 I'm very warm welcome to this taster lecture for postgraduate programs in the School of Finance and Management at Southampton University of London. I'm Christina Outer and I'm one of the professors in the School of Finance and Management and I'm here tonight with my colleague, Dr. Alberta Asqua, who's a senior lecturer in public policy and management in the School of Finance and Management. We're just going to give you a little overview of the four programs, postgraduate programs that we have on campus and then Alberta is going to give a short taster lecture so you get the flavour of the kinds of things we cover in our lectures and our style of teaching at SOAS. So moving on to the next slide we can see that SOAS, if you're not familiar with it, is located in a brilliant location actually. I'm always very happy to go into work at SOAS. It's right next to the British Museum and Russell Square in the centre of London and the picture you're seeing at the bottom is Senate House where SOAS has one half of Senate House which is the old building of the University of London so you probably know University of London is a federal structure. The SOAS, UCL, LSE are all members of the same University of London and this is the headquarters if you like of University of London so it's a fantastic location close to the City of London, close to all the main connections for rail and so on. I am a Londoner, I'm very proud to be a Londoner and one of the things I love about London is it's a very cosmopolitan city where people meet from all over the world. So moving on to the next slide, a little bit about the School of Finance and Management at SOAS. We are ranked first for Business and Management Studies in London and 14th in the UK in the 2020 Garden League table you can have a look at. There's a survey every year from the National Student Survey that show that 96% of our students are satisfied with the overall quality of their course. We are ranked in the top 20 on research intensity in the UK research excellent framework. We have accreditation for undergraduate ACCA and SEMA programs and we collaborate with a number of institutions across the world, Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East and so we'd like to see ourselves as positioned globally. Here's a brief story from one of our students, it's only at SOAS where you'd find that your Jamaican friends enjoying listening to Arabic music in the Students' Union and it gives a flavour of how cosmopolitan SOAS is as a university and that's one of the things I think we all love about SOAS, it's very international and if we look at the careers of our graduates, these are some of the places where recent graduates are currently working, Boston Consulting Group, Sachi and Sachi, Bloomberg, the UK Government Treasury, the Government of Canada, Santander, Klein-Walt Benson, Euro Monitoring International, UBS and so on. So our graduates are very successful at going on to prestigious careers and also to do research, a number of them go on to do PhDs at top universities including some of them stay with us at SOAS for their PhD. What a little bit about the way we teach and structure our programs, our programs degrees, their research-led and their challenge-driven programs, that's very important to us so you're taught by people who are actually doing the research and our first graduate students are well equipped in research methods and all the skills necessary for a strong career start in a fairly advanced level at the range of organizations in the public and the private sectors and the style of education we offer is small group, it's a personalized style of education so you would be in small group tutorials which gives you an opportunity to develop skills at discussing, debating, communicating ideas and discussing quite fairly complex research issues and breaking those problems down led by a lecturer or professor in those tutorials. So it's a nice conducive environment for developing good working relations with fellow students, with staff and we also have good links with company executives and colleagues that we work quite closely with in the real world as it were in banks, in the banking sector and in industry. We have help, we can give help with internships and finding placements at companies and if we move on to the next slide, we have four postgraduate programs at SOAS, one MSc in Accounting and Finance, an International Financial Management MSc, an MSc in International Business, an MSc in Public Policy, Finance and Management. I'm going to hand over to my colleague now who will explain a little bit about the structure of these programs so over to Alberto. Thank you Christine and welcome to all the participants and anyone who will listen or watch this webinar. Just a few words concerning these MSc programs, they all share a common structure and so that's the easy part because every MSc program consists of eight modules, students take over two terms plus a dissertation and for each term students take three core compulsory modules and they have a choice of one extra elective modules. This is a common structure running across the four MSc programs. Any particular program then they do have specific features about what is what is taught in these in these programs so the MSc Accounting and Finance is really intended to help students build deeper expertise on accounting and finance matters. You can have a quick look at the titles of the modules which are taught there and you can notice topics like professional integrity and accountancy for finance practitioner, managerial accounting, risk management, financial analysis, financial statement analysis for investors and emerging market finance. You may also notice the in-term two courses which is on research methods in management and that's there as in any as in other MSc programs because the research is a key component part of our postgraduate degrees. Apart from the expertise and in a particular subject area postgraduate students they do become experts to carry out the research, to carry out research independently as they can demonstrate in the dissertation project. Therefore all of the subjects which they learn but also specifically the topic on the research methods in management does provide the students a way to develop their skills and knowledge on research methods. How to design research qualitative and quantitative skills both data collection, data analysis and interpretation down to the very final skills and capabilities needed to write the professionally and research reports or policy papers. So that's again another general feature of MSc programs which is of course also included in the MSc accounting and finance. This program as a highlight is accredited by Saima and enables you into Saima master's gateway with some exemptions. Other other programs they do provide specialized expertise in different different areas. Christine, please let me know if you find a provider general overview or you'd like to step in to supplement any additional highlights you regard as quite important. The MSc international financial management again does provide a way to gain expertise on financial matters. You can see that compulsory modules like financial modeling techniques, financial law for international managers and risk management, international