This programme offers you the opportunity to acquire advanced knowledge of how different societies are influenced by the environment and manage natural resources and hazards, in relation to issues in human ecology, biodiversity management, sustainable development, environmental change and the practical applications of such knowledge. As a graduate of this programme, you will have a range of both practical and evaluative skills, and experience of conducting empirical or other applied research. This allows you to pursue work as a researcher and will inform whatever position you take up in the future. Your expertise will be welcome in a range of organisations including national or international environmental bodies, governmental departments and nongovernmental organisations. This programme aims to: to provide you with a broad range of knowledge in environmental anthropology, a major sub-division of anthropology, showing how it is closely linked to other academic disciplines; to provide you with advanced level knowledge of the theoretical, methodological and policy issues relevant to understanding the subdiscipline; introduce you to a variety of different approaches to environmental anthropology research, presented in a multidisciplinary context and at an advanced level; facilitate your educational experience through the provision of appropriate pedagogical opportunities for learning; provide an appropriate training if you are preparing MPhil/PhD theses, or if you are going on to employment involving the use of research methods and results in environmental anthropology; make you aware of the range of existing material available and equip you to evaluate its utility for your research; cover the principles of research design and strategy, including formulating research questions or hypotheses and translating them into practicable research designs; introduce you to the philosophical, theoretical and ethical issues surrounding research and to debates about the relationship between theory and research, about problems of evidence and inference, and about the limits to objectivity; develop your skills in searching for and retrieving information, using library and internet resources in a multidisciplinary and cross-national context; introduce you to the idea of working with other academic and non-academic agencies, when appropriate, and give you the skills to carry out collaborative research; develop your skills in writing, in the preparation of a research proposal, in the analysis and presentation of research results and in verbal communication; help you to prepare your research results for wider dissemination, in the form of seminar papers, conference presentations, reports and publications, in a form suitable for a range of different audiences, including academics, policymakers, professionals, service users and the general public; give you an appreciation of the potentialities and problems of environmental anthropological research in local, regional, national and international settings; ensure that the research of the Department’s staff informs the design of modules, and their content and delivery in ways that can achieve the national benchmarks of the subject in a manner which is efficient and reliable, and enjoyable to students.