It’s that time of year when prospective students start exploring the broad inventory of university courses on offer to find the right fit. Many will be drawn to Anthropology at Cambridge – and with very good reason.
 

We are consistently placed among the world’s leading institutions for the study of Anthropology, most recently maintaining a second-place subject ranking in the influential 2026 Complete University Guide.

The University of Cambridge at large held onto the Guide’s top spot again this year in the overall UK league table. Cambridge appears in 42 of its top ten subject tables and is the number one place to study in 26 of those.
 

These results complement other excellent rankings for Anthropology at Cambridge in 2025/26. We maintained our third place in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2025 – the most widely read global league table in the world. We have retained a top three ranking in this important guide over the past decade.

For 2025, we also secured the maximum possible Academic Reputation indicator of 100. This measure of the reputation of institutions and their programmes asks academic experts to nominate universities based on their subject area of expertise.

For the third year running, Cambridge also held first place for Anthropology and Archaeology in the Guardian University Guide 2025. We were the only institution to achieve the maximum rating of excellence, a feat upheld since 2023.
 

At undergraduate level, Social Anthropology at Cambridge is studied as part of the BA (Hons) Human, Social and Political Sciences (HSPS), an interdisciplinary degree – or Tripos as it’s known in Cambridge – run jointly with Politics and International Relations, and Sociology. This unique degree is only offered at the University of Cambridge.