social Change and Political Action
Food and Taste
Religion, Crime, and Law
Crimes Against Humanity

Year 3
In your final year, you'll take the following compulsory module from the Department of Sociology:
Confronting climate crisis

You'll then choose:
30 credits from modules offered by the Department of Sociology.
30 Credits from modules offered by the Department of Anthropology.
45 credits to be used across any of the optional modules from the two departments.

Year 3
Recent third year Anthropology modules have included:
Psychological Perspectives in Anthropology
Anthropology of Health and Medicine
Anthropology of Art
Anthropology and the Environment
Anthropology of Development
Anthropology and Gender Theory
Anthropology of Rights
Multimodal Experiments
Anthropology of Violence
Anthropology in Public Practice
Learning from Social Movements
Borders and Migration
Digital Anthropology
Anthropology and the Visual: Production Module
Critical Voices in Development
Environmental Anthropology
Ethnographic Film and Cinema Studies
Anthropology of Religion
Theorising the Visual
Economic and Political Anthropology 1
Material Culture

Year 3
Recent third year Sociology modules have included:
Sociologies of Emerging Worlds
Philosophy, Politics and Alterity
Identity and Contemporary Social Theory
Law, Identity and Ethics
Analysing the Complexity of Contemporary Religious Life
Race, Racism and Social Theory
Citizenship and Human Rights
Migration, Gender and Social Reproduction
Childhood Matters: Society, Theory and Culture
Social Theory Through Film
Globalisation, Crime and Justice
Crimes of the Powerful

Please note that due to staff research commitments not all of these modules may be available every year.

Assessment methods

You’ll be assessed by a variety of methods, depending on your module choices. These include coursework, examinations, group work and projects.

The Uni


Course location:

Goldsmiths, University of London

Department:

Anthropology

Read full university profile

What students say


We've crunched the numbers to see if overall student satisfaction here is high, medium or low compared to students studying this subject(s) at other universities.

33%
Anthropology
36%
Sociology

How do students rate their degree experience?

The stats below relate to the general subject area/s at this university, not this specific course. We show this where there isn’t enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.

Anthropology

Teaching and learning

85%
Staff make the subject interesting
69%
Staff are good at explaining things
70%
Ideas and concepts are explored in-depth
50%
Opportunities to apply what I've learned

Assessment and feedback

Feedback on work has been timely
Feedback on work has been helpful
Staff are contactable when needed
Good advice available when making study choices

Resources and organisation

53%
Library resources
82%
IT resources
66%
Course specific equipment and facilities
21%
Course is well organised and has run smoothly

Student voice

Staff value students' opinions
Feel part of a community on my course

Who studies this subject and how do they get on?

88%
UK students
12%
International students
25%
Male students
75%
Female students
92%
2:1 or above
22%
First year drop out rate

Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)

B
C
B

Sociology

Teaching and learning

65%
Staff make the subject interesting
66%
Staff are good at explaining things
73%
Ideas and concepts are explored in-depth
57%
Opportunities to apply what I've learned

Assessment and feedback

Feedback on work has been timely
Feedback on work has been helpful
Staff are contactable when needed
Good advice available when making study choices

Resources and organisation

53%
Library resources
67%
IT resources
61%
Course specific equipment and facilities
12%
Course is well organised and has run smoothly

Student voice

Staff value students' opinions
Feel part of a community on my course

Who studies this subject and how do they get on?

89%
UK students
11%
International students
18%
Male students
82%
Female students
90%
2:1 or above
19%
First year drop out rate

Most popular A-Levels studied (and grade achieved)

B
C
B

After graduation


The stats in this section relate to the general subject area/s at this university – not this specific course. We show this where there isn't enough data about the course, or where this is the most detailed info available to us.

Anthropology

What are graduates doing after six months?

This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.

