Resource Guide
Research Project Ideas in Anthropology for High School Students
Specific, comparative questions across social organisation, ritual and belief, identity and power, and medical anthropology, with guidance on using ethnographic literature rigorously.
How to Use This List
Anthropology asks what it means to be human by studying human diversity: how different societies organise themselves, make meaning, and solve the common problems of social life in strikingly different ways. A research project in anthropology takes a specific question about that diversity and investigates it through ethnographic literature, comparative analysis, and theoretical engagement.
The key anthropological move is defamiliarisation: treating practices that seem natural or inevitable as culturally specific choices, and practices that seem alien as locally coherent. A project that achieves this, using the comparative evidence that ethnography provides, is doing real anthropological thinking. Our guide to writing a research question helps frame a focused comparative enquiry.
Choose a Method Before a Topic
The choice that decides whether a project is feasible is the method, not the topic. Every question below is tagged with one of these four routes.
Ethnographic reading
Take one published ethnography and read it closely: what the anthropologist saw, what they inferred, and where the inference outruns the evidence. This is the discipline’s core skill, and doing it on a single book beats summarising ten.
One ethnography, read properly rather than skimmed.
Comparative analysis
Set two or three societies side by side on one practice and ask what varies, what holds, and what that implies. Comparison is how anthropology generates claims, and it is achievable entirely from published accounts.
Two or three ethnographies covering the same practice.
Literature review
For theoretical questions, trace how anthropologists have explained something and assess which account survives scrutiny. Anthropology argues with itself productively, and mapping that argument is real work.
JSTOR or your library, and a way to keep the positions straight.
Local fieldwork
Original fieldwork is possible but carries the discipline’s heaviest obligations: informed consent, the right to withdraw, anonymisation, and school approval before you begin. Anyone under 18 needs parental consent, and you should not study classmates or family without going through your school. Anthropology has a difficult history here, which is exactly why the rules are strict.
School permission first, then consent. Assume this takes weeks, not days.
Ideas by Sub-Field
Social organisation & kinship
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How do different societies organise family and kinship, and what social work does kinship do beyond biology?
Comparative analysis Intermediate
Output: A comparison of kinship systems across two or three published ethnographies
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What does the anthropology of gift exchange reveal about economic behaviour that markets obscure?
Ethnographic reading Intermediate
Output: A close reading of Mauss alongside one modern ethnography, with the argument tested
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How do different communities define and manage the boundary between kin and non-kin?
Comparative analysis Advanced
Output: A comparison drawing out what varies and what appears to hold constant
Ritual, belief & culture
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What social functions do ritual practices serve, and how does anthropology distinguish them from practical action?
Ethnographic reading Intermediate
Output: An analysis applying a named theory of ritual to one documented case
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How have anthropologists explained the cultural diversity of religious belief, and how convincing are those explanations?
Literature review Advanced
Output: An assessment of competing explanations and what each fails to account for
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What does a close reading of ethnographic accounts of a specific cultural practice reveal about underlying values?
Ethnographic reading Intermediate
Output: A close reading of one ethnography with its interpretive claims made explicit
Identity, power & the state
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How is ethnicity constructed and mobilised, and what does anthropology reveal about its social rather than biological nature?
Literature review Advanced
Output: A review distinguishing primordialist from constructivist accounts, with cases
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What do ethnographies of bureaucracy reveal about how states are experienced by those who live with them?
Ethnographic reading Advanced
Output: An analysis of two ethnographies of state institutions
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How have indigenous communities negotiated identity and rights in relation to nation-states?
Literature review Advanced
Output: A case-based review with the legal and historical context set out
Medical & environmental anthropology
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How do cultural beliefs shape the experience and treatment of illness in a particular community?
Ethnographic reading Intermediate
Output: An analysis of published medical ethnography on one community
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What does medical anthropology reveal about the social determinants of health beyond the clinical perspective?
Literature review Intermediate
Output: A review connecting anthropological findings to public-health evidence
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How do different communities understand and relate to the natural environment, and what are the practical consequences?
Comparative analysis Intermediate
Output: A comparison of environmental knowledge systems with the consequences drawn out
Taking Cultural Diversity Seriously
What makes anthropology intellectually distinctive is its insistence on taking the practices and beliefs of other societies seriously on their own terms, before evaluating them. That discipline of understanding before judging is harder than it sounds, and applying it consistently to a research question produces a kind of cultural analysis that is genuinely rare at school level.
A mentor helps a student engage with ethnographic literature carefully, avoid the common pitfall of projecting their own assumptions onto other societies, and write with the measured, comparative register that anthropological analysis demands. That skill, taking cultural diversity seriously as data, transfers well to medicine, international relations, law, and many social science fields.
Taking a Question Further
Anthropology overlaps with sociology, history, medicine, and politics. For related guides, see our companion pages on sociology and medicine, our Humanities & Media field page, and our broader research project ideas across all six fields. When you are ready to develop a project with a mentor who works in the field, the Research Scholar programme is built for exactly that.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does anthropology research look like at school level?
Anthropology at school level is mostly desk-based: analysing ethnographic literature, comparing how different societies handle a common human challenge, or examining the anthropological dimensions of a cultural practice or institution. Original fieldwork, such as conducting ethnographic interviews, is possible with careful design but is not required for a strong project.
What is the difference between social and cultural anthropology?
Social anthropology focuses on social organisation, kinship, politics, and institutions; cultural anthropology emphasises meaning, symbols, beliefs, and cultural practices. In practice, the two overlap substantially at the research level, and most university departments teach them together. Both use ethnography as their primary method and share a comparative, cross-cultural perspective.
What background do I need?
None specific. Students arrive through history, biology, philosophy, or languages. What matters is genuine curiosity about human diversity and a willingness to suspend the assumption that one's own cultural practices are normal or natural. A mentor introduces the theoretical frameworks and ethnographic literature the project needs.
Is anthropology useful for university applications?
Directly for anthropology, archaeology, and social science courses, and valuable for medicine (the cultural dimensions of health), law (legal anthropology and rights), development, and international relations applications. The anthropological perspective, taking culture seriously as a shaping force, is genuinely distinctive in application pools dominated by more conventional social science approaches.
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