 And welcome to everyone who's in the audience and I'm sorry that I can't see you and it's a very strange kind of experience still after a year of teaching online still feel strange sitting here in my living room talking to people that I can't see but anyway that's partly why culture matters I guess. I am a professor of Thai cultural studies so I work specifically on Thailand and I will be talking a little bit about Thailand in the presentation. I'm also chair of the Center for Cultural Literary and Postcolonial Studies which we abbreviate to CCLPS and CCLPS is the sort of home of three of our MA programs, MA comparative literature, MA postcolonial studies and MA cultural studies. So I'm happy to take questions in particular about MA cultural studies which is the MA program that I convene. And I wanted to really talk more generally this evening about the broader question of why culture matters. So we've had a really fun year with the MA group this year I teach the kind of the two compulsory units, the two core units for the MA program which are on theory and methodologies and kind of broad concepts of cultural studies. But I wanted to broaden that out this evening to be thinking more, more widely really about what culture is and why it's so important and how it permeates really so much of what we do whether we're working on in the field of culture, arts and humanities or indeed in kind of other subject areas like the social sciences and the hard sciences. So let's see if I can make my PowerPoint slides work. Okay, so I wanted to think broadly actually because what you know one of the things that we're doing at SOAS because obviously this is SOAS's speciality to be is to be working on Asia Africa in the Middle East, and so much of the kind of field of cultural studies is thrown out of British cultural studies and the work of Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School, and out of the work that's done on culture in North America. So it's a very kind of, it's, it's a field that has a very kind of Western origin. So the kind of work that we're doing at SOAS on cultural studies is refocusing shifting the focus on to the study of Asia Africa in the Middle East and why, and how cultural studies relates to those areas. So, broadly speaking, that means that we're dealing with questions about knowledge production and knowledge of the other and I don't know how many of you have come across the work of Edward, the late Edward Said, and his kind of seminal work orientalism that he wrote in 1978. But a major thrust of Edward Said's argument was that in Western studies of the so-called Orient, that area of the world was othered, it was made other or different in a split of self as the West and other as the world beyond the West. And very much, I think part of the work that we do in terms of cultural studies at SOAS deals with the question of what I call global intercultural dialogue so it's looking at the interaction between self and other between the West, the Asia Africa in the Middle East and looking at it in terms of the need for understanding the significance and importance of intercultural dialogue of intercultural understanding. People do things differently in different parts of the world. We know we all know that. So, those differences are mediated through cultural difference. And that's why culture matters so much. So I'm going to be looking this evening at the role of intercultural understanding, the significance of culture, the dynamics of knowledge production, how all of those things are the processes of globalization and trying to unravel some of the kind of fantasies about globalization that it paints universalism as the solution to everything. And there's two strands to that thinking about the importance of empathy and the benefits of embodiment as ways of promoting better intercultural dialogue and better cultural understanding. And I know that you have the, you have a Q&A function so I won't be talking for the whole hour this evening obviously. I will try and wind up within 20 minutes or so from here and very happy to take questions about the kind of ideas that I'm talking about here. So, we've got some major global challenges at the moment in the world, not least of course the global pandemic that is COVID-19. The life-threatening inter-connected challenges that the world currently faces, not only COVID-19 and the global pandemic but also unsustainable development, climate change, mass migration, war and the enormous and growing gap between rich and poor, all of these things call for a united scholarly intervention. There are challenges that require engagement with cultural difference for urgent international cooperation. So, what I'm saying here is that any of the major challenges that we now face, such as climate change, such as a global pandemic, can only be engaged with through the lens of cultural understanding. Without cultural understanding, we are incapable of working collectively towards global solutions for the kind of international and world quippling problems that we currently face. The notion that all human beings would end up sharing the same values and norms was prevalent before the turn of the millennium, so there was a thrust in cultural studies and in the arts and humanities in general, that globalization would mean a kind of flattening out of the world where everything would essentially be the same and we would all automatically be able to understand each other better because we would all be more or less the same as a result of the process of globalization. Other cultures were thought by the West to