Masters Programme

The SRU MA course provides coverage of the three regions (taught in three separate modules) and a core module focused on general theoretical and methodological issues and on museum anthropology. Through lectures and coursework, the course explores some of the following themes: Architecture, cosmology and organisation of space | Representations of power and legitimacy | Ceremonial practices | Spirits and ancestors: the interface of politics, ideology and art | Valuables, exchange and the market | Production, style and the role of the artist | Ethnographic museums and display | Current perspectives on collecting and museums | The agency of objects. There is a strong emphasis throughout the course on cross-cultural comparison and examination of contemporary theory.

MA course assignments are: six regional essays (a Gallery Talk essay and Seminar Paper for each of the three regions), a Museology Essay and a Dissertation. The 15,000-word dissertation is an important part of the course, allowing students to work intensively on a topic of their choice, possibly as a precursor to doctoral research.

Regional modules
Three 12-week regional modules run during the academic year. Within each module, faculty members deliver a lecture series that provides students with an overview of each region’s visual material, while also covering the main methodological and theoretical issues raised in the area literature. These lectures provide the background against which two assignments are chosen, prepared and delivered by students: a Gallery Talk (a 2,000-word essay on an artwork in the Sainsbury Collection) and a Research Seminar (4,000-word essay). Each student receives two personal tutorials for each assignment. Practical instruction is provided in presentation and teaching techniques, so that students become experienced in presenting written and visual material to an academic audience.

Core Course
Weekly core-course lectures are delivered throughout the academic year. These cover disciplinary and theoretical approaches, as well as cross-cultural topics such as Value and Agency. During the second semester there is a focus on museums and material culture studies, including the history of collecting, cultural property, object handling and conservation, exhibitions and display, fakes and authenticity, the art market, repatriation debates, cataloguing and documentation. MA students also collaborate to prepare, as a practical exercise, an exhibition display case in the Robert Sainsbury Library.

Museum study visits
MA students undertake study visits to the British Museum in London, the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge. A longer 3-day trip to either Paris or Scottish museums takes place in the Spring. SRU alumni work as curators in several of these museums. These museological aspects of the course are examined by a Museology Essay (2,000 words) in May.

Supplementary sessions
These provide training in research techniques, bibliographic research, computing, work presentation, object handling, editing, design and other professional matters. There are also regular seminars at the SRU and the Department of Art History, with presentations by SRU faculty, students and visiting speakers.

Americas Module
This module examines the distinctive arts and cultures of the Americas. Lectures, discussions, readings and assignments provide an overview of selected indigenous traditions of the New World – both ethnographic and archaeological – with a focus on their remarkable achievements and material things, including architecture, sculpture, ceramics, metalwork, basketry and textiles. We will examine how scholars have interpreted them as ‘arts,’ using a range of approaches and viewpoints. The Sainsbury Centre and its assemblage of objects from different parts of the Americas are crucial in the teaching of the module. There is a special focus on how Amerindian cultures can be studied on the basis of shared dimensions in cosmology, organisation and aesthetics. We will highlight ways that objects inform about the people and societies who produced them, particularly in terms of negotiating identity, ritual practices and socio-political status. We will also have documentary films to illustrate and analyse the close relations between art, performance and socio-cosmological meanings. 

Africa Module
This module considers the arts and artefacts produced in Africa in the past thousand years or more. As in the rest of the course, we will focus on the methodological and theoretical issues involved in the analysis and display of objects. We will also use anthropological approaches, historical sources, and theories on the use and disposal of material culture, including its deployment in local ritual and political systems in the form of masks, images, textiles and regalia. We aim, through a strong archaeological backbone, to make students reflect on the ‘fourth dimension’, time, in their consideration of objects. By the end of the course, students should be familiar with social and historical developments in sub-Saharan Africa as evidenced by material remains and be aware of the difficulties (both ethical and practical) in understanding and caring for artefacts. 

Oceania Module
Examining ‘art’ in the diversity of its forms (visual, aural, kinetic, tactile), this part of the course will provide a working knowledge of the distinctive cultural traditions and histories of Oceania. Through lectures, discussions, readings, assignments and films, we will address the history of the region and some of the central conceptual issues that have arisen in the study of Oceanic sensorial ‘things’ (sculptures, architecture, textiles, paintings, ceramics, dance, chants). The aim of this module is to draw on interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies, particularly from anthropology, archaeology, art history and ethnohistory. After an introduction to the region, we will discuss the historical engagements of Pacific communities with Euro-America. These encounters will be examined with a particular eye to the various routes by which the ‘arts’ of Pacific communities moved into museums and collections. There will also be intensive surveys of Oceania’s various ‘art’ forms found in Melanesia, Polynesia and Australia, historical and contemporary. These surveys will be supplemented by case studies on West Papua, Fiji and Australia.

In the interests of equality, the SRU charges the same fees for all MA students, UK and International, which is set at the UK fees level. For the 2025/26 MA Course, the course fees will be £10,675.

Scholarships to cover fees, living expenses and travel are available. All applicants who are accepted for a place on the MA course are considered for scholarship funding. Please see MA Funding for details.

We welcome enquiries concerning any aspect of the MA programme. Please contact the SRU Admissions Office for information or to discuss your interests.

MA Applicants should have, or be about to complete, a good undergraduate degree in anthropology, archaeology, art history or a related subject. Exceptions, such as candidates with extensive museum experience, may also be considered.

Applicants wishing to be considered for SRU funding should apply no later than 20 March for the course starting in September that year. Potential applicants are encouraged to get in touch with the SRU Admissions Officeand apply as early as possible. Applications after 20 March may be considered, depending on available places. 

Application forms and course details may be obtained from the SRU Admissions Office or apply online below:

Apply for a Postgraduate Taught Master's Course