Outside the Department of Anthropology, but within Brown University are several academic centers and units in which departmental anthropologists, or other anthropologists, or both, take an active role, and which provide strong intellectual support for faculty and student interdisciplinary research interests. Beyond the departmental requirements, students have considerable flexibility in arranging their graduate program, and they may take advantage of resources elsewhere to work in specialized areas pertinent to their anthropological research. The units in which Department of Anthropology faculty play a role include:

The Population Studies and Training Center is one of the most prominent centers for research and doctoral training in demography in the United States. Bringing together a variety of disciplines, it hosts the strongest program in sociocultural anthropology and population studies in the world. The PSTC offers a variety of fellowships to support doctoral students in anthropology and population.

The Watson Institute for International Studies is a research center focusing on theroretical and public policy issues connected with international affairs. Its four major research divisions focus on Politics, Culture, and Identity (PCI); Political Economy and Development; Global Environment; and Global Security. The PCI program, directed by Kay Warren, emphasizes anthropological approaches to contemporary political issues.

The John Carter Brown Library has one of the two or three largest collections in the world of early European accounts of North and South America; the most complete collection in the world of Mexican and Peruvian imprints before 1700; the largest collection of books in the U.S. relating to colonial Brazil; the finest collection of sources in the U.S. for the study of early Canada and the Caribbean; and nearly three-fourths of all known imprints in the native languages of North and South America from the colonial period.

The Division of Biology and Medicine. Anthropologists based in the Departments of Community Health, Medicine, and Psychiatry and Human Behavior and other units in the Program in Biology and School of Medicine conduct research in Medical Anthropology and Alcohol Studies and have special research interests in alcohol and addictions, gerontology, reproduction, sexually transmitted diseases, comparative health systems and transcultrual psychiatry.

The Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. The Center is dedicated to the study of gender; the analysis of gender construction and of women's literature and ethnography, drawing on insights from feminist theory.

The Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. The Center's participating faculty have interests in the analysis of ethnicity, culture change, inter-ethnic relationships and adaptation from a comparative perspective. The Center offers small grants for graduate students. Rhode Island's multi-ethnic history and neighborhoods provide excellent potential for research, which both faculty and students have conducted.

The Brown University Scholarly Technology Group (STG) supports the development and use of advanced information technology in academic research, teaching, and scholarly communication. STG pursues this mission by exploring new technologies and practices, developing specialized tools and techniques, and providing consulting and project management services to academic projects.