Financial Information

The Department of Anthropology, in concert with the Graduate School, is committed to financially supporting graduate students’ training. Our standard offer upon acceptance into the program is for five years (10 semesters) of TA-based funding, which provides tuition, fees, health insurance, and a $10,000/semester stipend, as is set by the Graduate School. (TA-based funding means students serve as teaching assistants during the given semester). Select admitted students may also be nominated for competitive university-based fellowships upon admission (e.g. Royster, Merit, Weiss, etc), which may increase their funding package. The department also supports first-year students’ summer research through the Harriet J. Kupferer Graduate Exploratory Summer Research Awards.

We guarantee semesters of TA-based funding and we have traditionally been able to support graduate students beyond this period. We do not fund dissertational fieldwork, so students must obtain funding for their research. To help us support as many students as possible, we ask our students to apply for North Carolina residency as soon as possible after entering the program.

Enrolled students are encouraged to apply to a variety of internal funding opportunities at UNC, which may provide funding for off-campus research, dissertation completion, and other initiatives. The Graduate School provides a list of fellowships on their website. Our students also have success in securing area studies fellowships like the FLAS and various awards from world-area specific programs around campus.

Our students also apply for external funding to support their training, research, and writing. Apply for external funding from sources like the NSF, Wenner-Gren, ACLS, and other institutions is integral to one’s professional development and we are committed to working with each and every student to hone their grant writing skills so that they may secure external funding to support their work.