be safely en route to the same end destination where the West was impatiently waiting for them. So a kind of idea that development followed one particular kind of line or trajectory and that the West was in the vanguard of that trajectory and that everyone else would sort of catch up sooner or later. But in reality, globalization has actually made differences between people more prevalent, recognizable and significant. So in fact, the effects of globalization have been in a sense to heighten our awareness of difference rather than to flatten everything out into sameness. We are now more acutely aware of difference and we can look at issues like international migration to point up the kind of issues that that produces at the local level in terms of the kind of fractiousness of the experience of cultural difference. So one of the ways of countering this is to foster better intercultural dialogue through intercultural understanding. We can't do that without an understanding of the other. However, we define the other. Acknowledging cultural difference. So rather than trying to erase it through a flattening of globalization, actually embracing the fact that people across the world are different. So that's one of the main things that I think we sign up to at SOAS and I've been working at SOAS for the whole of my career since the end of the 1980s and was an undergraduate student learning Thai language and Southeast Asian history at SOAS in the early 80s. So I know that the institution is absolutely dedicated to the study of different cultures and the appreciation of the tremendous things that an awareness of a different culture and knowledge of a different culture can bring to us. What we're trying to avoid at all costs is what Samuel Huntington famously referred to as a clash of civilizations. Since that notion of clash leads to animosities and conflict and gets in the way of working collaboratively across cultures and across disciplines. To build a creative and egalitarian East West dialogue or South South North dialogue. Cultural difference then from a cultural studies perspective and indeed from an anthropological and sociological perspective is at the foundation of societal variations. And it's important to recognize that culture is embedded in all forms of human behavior. I always start off my cultural studies MA year by asking people to define what their own national culture is or how they see their own relationship to a specific form of cultural belonging. And it always produces a range of really, really interesting answers and ideas. It's imperative that we acknowledge contrasting cultural perspectives and champion the value of seeing the world as relational. And that's another sort of key point here that the world is not made up of isolated countries, isolated nations, isolated groups of people. But instead, as this kind of illustration fails to show, they're all very much interlocking. They all relate to each other and don't and can't be separated out. It's really important then through because of this relationality to be able to understand and respect the, the various kind of interlocking features of the way in which we relate to each other across the world. So part of the problem that we have to deal with that Edward Said kind of points up to us as well very much in work such as Orientalism and which are fundamental to postcolonial studies is that what's called universalism is not really universal. It's actually very often Western and knowledge production is also driven by dominant Western forces and tends to kind of undermine what can be offered in terms of knowledge production from different parts of the world. Knowledge production has been dominated by Western thought and intellectual traditions on the basis of arguing that those traditions are universal when in fact they're not they're very culturally specific. Institutions in Asia Africa and the Middle East often do so from a Western model of knowledge production. There's a slight error on my slide that I haven't edited often produce knowledge based on a Western knowledge Western model of knowledge production. And this is problematic for studies that focus on Asia Africa and the Middle East, because in the quest for understanding these regions, a Western understanding of them is produced. It's strange that an institution based in the heart of London might be so wedded to producing knowledge of the world which is trying to become attuned to an aware of Western forms of knowledge production but that's very much what the colonization of knowledge agenda so as is aiming to do and we've worked a lot this year on thinking through how one can decolonize the field of cultural studies. You just keep an eye on the time so I don't speak for too long. Okay. The linchpins really of Western knowledge and Western knowledge production comes from the Cartesian hypothesis from Renee Descartes. I think therefore I am this very much lies at the West at the root of Western thought and the root of Western knowledge production the idea of knowing the world coming from a thinking position knowledge comes from the brain from the head. Other parts of the world in other cultures across the world. This is not necessarily the soul or only root of knowing knowing can come from different parts of the body different experiences and cultural studies can explore alternatives to dominant Western notions of the mind body divide prioritizing core non Western values of connectedness and interrelationships could promote new approaches to learning about and engaging with different others. So one of the things that