Anthropology offers hands-on engagement with the world beyond the classroom. As an undergraduate, you’ll have opportunities to participate in research projects, lab work, field schools, study abroad, and internships. Faculty support you in gaining foundational knowledge while developing cultural competencies, analytical skills, and social empathy. These experiences help you build essential skills like critical thinking, collaboration, and effective communication in a globalized world.
In the anthropology department, undergraduate research takes place in the classroom, in the lab, and in the field. Faculty run research projects, create research opportunities as part of their own research programs, and invite proposals and ideas from students in the form of independent research classes.
There are many ways that you can get involved in faculty projects, gain valuable research experience, develop your own ideas, and learn to present your findings.
Course-based research
Our faculty routinely bring their work into the classroom, providing opportunities for students to learn from and help to extend research. Our Advanced Research Methods classes are typically designed to offer students the ability to produce their own research or work directly with the faculty and their collaborators. Many faculty will continue working with students after the classroom in the following ways:
Faculty research assistants
As students and faculty build collaborative relationships, students may have opportunities to work with faculty on research projects outside the classroom. These opportunities can come in various forms, including voluntary positions, independent studies, or even paid roles. By participating, students can contribute to the creation of anthropological knowledge, develop valuable research skills, and gain insight into the research and publication processes.
Students are encouraged to connect with faculty whose teaching and research interest them. Additionally, faculty may occasionally announce research opportunities through the department, particularly when new grants are received, and invite applications on an ad-hoc basis.
Independent research
Advanced undergraduate students may also develop and propose their own research projects with faculty or advanced graduate student mentors. These projects may involve independent reading, archival research, ethnographic work, laboratory work, spatial analysis, and so on. Research structure, process, and “products” are agreed upon between the student and faculty sponsor as part of a credited independent research course. Products might include a term paper, an op-ed or other type of public writing, an annotated bibliography, a conference paper, a photovoice project, a poster presentation, or other agreed format that can showcase research findings.
Internships can be excellent opportunities for students to develop skills and knowledge while gaining real-world experience. When thoughtfully arranged, internships can be of great benefit to both student-interns and the organizations that they work with.
We encourage anthropology students to find engaging, for-credit internships and to apply for scholarships and funding to support this work.
Locating internships:
Anthropology students can develop internships in the following ways:
- apply for anthropology-related internships offered by our department and/or facutly
- develop your own internships with community organizations, businesses, non-profits, etc.
- work with career services to find internship opportunities
Getting credit for your internship:
To earn academic credit for your internship in any of the mentioned categories, you must secure a faculty sponsor and establish an agreement outlining the internship's terms, including the type of work you'll be involved in and how it aligns with your goals. The internship must include an academic component, such as a research paper, a series of reflections, or another project, to justify receiving academic credit.
Internships eligible for credit may be counted as general university credits or, if sponsored by an anthropology faculty member, as credits toward the anthropology major.
To register an internship for credit, you must login to Handshake and submit an internship experience contract.
Getting funding for your internship:
Community-based summer program internships often receive departmental funding, although the amount can vary from year to year. Other internships may offer stipends or are paid, while others may be unpaid.
Internship funding may also be found through the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences. To see what internship funding (and funding in general) you are eligible for, make sure to register for Academic Works.
Anthropology-related internships:
Community-based summer internship program
This internship program connects students with local social justice, movement-based organizations, that are working to support and create community autonomy. They are designed to build upon and develop anthropological thinking, methods, and skills and forge deeper relationships between the university and community groups.
Previous Internships placements have included:
- the Center for Economic Democracy;
- the Resistance Center;
- the New Economy Coalition; and,
- Wellspring Cooperatives.
Internships take place over the course of the summer with an optional but encouraged credited, academic component occurring in the summer or fall. Please see Boone Shear for more information.
Alumni and friends internships
These internships are geared towards collaboration with the department and anthropology majors. Interns work with organizations that have strong alumni and/or departmental ties who prioritize anthropology majors. They are designed to build upon and develop anthropological thinking, methods, and skills and forge deeper relationships with the department and our alumni and friends. Current alumni and friends internship partners include:
- The Peace Development Fund
- Wellspring Cooperatives
- Witness Stones Project
- Mad Gab’s Natural Body Care Products
W.E.B. Du Bois Center internships
In conjunction with Professor of Anthropology Whitney Battle-Baptiste, the anthropology department periodically offers credited internships that both practically and intellectually engage with the W.E.B. Du Bois Center. Du Bois center interns will participate in managing the Dubois Center’s day-to-day operations, will learn public relations and develop interpersonal skills, and will collaborate with other stakeholders in advancing the Dubois center’s activities and mission. In addition, interns will engage in a research project aimed at exploring the intellectual legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois and/or promoting the Du Bois center.
