The International Centre of Anthropology was founded in February 2018 as a research unit within the School of History, Faculty of Humanities, National Research University Higher School of Economics. The Centre studies social institutions, forms of political organization and cultures of peoples of the past and present in historical dynamics, in the context of local and global sociocultural history.

The Centre's basic activities are fundamental studies of societies of different epochs, geographic areas and sociocultural types, elaboration and fulfilment of international research and educational projects in the field of historical anthropology, organization of academic conferences, seminars and summer schools for Russian and foreign post-graduate students, young university teachers and researchers. One of the main objectives of the Centre is active involvement of young scholars in its activities, resulting in the increase of their professional level and early intellectual and organizational integration into the global academic community (through participation in international research projects, etc.).