• Diversity & Development in a Sociological Perspective
  This first semester course exemplifies how anthropologists can critically analyse societies by exploring how people think about human differences and how they relate this to processes of change, both in their personal lives and their communities. This course is key to understanding differences and how inequalities are created.
   
• Mediated Anthropology 
  This course is about the roles that media play in gathering, processing, and presenting knowledge. It explores how anthropologists can use images and objects to communicate with, and the significance nowadays of digital communication and social networks. The course is an introduction to the visual and multimodal approaches that form part of Leiden's signature methodology of the international bachelor's programme in Anthropology 

• Key issues
  The three key issue courses in the second year will help you understand the deeply rooted connections between politics, economy, the environment and digital media, from what can sometimes be surprising perspectives. For example, the link between Fair Trade merchandising and land grabbing in Africa, or between fashion and social media and the emancipation of female Muslims, racism and national heritage, or tourism and halal consumption. They will hone your analytical skills and give you the necessary content knowledge to optimally tailor your third year.
  
  All second-year students follow the Key Issue Diversity & Power. Depending on your chosen specialisation you will follow two more Key Issues. Within the specialisation Sustainable Societies (SuSo) you will follow the Key Issues Economy & Ecology and States & Citizens. If you choose the Digital & Audiovisual Ethnography (DAE) specialisation, the Key Issues Visual Anthropology and Digital Anthropology. 

As of the coming academic year (2024 - 2025) Sustainable Societies (SuSo) will change to People, Power and Planet (PPP) and Digital & Audiovisual Ethnography (DAE) will become Media Making Movements (MMM). 

• Medical Anthropology

  What is medical anthropology and how do medical anthropologists study health, illness and the body? This course will offer a broad introduction to the field of medical anthropology. We will study meanings and experiences of illness and health from an anthropological perspective and we will examine the ways in which local and global forces affect illness, suffering, pain, and healing.

• Visual methods in the Digital World 
  This course provides a general theoretical introduction to visual methods, as well as hands on training regarding the anthropological use of video and photography. You are introduced to the ways in which photography and video can be used in anthropological research through a series of ethnographic research assignments and the design of a multimodal website.

You can choose from a series of electives offered by the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology or by other institutes. These allow you to broaden or deepen your study.  For more information on electives, see the prospectus.

You also have the possibility to choose between more than 30 minors, covering topics from Culture and Society in Morocco to Museums, Heritage and Collections to Religion in a Changing World. In this way, you create your own unique study path that will fit your future perfectly.

More information about minors can be found here. 

Within the programme in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology you are encouraged to study abroad for a semester, or do an internship in a museum, company, NGO or fund-raising organisation in the Netherlands or abroad. Our study-abroad- and internship coordinator will help you make the right choices, give you practical advice and arrange for a staff member to act as your supervisor. 

More information on studying abroad can be found here.