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Anthropology

Honours

Anthropology Honours is an intellectually rewarding and personally fulfilling experience. Intellectually, you will undertake study at a higher level than in your undergraduate degree both in your honours units and when you carry out research for your thesis or dissertation. Personally, the skills acquired during this period will enhance your future career prospects in a broad range of occupations in the public and private sectors, giving you an edge compared with the straight undergraduate degree.

Career

Students who complete Anthropology Honours at Deakin University are eligible for normal membership in the Australian Anthropological Society. Such membership recognises the person's achievement of a sound understanding of issues, theories and methods associated with anthropology as a social science discipline. From this basis, an anthropology honours graduate can pursue further studies towards a higher degree by research (Masters and/or PhD).

What is involved?

The Honours program consists of coursework (worth 4 credit points), and a dissertation of between 15,000 and 16,000 words (worth 4 credit points). Full-time students will complete the program in one academic year; part time students normally take two years. Coursework is usually done before the dissertation.

Coursework

The coursework units are designed to enhance graduate social science research skills, explore the different areas of applied anthropology and facilitate in a collective seminar environment the task of individual thesis completion.

Honours thesis

The Anthropology thesis will normally consist of library based research, but may also include a small element of field research that may require prior research ethics clearance. Taking a topic of particular interest to you, the thesis must demonstrate a solid command of the literature pertinent to a particular problem or topic clearly linked to a sub-field within the discipline of anthropology. The thesis addresses a proposition and presents an argument and conclusion, i.e. your 'thesis'. It is not simply a narration of events or views even though it may well include an important assembling and ordering of such events or views.

Finding a topic

It is important, for your own motivation, that you write on a topic or examine or analyse a problem which interests you. This topic must, however, be viable. This means that the sources it requires must be readily available and not too voluminous to make the task beyond the scope of a dissertation of this length. You should be able to research and write your thesis in six months if you are a full-time student, or one year, if you are part-time.

Your choice of topic must be refined in discussions with the academic staff in your discipline area. The Honours Coordinators will refer you to the member of staff whose interests most closely align with your own.