£20,000
med
Average annual salary
81%
low
Employed or in further education
48%
med
Employed in a role where degree was essential or beneficial

Top job areas of graduates

20%
Other elementary services occupations
10%
Artistic, literary and media occupations
9%
Welfare and housing associate professionals

This is a pretty flexible degree and a good one if you want to keep your options open. Just over 1,250 graduates completed anthropology degrees last year, and they were well spread out across a whole range of jobs — many industries have jobs that can be done by anthropology graduates and unlike a lot of degrees, there aren't many jobs we can point to and say ‘graduates from this degree do that job’. Management, marketing, housing and recruitment jobs are the most popular, though, and many graduates go into the education or social care sectors. Graduates are also rather more likely than average to work in London, or to go overseas to work. This is quite a popular subject at postgraduate level, and if you want to go into research, you'll need to think about postgrad study - and it's one of the few where numbers are on the up at the moment.

Sociology

What are graduates doing after six months?

This is what graduates told us they were doing (and earning), shortly after completing their course. We've crunched the numbers to show you if these immediate prospects are high, medium or low, compared to those studying this subject/s at other universities.

£19,200
med
Average annual salary
90%
low
Employed or in further education
61%
high
Employed in a role where degree was essential or beneficial

Top job areas of graduates

21%
Sales, marketing and related associate professionals
13%
Sales assistants and retail cashiers
10%
Childcare and related personal services

We have quite a lot of sociology graduates, although numbers fell last year. But graduates still do pretty well. Most sociology graduates go straight into work when they complete their degrees, and a lot of graduates go into jobs in social professions such as recruitment, education, community and youth work, and housing. An important option for a sociology graduate is social work - and we're short of people willing to take this challenging but rewarding career. Sociology is a flexible degree and you can find graduates from the subject in pretty much every reasonable job — obviously, you don't find many doctors or engineers, but you do find them in finance, the media, healthcare, marketing and even IT. Sociology graduates taking further study often branch out into other qualifications, like teaching, law, psychology, HR and even maths, so don’t think a sociology degree restricts you to just one set of options.

What about your long term prospects?

Looking further ahead, below is a rough guide for what graduates went on to earn.

Anthropology

The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.

£16k

£16k

£25k

£25k

£27k

£27k

Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.

Sociology

The graph shows median earnings of graduates who achieved a degree in this subject area one, three and five years after graduating from here.

£16k

£16k

£25k

£25k

£27k

£27k

Note: this data only looks at employees (and not those who are self-employed or also studying) and covers a broad sample of graduates and the various paths they've taken, which might not always be a direct result of their degree.

Explore these similar courses...

Higher entry requirements
Durham University | Durham
Anthropology and Sociology
BA (Hons) 3 Years Full-time 2024
UCAS Points: 136-160
Lower entry requirements
University of Oxford | Oxford
Human Sciences
BA (Hons) 3 Years Full-time 2024
UCAS Points: 112-165

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This information comes from the National Student Survey, an annual student survey of final-year students. You can use this to see how satisfied students studying this subject area at this university, are (not the individual course).

This is the percentage of final-year students at this university who were "definitely" or "mostly" satisfied with their course. We've analysed this figure against other universities so you can see whether this is high, medium or low.

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This information is from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), for undergraduate students only.

You can use this to get an idea of who you might share a lecture with and how they progressed in this subject, here. It's also worth comparing typical A-level subjects and grades students achieved with the current course entry requirements; similarities or differences here could indicate how flexible (or not) a university might be.

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Post-six month graduation stats:

This is from the Destinations of Leavers from Higher Education Survey, based on responses from graduates who studied the same subject area here.

It offers a snapshot of what grads went on to do six months later, what they were earning on average, and whether they felt their degree helped them obtain a 'graduate role'. We calculate a mean rating to indicate if this is high, medium or low compared to other universities.

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Graduate field commentary:

The Higher Education Careers Services Unit have provided some further context for all graduates in this subject area, including details that numbers alone might not show

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The Longitudinal Educational Outcomes dataset combines HRMC earnings data with student records from the Higher Education Statistics Agency.

While there are lots of factors at play when it comes to your future earnings, use this as a rough timeline of what graduates in this subject area were earning on average one, three and five years later. Can you see a steady increase in salary, or did grads need some experience under their belt before seeing a nice bump up in their pay packet?

Have a question about this info? Learn more here