As a Department, we are committed to helping our staff, students and faculty find ways to navigate the unprecedented crisis that the Global COVID-19 Pandemic has brought upon us all. Knowing that many in our community will be facing serious challenges in the days, weeks, and months to come we hope that we can find ways to support each other in these uncertain times. – Read more

Professors Abigail Bigham (Undergraduate Vice Chair), Jason Throop (Department Chair), and Erin Debenport (Graduate Vice Chair)

There has never been a better time to study anthropology — nor a better place to study it than UCLA. Examining the complexity of the human experience, past and present, our discipline encompasses the full sweep of the world’s cultures across time.

Anthropologists investigate such challenging questions as how humans evolved and came to adapt to diverse environments, what led to the rise of urban life, what causes disease and death, how people imbue their lives with meaning, and how language reflects and shapes social life. Anthropology seeks to draw back the curtain on humankind’s most vexing problems from intractable political conflicts to the human consequences of globalization. Anthropologists also study such contemporary issues as how the new media influences the ways we experience the world and how individuals and families balance the increasingly diverse demands in their lives. – Read more