I'm interested in exploring in my own cultural studies work and my own research that goes beyond the kind of teaching that we do on the MA cultural studies program is around the questions of empathy and embodiment which I see as being really central to knowledge production. Cultural studies must take into account discoveries not only in its traditional fields of the humanities and the social sciences, but also in the natural sciences. The findings of neuroscience and cognitive psychology point to a need for recognizing the role of emotions and embodiment. These are things that are much more readily recognized in other cultural spheres than they are in the Western sphere. Culture affects memory, attention, perception, and the ways in which human beings feel think and speak. In short, culture is not only an intellectual add on, but it's rooted in the brain, guts, heart, DNA, and every part of the human body emotion and being. So what I want to do next at this point is give you a case study about the way in which I've been using my own kind of knowledge and training in cultural studies to address a particular issue, a particular research issue, which is connected up with what we call trans disciplinarity or pan disciplinarity, running across disciplines, including the arts and humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. And given that I work on Thailand, you won't be surprised to hear that my case study comes from Thailand, perhaps. So just in case you don't know much about Thailand and a lot of Southeast Asianists, this is where we are on the map. The work that I've actually been doing is around this particular area here. So the Mekong River runs down here. And the research work that I've been doing is in the area around the Mekong River. And the reason for that is because the Mekong River is a source of fish for local people. Other peoples around this Mekong area have a heavy diet in fish, which they eat with with rice. And why am I telling you this? Because I've been doing work with a huge interdisciplinary team of scientists, biochemists, surgeons, medical doctors, parasitologists, geographers, anthropologists, ecologists, environmentalists, and people working in the field of religious studies, cultural studies, sociolinguistics, what else, and art and literature, bringing all those people together over the discussions of this particular fish dish, which is eaten in Northeast Thailand, Lao PDR and parts of Cambodia. It's raw fish salad, locally referred to as guai pla, and it's a raw fish dish made with ciprinid fish, that's white fish with scaly fish that are prolific in the Mekong River and the river areas around the Mekong. And the problem with this dish is that although people have been eating it and it's great sort of cultural delicacy and has been so for, you know, the last five or 600 years in this area, it actually poses a health problem, because the fish is infested with liver fluke and the liver fluke. If you eat the fish raw, the liver fluke is ingested and can sit in part of the liver, the bile duct, and produce bile duct cancer 20 or 30 years after the dish is ingested. So here's a case where doctors are kind of tearing their hair out because they have a cancer which they, they're aware of a cancer which has been produced by what the World Health Organization has classified as a class 1 carcinogen, the liver fluke. I get that the proliferation of bile duct cancer in this region of Southeast Asia, doctors know comes from cultural practice, it comes from the cultural practice of eating raw fish, which is why cultural studies and awareness of cultural culture, can play a role in trying to understand questions of public health and questions of people's behavior. It's one of the ways in which, in which I can demonstrate that culture matters because with an understanding of people's cultural practices. We can bring about changes in a whole wide range of, or we can aspire to bring about changes in a whole wide range of problems and practices. So this has received quite a lot of coverage in the press, in the BBC, the New York Times, as a cancer producing dish, produced by the liver fluke present in the fish which lodges in the liver and produces scarring that in the end can lead to cancer. Let me relate that finally to the question of culture of culture again, through a reference to the Sukkotai inscription, an early inscription discovered in 1833, but dated back to 1292. It was found in the early Thai kingdom of Sukkotai, which was active in the 12th and 13th centuries, and which was the source of the earliest example of Thai script. And one of the famous things which is said in the Sukkotai inscription is this famous two liner, in the water there is fish, in the fields there is rice. It's an indication from this early inscription that Thailand or this part of what is now Thailand was abundant. There was no lack of food, there was no lack of a source of protein, there was always fish in the water and rice in the fields. And this kind of cultural artifact allows us to understand just why it's so important, if you date it this far back, just why it's so important for people to continue the cultural practices that they do through eating particular forms of food, so that it's much more complicated than doctors unfortunately would have it, that you can simply tell people not to do something that is an embedded cultural practice, that it relates to their identity, their well-being, their sense of community, and their kind of social cohesion. So culture is so much more important than simply kind of things that we can dictate