The Minor/Certificate in Advocacy and Public Engagement affirms the role of students and scholars as active citizens, community leaders, and partners in empowerment. This minor draws on the Department’s long-standing strengths in Applied Anthropology, or Public Anthropology as it is more generally known today. This sub-field encourages student activism by offering a critical, cross-cultural perspective on major public issues, and demonstrates how to effect change by drawing on political forces outside the discipline.

The Minor/Certificate offers training that employs anthropological perspectives that bridge the academic and non-academic sectors. Recognizing the value of anthropological insights and methods for solving today’s complex social, economic, and environmental topics, the program offers a choice of theoretical informed perspectives on issues and movements related to mental health/disability, the environment, human rights, reproductive rights, refugees/migration, First Nations, race/racism, gender and sexuality. Throughout the program, emphasis is placed upon high impact experiential education (EE) training, including ethnographic community based research and a capstone work placement in an non-governmental organization (NGO) or civil society association context.

The theoretical coursework, ethnographic research skills and experiential education components on activism, advocacy, and/or community outreach will prepare students for careers which may include: working in community relations and development; for government departments and non-governmental organizations, unions, civic associations and international bodies; or in the field of cultural resources management.

Program Requirements

The minor/certificate  program seeks to provide intensive training in the required skills of applied anthropology:

• the ethics of advocacy and advocacy-based research;
• formulating advocacy-based research questions;
• the ethnographic/qualitative field methods to investigate these issues;
• and the public engagement skills by which critical interventions on the basis of that research may be made.

This honours minor/certificate  program in Applied or “Engaged” Anthropology requires 30 credits of which 24 credits are required courses. The program provides two high impact Experiential Education Community Based Research opportunities in which the applied anthropology skill set can be applied in real world context. There is one required course at each year level (2 through 4) plus an additional work placement capstone experience.

The required core courses of the degree are:

ANTH 2210 6.0 Advocacy & Public Engagement introduces the history and practice of applied and engaged research in anthropology, practices the skills necessary for public engagement and media outreach, and explores the challenges of different roles of advocacy, activism, and collaboration.

ANTH 3110 6.0 Acquiring Research Skills provides experiential training in Community-Based Research.

ANTH 4340 6.0 Advocacy & Social Movements provides a capstone small seminar experience focused on the advanced academic theory of social mobilization in a wide variety of institutional contexts.

ANTH 4130 6.0 The Professional Anthropologist is a final placement experience in which the skills and theories acquired in the core coursework is applied in a real world context.