Undergraduate Course: Medical Anthropology (BIME10063)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh Medical School |
College | College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course introduces students in Medical/Biomedical Sciences and intercalating MBChB programmes to anthropological perspectives on health, illness, and healthcare, showing how culture, history, politics, and environments shape medical practice and patient experience. The course demonstrates how social science insights complement biomedical knowledge to enhance clinical care, public health interventions, and health policy. No prior anthropology courses are required.
Students will explore how different forms of evidence¿biomedical and ethnographic¿are produced, interpreted, and combined, developing critical thinking, reflexivity, cultural humility, and patient-centred approaches to care. Through key debates and case studies, the course examines cultural and historical variations in illness experience, medicalisation and diagnosis, medical pluralism, and One Health. It also addresses global and planetary health challenges, including infectious disease control, end-of-life care, and the health impacts of climate change and environmental degradation.
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| Course description |
Modern healthcare is shaped not only by biology and technology, but also by culture, history, politics, environments, and patients¿ lived experiences. This course introduces students to Medical Anthropology, a fast-growing field within the social sciences, and shows how its insights strengthen core competencies of healthcare practitioners, including critical thinking, reflexivity, cultural humility, and compassionate, patient-centred care.
Designed for students in Medical/Biomedical Sciences and intercalating MBChB programmes, the course shows how anthropological insights complement biomedical knowledge to improve patient care, public health interventions, and health policy. No prior knowledge of anthropology is assumed. Students are supported to understand biomedical and qualitative research as different ways of generating evidence, including the strengths and limitations of the different approaches, and how they can complement each other.
The course highlights the relevance of medical anthropology to clinical practice and fields including Global Health, Planetary Health, and One Health. Students are introduced to ethnographic research methods and key debates in the field, with a focus on how social, environmental, and structural factors shape patterns of health and illness. Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on how clinicians can use these insights to improve communication, build trust, and deliver care that is culturally safe, context-sensitive, and effective.
Anthropological perspectives are applied to pressing issues in contemporary medicine, including:
¿ Cultural and historical variations in experiences and explanations of illness, trauma, and emotional distress
¿ Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for clinical practice, public trust, and global health responses
¿ Medical pluralism and how biomedicine itself is practiced differently across settings
¿ Medicalisation and diagnosis through case studies such as PTSD and ADHD
¿ The local realities shaping the success or failure of global health initiatives, including infectious disease control
¿ Death, dying, and end-of-life care across diverse cultural contexts
¿ Health challenges posed by extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, and pollution
Through these examples, students will learn how medical anthropology contributes to One Health and planetary health thinking, revealing how human health is inseparable from social systems, animal health, and environmental conditions.
This course follows a scaffolded, student-informed approach, beginning with familiar clinical encounters and progressing to more complex and less familiar contexts. Learning activities include seminars and tutorials, including an essay-writing workshop. The course further includes two museum excursions where students learn to write fieldnotes about museum displays which forms the basis of their assignments.
By the end of the course, students will be better equipped to engage with diverse groups of patients and communities, understand social aspects of health and medicine, and use interdisciplinary perspectives to improve healthcare outcomes in an increasingly complex, globalised, and environmentally challenged world.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- demonstrate a critical understanding of the principal theories, concepts and methodologies underpinning medical anthropology.
- apply critical reflection and anthropological perspectives when working with people, texts and materials.
- evaluate and synthesise a range of sources to develop original, creative and well-evidenced arguments.
- demonstrate initiative and independent learning when engaging with and assessing anthropological debates.
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Reading List
Hamdy, Sherine (2013): Not quite dead: why Egyptian doctors refuse the diagnosis of death by neurological criteria. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics. 34(2):147-160.
Heinemann, Laura Lynn (2014): For the sake of others: Reciprocal webs of obligation and the pursuit of transplant as a caring act. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 28(1):66-84.
Helman, Cecil (2007): Culture, Health and Illness. 5th Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lambert, Helen and McKevitt, Chris (2002): Anthropology in health research: from qualitative methods to multidisciplinarity. British Medical Journal 325:210.
Lock, Margret and Nguyen, Vinh-Kim (2010): An Anthropology of Biomedicine. Wiley-Blackwell.
MacArtney, John and Wahlberg, Ayo (2014): The Problem of Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Today: Eyes Half Closed? Qualitative Health Research 24(1):1-10.
Manderson, Leonore, Cartwright, Elizabeth, and Hardon, Anita (2016): The Routledge Handbook of Medical Anthropology. New York/Oxon: Routledge.
Martin, Emily (1991): The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Role. Signs 16(3):485-501.
Napier, David (2020): Rethinking vulnerability through COVID-19. Anthropology Today 36(3): 1-2.
Reynolds Whyte, Susan, van der Geest, Sjaak, and Hardon, Anita (2002): Social Lives of Medicines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Street, Alice (2014): Medicine in an Unstable Place: Infrastructure and Personhood in a Papua-New Guinean Hospital. Durham (NC): Duke University Press.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
1. Critically evaluate and synthesise academic literature and other sources to develop original, creative and well-evidenced arguments. Throughout the course students will be challenged to be self-reflexive and re-evaluate previously held assumptions.
2. Effectively communicate their arguments to other (verbally and in writing), give and receive constructive feedback, and follow ground rules of respectful academic discussion. Students will also have learned how to identify useful literature using appropriate library sources and online search engines and how to use references and create a bibliography in the social sciences.
3. Collaborate on tasks, take on responsibilities in a team (small groups or tutorial groups) and engage in group discussions. Students will be expected to be able to do independent research and develop their own questions and arguments which they will have demonstrated in their essay.
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| Keywords | Medical Anthropology,cross-cultural perspectives,ethnography,social aspects of medicine |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Hannah McNeilly
Tel:
Email: hlesshaf@exseed.ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Sam Fisher
Tel: (0131 6)50 3160
Email: sam.fisher@ed.ac.uk |
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