around or mitigate against or kind of legislate against. That's why in the work that I was doing with this team of medics to try to resolve questions of a particular cultural practice that had health risks, we brought in questions of the arts. So we had a community art project which allowed people to explore their own questions of health and well-being and diet and food and community and so on through the arts. And we brought in the work of a very famous Thai film director who won the palm door at Cannes in 2010. Apichad Pongwira Setekun whose nickname is Joe, luckily for most people who are not Thai speakers, who won the palm door in Cannes in 2010 for his film Uncle Boon Me, who can recall his past lives. There's my cat involved in the presentation as well. So I just wanted to end up really with talking about the way in which culture kind of seeps through everything. It may seem to be invisible and not kind of immediately noticeable, but actually culture is so important to so many of the things that we do and so many of the ways in which we relate to each other. And I hope that's given you a kind of a taster of the ways in which I think culture really matters. Okay. Thank you for your for listening to me and I'm going to come out of the slideshow now. Stop sharing my screen and open up the floor for questions. Brilliant. Thank you so much. Like I said earlier, if you do have any questions, feel free to pop them in the Q&A box and we'll start answering them. We've got one that's come through. That said, do you plan to teach the course remotely again next year? That's an excellent question. I don't know whether I'm the right person to answer that. I wish I knew that COVID-19 was going to go away and we'd all be vaccinated and everything will be safe. Our aspiration, I think, is to teach face to face as much as possible. And I have to say that I know me and my colleagues are missing it so much because there's so much that goes on in a classroom, you know, in terms of face to face interaction. Here I am talking about culture and embodiment, but we're not embodied when we're sitting, you know, in our own separate spaces speaking over a screen. But unfortunately, I can't answer that question. It really depends on what is happening in terms of government advice. So I don't know, there may be somebody who can give you a clearer answer than me, but I can say I hope so. Yeah, I'm just going to echo what Rachel said. Unfortunately, we don't. There's no clear answer at the minute with all the government regulations changing. Like Rachel said, we do hope to teach face to face in September, but obviously this is subject to change based off of what happens with COVID. But we've had a question that says, does the cultural studies may allow you to select modules from other disciplines? Yes, absolutely. Yes. Yes, if you if you go online and look at what the list of options are. I think we have 15 credit modules in, now I can't remember the name of them, a theory and methodology of cultural studies in term one, a new horizons, a case studies in term two. And from that, you're picking your modules from a variety of different disciplines. For example, in politics, in anthropology, in media studies, you can do modules in literature and post colonial studies but you're not constrained or confined to doing only modules available through the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. So yes, absolutely. I see it very much as an interdisciplinary degree. And I think, you know, with the work that we do in the core courses for thinking through what cultural studies and its various methodologies, you then apply that to the different kind of credit modules that you want to take, either normally 15 credit modules, but sometimes taught through the year as 30 credit modules. And I think it's very interesting as well, that quite a number of people are also considered taking a language as part of that, because one of the best ways in which we can really understand what, what cultural difference is and how people constitute their own kind of awareness of language is absolutely through language. And that was the way that I came to cultural studies, Thai cultural studies through doing a degree in Thai language, first of all, and that really helps you to absolutely understand how things are differently experienced, what different priorities there are in different cultures, and they're all expressed through different kind of language, different forms of using language. And the next question is how big is the course expected to be this year. I can say that this, this year in the, in the core course I had 20 students in in term one and slightly fewer in term two so you can take the core units without actually doing the MA in cultural studies. So I mean we'd, I'd hope for a slightly larger group than that. But I think 20 to 25. Lovely. Someone's asked what career paths or endeavors outside of academia, would you say cultural studies lends itself to. That's a really good question, because I think you can use cultural studies in, in anything you do actually, because I think that one of the things we don't really realize is, and that's what I was trying to get across in the presentation is just how important cultural studies is to every encounter that we have, even, even if it's a monocultural encounter. Because so much of what we talk about in cultural studies is engagement with difference engagement with otherness, and whether we're working within our own cultures or across cultures. Those kinds of ideas and skills that we learn can actually translate into any