We are a community of committed teacher-scholars and diverse, talented students who come together in the heart of downtown Atlanta. Faculty research agendas are active, with past and current ethnographic, archaeological and museum projects based across Europe (Greece, Italy, Belgium, Russia), the Americas (Mexico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Brazil, Argentina, Peru and the United States) and Africa (Rwanda and South Africa). Our four-field anthropology programs train B.A. and M.A. students in the holistic, comparative and interdisciplinary study of the human experience.

We offer training in basic and applied research – whether students pursue this through fossil analysis in the lab, ethnographic interviewing in the city or internships at archaeological sites and social service organizations. Atlanta, a center of technological innovation, media production, transnational migration and political struggle in the U.S. South, provides a rich context for this work. Such opportunities prepare students for politically responsible and ethically sound applications of empirical knowledge that can be applied in professional fields that include medicine, education, environment, forensics, cultural resource management and business. We also provide rigorous instruction in critical writing and social theory.

Our students and faculty form a community committed to creating knowledge about the broad range of human possibilities across time and place. We aim to humanize differences and to bring new understanding and critique to persistent forms of inequality. Our work includes striving to recognize, affirm and communicate effectively about the many forms of diversity – cultural, racial/ethnic, class, sexual/gender, religious and regional – that shape our encounters in Atlanta and the world. We also work to support diversity at Georgia State through the recruitment of graduate students and faculty from groups historically underrepresented in higher education.