Welcome to the Department of Anthropology

A Message from the Chair

Welcome to the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria, an institution located on the traditional lands of the Coast Salish and Straits Salish peoples, whose primacy on the land we acknowledge.

Anthropologists have a saying that their work is "to make the strange seem familiar, and the familiar seem strange." Whereas once that meant studying the lifeways of small-scale societies, nowadays you are as likely to find an anthropologist studying the social dynamics of investment banking or the formation of communities through social media.