field of work so I mean, when I started off talking I was talking about really kind of international diplomacy in a sense and international politics and climate change and environmental work and, you know, work as, as for example with non government organizations and so on. But obviously, people go into cultural studies also with an interest in very specific things like arts management and, you know, film curating and museum curating and so on. So I think there's a huge range of things that you can do with a degree in cultural studies that, you know, are there at the level of kind of transferable skills that come from the very issues that we're talking about. Lovely. We've had a question come in that says, what are the main differences between cultural studies and anthropological? He's definitely messed up, anthropological ones. Yes. Yeah, well they're interrelated, but we have a different methodological approach. So anthropologists do things like ethnography and fieldwork and they go and sort of, you know, sit in villages and do a year of fieldwork and observing how villagers behave and relate to each other and so forth. Cultural studies doesn't really use that methodology. We're doing a lot of text based methodology. So we're doing close readings of things like, you know, film posters, cultural artifacts. Yeah, we do use a lot of film for looking at the ways in which different cultures kind of prioritise certain issues. We look at, last week we did in the cultural studies class, a lecture on street protest in Myanmar and Thailand and the kind of iconography that people use in terms of street protest and so on. You could have an anthropological approach to that, I guess, but it would be more about the ways in which people are sort of speaking to each other and relating to each other than the actual kind of cultural material that they're using. So one of the things that we looked at last week, for example, was why protesters in central Bangkok in 2010 protested using baguettes when nobody in Thailand actually eats baguettes and it was an illusion to the Arab Spring and the way that the Tunisians had protested at the time. And so, you know, we're looking at intercultural connections in that sense, which is much more cultural studies than it is anthropology. But there are interrelationships, there are kind of cross similarities in some senses between the two, and part of the cultural studies MA would certainly allow you to take courses in anthropology. There's a methodological difference, which is around the kind of material that we're looking at. Lovely. Someone said, do you recommend doing the MA cultural program for someone who wants to focus on critical dance studies? Yes, very much so, because dance is something that we would certainly kind of be interested in. It's dance and performance would be part of the kind of the cultural framework that we would be looking at. So yes, and certainly because it's got that element of embodiment as well, I think it would fit really well with a cultural studies program. Brilliant. And the last question that's come up for now is, how flexible is the MA course in terms of doing it part time and working part time? Yeah, so some people do it over two years and some people do it over three. We just split the kind of components differently depending on the number of years. Three is the maximum. And one of the key components of the MA program, of any MA program, so as is to write a 10,000 word dissertation, and whether you're part time or full time, that's always done in the last three to four months of the degree. That aside, the rest of the degree is made up of taught modules. And if you're taking the program over two years, you'll do sort of half the modules in one year and half modules in the next. And the split is slightly more awkward over three years, but basically it's absolutely possible to work and do the degree part time and I've got some students doing that this year. And we try and be as flexible as we can and give as much support as we can to working to doing to doing work and and studying. So I think it's, yeah, it's an important, important. It's important to have that ability to do it part time for sure. Lovely. Oh, we have had some come up before we go to the questions I do want to give a little bit of time to the student ambassador that's joined on this call. If you don't mind. Yeah, I was actually going to jump in. This question because I'm actually doing part time this year. I'm on my first year so obviously I haven't had any experience with balancing a job and in person lectures and tutorials. But in terms of my teaching is actually been quite manageable. I mean, a lot more than I thought it would be, especially with recorded pre recorded lectures. It's so much more simple if you're working so I work in a cafe. And I do, I mean I do this is obviously, but if there's a shift that comes up and I have a lecture I can just be like I can just watch it tomorrow or late to the evening so as both of you said, we don't know if it's going to be online or in person next year, but if you're working part time and doing it part time yeah it's, it's definitely very manageable yeah. So even if we're teaching face to face to be honest now we're so used to recording that I think we'll record everything and so people who can't come to class will still be able to catch up on things they miss which is much more useful for for part time students if there if there's a clash. Brilliant. We've had a follow up question from the student asked about critical dance studies they said are there any faculty specialized