Curriculum and Career Prospects

Through structured learning, our courses provide direction for building meaningful careers

Research

Data Analysis

If you’re considering careers where decisions must be justified with evidence – UX research, market insights, policy evaluation, programme monitoring, or research roles – this domain gives you a strong foundation to investigate social worlds rigorously. You’ll learn how to design studies, collect and interpret qualitative and quantitative data, and communicate findings clearly to different audiences, skills that travel across the public sector, private industry, and civil society.

Courses include:
AN2101 Research Methods in Anthropology
SC2101 Methods of Social Research
SC3209 Data Analysis in Social Research
SC3221 Qualitative Inquiry

Public Sector and Policy

Development, Urbanization and Mobility

If you’re drawn to big questions about cities, development, and migration, this domain helps you connect “macro” forces to everyday experiences on the ground. It’s especially relevant for students interested in urban planning, community development, education initiatives, and migration-related work, including roles in government, consultancies, and NGOs.

Courses include:
AN3208 Critiquing Development
AN4210 Urban Anthropology
SC3204 Sociology of Education
SC3206 Urban Sociology
SC3227 Modernity and Social Change
SC4210 Sociology of Migration
SC4882B Citizenship, Nation and Globalization

Governance and Law

If you’re considering careers in governance, justice, policy, compliance, or community safety, this domain builds the analytical toolkit to understand how rules, power, and institutions shape real lives. You’ll examine law in everyday life, deviance and social control, policing and security, and the social dynamics of authority and legitimacy, useful in public administration, regulatory work, and justice-sector organisations.

Courses include:
SC2212 Sociology of Deviance
SC3205 Sociology of Power: Who Gets to Rule
SC3215 Law and Society
SC4880D Policing and Security: Past, Present and Future
HS2916 Love that Kills

Health, Wellbeing and Population

If you want to work in healthcare, public health, ageing services, or social services, this domain helps you see beyond purely biomedical explanations to the social realities that shape health outcomes. You’ll explore mental health, emotions, ageing, drugs and society, and population issues, giving you the perspective needed for service design, community health programmes, and policy/evaluation work that actually fits how people live.

Courses include:
AN2208 Biocultural Perspectives on Health and Wellbeing
SC2208 Population and Society
SC2211 Medical Sociology
SC2216 Emotions and Social Life
SC2226 Sociology of Mental Health
SC4220 Aging and Health
GEN2008 Purposeful and Productive Aging in Community
HS2915 Beyond the Good and Evil of Drugs

Private Sector and Industry

Digital Life, AI and Technology

If you’re curious about AI, digital platforms, and technological change and want to work at the intersection of people and technology, this domain trains you to ask the “so what?” questions that responsible tech work depends on. You’ll learn how technologies shape identities, relationships, institutions, and inequalities, preparing you for pathways in tech governance, responsible AI, user research, and innovation-and-society roles.

Courses include:
AN3209 Anthropology of Technology
SC3210 AI and Society
SC3211 Science, Technology and Society

Economies, Work and Organizations

If you’re considering careers in consulting, HR, organisational development, market research, or finance/risk, this domain gives you a “people-in-systems” lens for understanding workplaces, organisations, markets, and crises. You’ll explore how networks and institutions shape economic life, why cultures of work matter, and how financial disruptions have social origins and consequences, insights that are valuable across many corporate and public-sector settings.

Courses include:
SC2202 Sociology of Work
SC2209 Money, Business and Social Networks
SC3226 Markets and Society
SC4203 Sociology of Organizations
SC4219 Social Origins and Consequences of Financial Crises
AN4206 Political Economy of Music

Media and Creative Industries

If you’re considering a career in creative industries, media, communications, content strategy, cultural organisations, or audience research, this domain builds critical skills and industry-relevant knowledge. You’ll learn to analyse popular culture and visual storytelling, understand how cultural production is shaped by power and policy, and develop strong interpretive and communication skills, useful for media strategy, cultural management, and public-facing work.

Courses include:
AN2204 Media Anthropology
AN3206 Visual Culture
AN4201 Cultural Production: Power, Voice, Policies
SC2229 K-drama and Sociological Imagination
SC3213 Visual Ethnography: Theory and Practice
SC4205 Sociology of Language and Communication

Civil Society and Community

Culture, Community and Everyday Life

If you enjoy understanding people “where they are” – in communities, cultural spaces, and everyday routines – this domain is for you. It develops cultural literacy and ethnographic sensitivity that’s especially useful for community development, heritage/cultural work, education and outreach, events/ tourism, and social impact programmes. You’ll explore how meaning and belonging are made through food, ritual, senses, sport, storytelling, and the uncanny.

Courses include:
AN2202 Culture and Society
AN2203 Peoples and Cultures of Southeast Asia
AN2205 Food and Foodways
AN3205 Ritual, Performance and Symbolic Action
AN3207 Senses and Society
SC2222 Sports and Society
GEH1062/GEC1024 Ghosts and Spirits in Society and Culture
HS2913 Representing Live(s)

Environment, Risk and Sustainability

If you’re considering pathways in sustainability, climate adaptation, ESG/CSR, environmental policy, or community resilience, this domain helps you understand the human side of environmental change. You’ll examine how risk and uncertainty are experienced differently across social groups, how institutions respond (or fail to), and why environment–society relationships matter for real-world decision-making, especially in climate-affected contexts.

Courses include:
SC2221 Humans and Natures
SC4880E Climate, Risk, Uncertainty and Society
SC6218 Environment and Society

Identity, Diversity and Social Justice

If you’re interested in social justice, DEI, education, community programmes, or public-sector work, this domain provides concepts and cases to navigate real-world diversity with depth and care. You’ll examine how inequality is produced and challenged across family, gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, religion, and belief systems, building the ability to translate complex social realities into inclusive practices and thoughtful interventions.

Courses include:
SC2204 Social Inequalities: Who Gets Ahead?
SC2205 Sociology of Family
SC2220 Gender Studies
SC3203 Race and Ethnic Relations
SC3219 Sexuality in Comparative Perspective
SC4218 Religion, Secularity and Post-Secularity
HS2908 Nature and Nurture
HS2932 The Power of Ideas in the Malay World