Faculty internships
These internships enable students to work with faculty on their ongoing or limited-time projects. Often these are run and listed as independent studies and have their own negotiated or pre-existing set of academic components. Other times these are categorized as research assistantships of various kinds and come with independent study credit.
Anthropology majors are encouraged to take advantage of study abroad opportunities that can enhance their interests, develop their skills, and provide cross-cultural encounters.
The International Programs Office (IPO) is a portal into international education opportunities. IPO develops exchange and partner agreements with many institutions and programs and offers advising and guidance to help you find programs and coursework that best fit your interests and goals.
In advance of meeting with IPO staff, you can explore potential programs through IPO’s searchable database. For example, here is a link to programs that UMass has partner agreements with that offer anthropology courses.
The UMass Alliance for Community Transformation (UACT) is a participatory organization of the UMass Department of Anthropology. UACT builds the capacity for diverse, solidaristic, deeply relational, community-based social justice work.
UACT cultivates partnerships with diverse programs and organizations working toward social, economic, racial, and environmental justice on the UMass campus, throughout Massachusetts, and in several other areas of the United States. We engage diverse social justice organizers as educators and partners in building a new generation of diverse, knowledgeable, sensitive, community-oriented, and highly skilled social justice activists. Our work is a form of public/engaged anthropology.
UACT is coordinated by student leaders, all of whom are alumni of our curricular programs. These leaders work together with the faculty director to manage all aspects of our programs, including classroom facilitation, curriculum design, alternative spring breaks, facilitation training, community, activist engagement curriculum, and new community partnerships.
UACT’s core course is ANTHRO 380: Grassroots Community Organizing.
Building Solidarity Economies (BSE) is an assemblage of classes, projects, internships, and engaged research efforts including:
- Anthropology 340 Other Economies are Possible;
- Anthropology 341 Building Solidarity Economies;
- the community-based summer internship program; and,
- the Mutual Aid Project.
BSE is assembled and designed to teach, learn about, research, and build relationships that can strengthen solidarity economies—initiatives and movements that put people and the planet before profit.
Anthropology 341 Building Solidarity Economies is the central, 6-credit praxis-based course in BSE. In Spring 2022, the class worked with and learned from the Coalition for Worker Ownership and Power (CoWOP). Students worked in “pods” on research projects collaboratively designed with CoWOP that will help facilitate relationship building and support policy campaigns. BSE also worked with Common Share Food Cooperative--an effort to bring a full service, inclusive, worker-owned/consumer owned hybrid cooperative grocery to Amherst. Students worked to support Common Shares efforts to reach the 1000-member threshold needed to begin to build the store, and researched other food cooperatives who employ hybrid models, learning qualitative research techniques in the process.
“Through BSE and the Mutual Aid Project I have learned how to engage with my community and larger coalitions to understand what alternatives to capitalism mean to people as they exist right now. I've been able to exercise my research, interviewing, coalition building, writing, event planning skills and more.”
—Anthropology major Quinn Kinney '23
The Mutual Aid Project
The Mutual Aid Project is a joint project between faculty and students, and between BSE (Building Solidarity Economies) in anthropology and the Community Scholars Program in Civic Engagement and Service Learning. The Mutual Aid Project researches mutual aid theory and practice and facilitates mutual aid projects.
The central organizing mechanism of the Mutual Aid Project is the regularly held Thingswap. People bring clothes, food, household items, art, and conversations. They teach each other skills and build relationships between individuals and organizations.
For more information about BSE or the Mutual Aid Project, contact Boone W. Shear.
We encourage students to participate in field schools anywhere in the world, covering topics from archaeology to ethnography to primatology, and more!
Our Field School AN 588:
Our anthropology department currently runs AN 588 Field And Laboratory Methods In Bioarchaeology And Forensic Anthropology during summer session I. Dr. Ventura Pérez is the Director and Dr. Sarah Reedy serves as Faculty.
This course introduces students to the role of the biological anthropologist, archaeologist, and forensic scientist in excavations of human remains. This field school is particularly unique because we work in collaboration with the UMass Chan Medical School’s Division of Translational Anatomy and Anatomical Gift Program. Students will also receive lectures from experts in political science, federal Indian law, historical archaeology, the U.S. State Department, and law enforcement.
The course will be divided into three units. The first unit will introduce students to field and laboratory techniques, including osteology, recognizing what constitutes bioarchaeological or forensic data, and violence theory. Students will participate in lectures and lab exercises at both UMass Amherst and at the UMass Chan Medical School. The second unit will consist of excavations of a pseudo-crime scene and pseudo-archaeological burial. The third unit will focus on laboratory techniques used to analyze the biological profile and write the lab report of the two excavation sites, as well as the design and build of the following year’s burial sites. Throughout the course, we will explore key concepts in ethics, violence theory, socio-cultural constructs left on the body, repatriation, medicolegal death investigation, and regulations regarding unmarked burials.
Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. Please follow the link above for more details and to apply.