with dance studies by any chance. No, not that I know of unless there are in ethnomusicology but I don't think so. But the nearest I can think to that is we do have people working in yoga studies which is not I know it's not dance but it's but you know, but nobody, nobody specifically in dance studies as far as not that I can think of anyway, So have a look at the ethnomusicology department, the music department see what their speciality is a certain there are certainly a team of ethnomusicologists. Brilliant. And then question is coming that says, do cultural studies students do fieldwork. If so, what is the difference between this course and social anthropology that focuses on the fieldwork. Yeah, so no cultural studies students don't do fieldwork at the moment, unless you do it as part of your dissertation. So when it comes to the end of the year, if you're doing it part, sorry if you're doing the course full time. The teaching comes comes to an end at the end of the end of term two which is the end of March normally. The fieldwork is completed and exams are taken if there are any in May, June, and by early June it's time to start working on the dissertation and you have up until mid September to do that. Some people do decide that they want to do what we call primary research for their dissertation. So there's no requirement to do that. But if you wanted to do fieldwork as part of the dissertation you could do. And the way we manage the dissertations is around about this time of year. Everybody kind of has a think about what kind of topic they'd like to work on and we we appoint a supervisor with with kind of specialist knowledge of that area. And then you work with your supervisor to see how you want to go about doing that topic. And if you want to include as part of that one or two months of fieldwork, then that's absolutely fine. So the answer is yes you can do it and no you don't have to do it. I just want to see if our student ambassador if you want to talk a little bit about what your experience has been like so far as a student and sort of what your degree has been like what you're specialising in anything like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, so I started this year I moved to London. Initially because I thought things were going to get normal similarly they're having yeah. But it's been, yeah it's been great. In terms of, I guess I'll speak first about online teaching, which is been a bit different from having in person, definitely. It has made things a lot more flexible in terms of, you know, life work. I want to say fun as well balance but there hasn't actually been any fun in terms of socialising and stuff. But yeah it's been it's been it's been really good, especially tutorials. We usually have quite small groups like between 10 and 15 people and doing breakout rooms and discussing the readings and then going back into a big room and just sharing different perspectives and you know criticisms that, you know, what we discussed in smaller groups has been, has actually been quite, I mean for me it has been, you know, very very fulfilling in terms of knowledge more than I thought it would be I was a bit skeptical at first of online teaching I was like oh, it's going to be quite different from in person. It was it was it was really nice. Because I've moved to London I've actually gone to the library quite a lot. I've actually met quite a few of my course mates. So it's been actually has actually been quite nice. Sometimes we have lunch together. I'm outside in a social distancing. And yeah, we're actually doing two group projects at the moment, and the ones of us they've moved to London is actually quite lucky because we've worked in those projects together. Obviously the people that abroad didn't have that chance. I know people are also working in group projects online and it's been, it's been easy. I did that for first time for one and it was, it was, it was quite easy. Yeah, it's been, it's been good. I think it's been nice of being in London as well hasn't been. I don't feel like I've experienced London at all. Yeah, apart from saw us obviously going in and walking around a lot, which in itself has already been quite, quite nice just walking around London, empty London, which is probably a site I won't see for much longer and probably won't see for a long time again. Does anyone have any questions regarding moving to London, living in London online lectures. Yeah, feel free to pop them in the Q&A box. Oh yeah, I didn't talk about yeah I didn't talk about my what I'm specialising in so I did, I did Japanese studies for my undergrad. So I want to focus. I'm only doing my dissertation next year, but I've already spoken to who I want to be my supervisor because I came to saw us with a very clear direction what I want to my research in because I want to progress into a PhD afterwards. I'm focusing on post Black Lives Matter racial awareness in Japan, and I'm focusing on subculture groups that have appropriated African American culture and racial tropes like hip hop break dancing. There's really small subculture called Ganguro where people see the black face nowadays, and it's kind of socially acceptable so I'm focusing on that and seeing all those subculture groups and navigating. Yeah, racial and cultural awareness in this post Black Lives Matter reality in Japan. Yeah, so if someone has any questions regarding Japan or stuff like that I'm also happy to answer them yeah. Brilliant thank you so much. I haven't, I don't see any questions in here right now, but we can maybe give it a couple of minutes to