The MSC in Biosocial Medical
Anthropology is the first program of its
kind in the UK to bring together
Biological, Social and Medical
Anthropology. It responds to an urgent
need to address global healthcare
challenges, such as epidemics and climate
change in relation to the Anthropocene
but also in responding to new and novel
areas of science, such as epigenetics,
human microbiome research, neuroscience,
where the social is being reframed in
particular kinds of ways in relation to
the biological. As a programme, provides you
the opportunity to cover a number of key
areas that we think are relevant to
biosocial approaches.
In term one of the
programme you will develop and understand
the theoretical and conceptual tools
that we think are necessary to address
biosocial developments in mental health, in chronic disease, in thinking about
health inequalities, in thinking about
biosocial difference around ethnicity
and gender, on even aging.
Term two of the
biosocial master's degree is really
focused on mixed methods training, it's
also an opportunity to think about
applied aspects of biosocial research
and how you might incorporate those
biosocial methods into the real world, after
graduation. To this effect, we think
critically about the human relationship
to urban environments and urban
ecologies and we get out onto the
street, actually, to see what the health
landscapes of the London ecology is. So,
we might look at things such as food
choices and food options across the city
but also access to green spaces, to noise
pollution and air pollution but also
places where it's peaceful and we
combine that with neuroscience and
psychology to think about how the brain
and cognition actually operates in
different aspects of the city. So, we
might think about other changes in the
city, policy and government
interventions that impact upon health in
ways we might not expect. For example,
we might look at rising rents,
changes in uncertainty, economic
instability and the way people move
through cities.
The dissertation requires
our master students to engage with both
qualitative and quantitative methods.
To this effect, we give seminars where we
purposely mix different methodologies
in Biosocial Anthropology to think
through how to model health
in the 21st century.
In the Ageing Body seminar, what
we were interested in is how these new
biomedical technologies are extending
our older adults lives longer than we
could ever foretell and the impact that
these biomedical life-extending
technologies have on social
organizations of older adults and their
care and also how these biomedical
technologies are expanding our sense of
what is possible in old age and so
conversations about biological
plasticity and the impact of social and
technological processes on our
biological life spans come up in this
seminar as well.
I also teach on the
Aging Brain and what we're interested in
is thinking about why it is that
Alzheimer's and dementia show up
differently across the globe and why
that's the case. A lot of doctors talk
about having a genetic predisposition to
Alzheimer's and yet, the nurses that I
worked with during my field work at a
retirement community in Los Angeles
would say that often times older adults
who moved into this retirement community
would start to show signs of dementia
and Alzheimer's that they probably
wouldn't have otherwise and that was
because they were moving away from their
family context, they were moving into a
strange institution that had different
rhythms that they were used to and so
they were really interested in thinking
about Alzheimer's not simply as a
biological process but as a a process
that is informed and made complicated by
social practices and, time and place.
So, a biosocial perspective really allows
us to think about Alzheimer's in a way
that is
a process that's affected by social
contexts, political processes as well as
biological processes.
We believe
students who complete the MSc in Biosocial Medical
Anthropology will have
a unique set of skills that will really
equip them for a broad range of careers. This includes not only careers in
academia, whether there are emerging and
important areas of science such as
epigenetics and microbiome research or
neuroscience but also careers in applied
health care areas such as global health,
public health and international development.
These are all areas that really require
a unique and cross-disciplinary set of
skills that this program can provide.