see if any come through this one. Oh, there we go. They're asking, what did you do your dissertation and for your undergrad. Okay, so for my undergraduate dissertation. I, I did. So I focus on Afro Japanese cultural interaction and synthesis in contemporary samurai anime. So I, my, some of my material that I focused on was to different Japanese animation series and I analyzed how Afro Japanese cultural racial social realms intertwined and formed a sort of new identity to overcome racialized problems of white hegemony. And, yeah, basically it's, it's, I'm trying to apply my undergrad research into real life through. I actually do social anthropology for Miami I don't do cultural studies. But I believe that quite similar, apart from the ethnography that Richard's talking about because I looked at the structure and it's actually quite similar. Yeah. Lovely, thank you. Um, that's the only more questions I've come through, maybe give it a moment. I also think that this is just an add on, even though I'm doing the next year. I think one of the big things if you're, if you want to focus on a specific region, whether it's Japan, or another Asian country or African country and you want to progress on to, you know, an M res or a PhD, or something like that afterwards. One is one of the big advantages of those is that you have an exceptional range of academics that can teach you languages that you can. Some of them, I don't think you can, you can learn them pretty much anywhere else, at least in Europe that I know of really, really small, you know, African and Asian language. I mean, it's an easy, you can't in other places. But, you know, it's, it's, it's a really, really, really big advantage that, you know, you can't have in many other universities. Yeah. Lovely. We've got one more come through it says as someone who didn't do a dissertation in their undergrad, how does it differ from a master's is it more pressured or more focused. Let me think. Yeah, I can, I can say something to that. We do have undergraduate level we have something called an independent study project, which is 10,000 words. And, and you get a bit of supervision for it but you're basically on your own is the, and the master's thesis is also 10,000 words. And you get about the same amount of supervision and you do it on your own. The only thing is it's the, the only difference is that the master's thesis is reflecting the kind of things that you have learned during your master's level course. So, quite often for coursework you're, you're being asked to write essays of three sometimes 4000 words in length. And I think the fact that the dissertation comes at the end of the taught element of the course stands you in good stead to do the dissertation so the fact that you haven't done a dissertation undergraduate level shouldn't matter, because you'll be learning the skills that you need to do the MA dissertation during the MA year. Lovely. Another question says, how often do students do small discussion group style seminars. It's an integral part of the way that we teach so most, most courses are taught to for two hours a week over a period of 20 weeks. And the first hour would be would normally be a lecture and the second hour would be a seminar slash tutorial. What I've been doing, since I've been doing it on zoom is using breakout groups for small group discussions, and, and actually they, they work really well and you can drop into them, virtually, as a, as a teacher, or sometimes we have a teaching assistant, helping with that as well. And I think it's really important for me to be able to provide my own PhD students to join and they'll sort of help facilitate the small breakout groups as well. But it's an important point, I think, is an important aspect, and then we get together after the breakout and sort of pull ideas together in class but the for me the important thing is really to facilitate an environment where people feel safe enough to explore ideas it's not about having to get everything right all the time or show how much you've read and you know, sort of show that you know everything about everything it's really for us to collectively explore ideas and things that are interesting so even the opening session that we have about thinking through what is culture and what does it mean to us is all about kind of breaking down those hierarchical barriers so that we kind of learning together. Thank you so much. And it doesn't look like there's any more questions in the Q&A so I just want to say a massive thank you to Rachel and to our student ambassador for joining, and for helping to answer all of the questions. And thank you to everyone that's joined us tonight. I hope you all have a lovely evening. Like I said this is recording it recorded and will be on our website soon. So yeah, thank you all so much. Maybe I can just add one thing if it's not clear already that if you've got, if you go away from this and you've got extra questions that you didn't think of at the time, please do feel free to email me. My email address is rh6 at psoas.ac.uk or just go on to the psoas website and key in my name you'll find my contact details. It's Rachel Harrison. I'm really happy to kind of take questions. Whenever you feel that you've got, you know, something that you want to ask about the course then please do drop me a line. Okay, thanks. I've dropped my email as well and goes to guys that have any non-course related questions, whether it's about London or accommodation or anything like that that I can be helpful. Lovely. Thank you so much and I hope everyone has a good evening. Bye.