corporate finance, financial statement analysis for investors and emerging market, market finance. Let me just comment here that in relation to the very international feature of so as these programs they do nicely combine attention to many institutions and practices and policies all over the world. So generally they do pay attention to both industrialized or emerging economies from every region of the world and typically modules students take and then reached by examples and case studies which may be taken from several countries which opens up very interesting opportunities also for comparison across institutions and practices and trajectories of development across countries and markets. Another program is the one on international business and you can see from the compulsory modules the flavor of this program. So we have international management, international human resource management and international marketing, international business strategy, multinationals and global business together with the research methods in management. The department is called the School of Finance and Management precisely because it does combine nicely focus on both finance management of the financial resource and financial institutions together with an interest towards managing the human resource and there I should say with a keen interest towards the variety of practices which are encountered across the globe also depending on the specific cultural features. And the last program I'd like to spend a couple of words is the one which I convene the MSc Public Policy Finance Management which is focused on public sector management. It does bring together three different components of looking at public policy, public management and public financial management and so modules they do include attention on fiscal governance, on public governance, on general features of making and implementing public policy together with other topics like innovation and organization and change and emerging market finance. This is a general overview of what we touch upon, what we cover in these programs. I'd like to ask Christine if you'd like to share any other particular highlight otherwise I believe that's the point where we can provide a test to our prospective students with a little bit of insight into what we teach by providing a bit of an example with another part of the presentation. Thank you Alberto I mean you've done a great job so I don't really have very much to add except to say that you know it's so as one of the distinctive features that we have is that we have an understanding, a deep understanding across so as of finance and management in different areas of the world and we see the world as interconnected in that way and we learn a lot from different areas of the world and just to give you an example of that and why that's important is that there is a technique of supply side management for example that you're probably familiar with called just in time and it manages a supply chain instead of storing all of the components to make goods it manages the supply chain so everything arrives just in time to go into the manufacturing process and that form of supply chain management is incredibly efficient but it wasn't created here there are many many articles published on just in time management and why it's so effective and it's been theorized and understood and broken down so it can be applied in different contexts and that theorizing is incredibly important but of course it came from Japan it wasn't something created in the west it's something that the west borrowed from Japanese companies and learned from and there's that scope for learning across cultures and languages is an incredibly important feature of the work we do so we're probably more international than a standard school of finance and management or standard business school we're very open and we kind of celebrate that internationalism so I think that's all I would add Albert and leave it to you to give us a taste of public policy finance and management. Thank you Christine and I thought to share with the participants just some slides and the brief talk concerning a topic which we discussed with the students in the last term within the public governance module concerning a particular aspect of public governance which is regulation regulatory policies and we focused on regulation over emerging technologies and let me try and share with you another presentation I think I need to stop sharing this one and could launch a new share of the screen instead and here it is. Can you confirm do you see another presentation now? Yes that's great perfect answer. Thank you. Just very quickly to provide a taste of what has been covered this year and it would be also in next year is an attention within the governance concerning regulation and regulatory policies and emerging technologies have become quite relevant nowadays as a phrase it can be defined in many possible ways but typically within research policy genre at least there was a key definition which relates emerging technologies as new technologies characterized by radical novelty relatively fast growth coherence permanent impact and uncertainty so from self-driving cars to the bitcoin or cryptocurrencies to the use of nano materials there is a flooding of new technologies which do afford new business models new ways to provide services to clients and to society but on the other hand they do pose quite a number of novel dangers and hazards so here are just some quick references to the media where we provide some evidence of such a sort of issues which may arise from emerging technologies from crashes out of self-driving cars to frauds or thefts in case of a cryptocurrencies to the unknown effects sometimes of nano nanoparticles public policy issues do arise and that's what we discuss we like to discuss in our programs so concerning emerging technologies issues like so what is it precise that we are to regulate what are exactly the sort of dangers or hazards that we are going to face and who should be regulated and how eventually should the policies should be should be framed some research I'm carrying out currently has to do with a particular sort of emerging technology which is the one related to genetic editing genetic editing is like the latest version of genetic engineering which relates to the possibility to modify the genes the genome of living organism in a much more targeted efficient economic way than we could carry out by producing genetically modified organisms in the last couple of couple of decades these techniques originates from some discoveries concerning the monetary system of bacteria but eventually it turned since 2012 into a technique which does allow to produce genetic edits with accurate precision in the last less than 10 years there was as a consequence the launch of a number of biotech companies especially in the US but also in Europe which focus on exploitation of such techniques with the prospects to apply in a number of areas from therapies like for instance tackling infectious diseases and viruses diseases like HIV the possibility to improve the efficiency and productivity of growing crops or food feed and by means of enhancing the performance of such organisms but up to the possibility to modify the human genome which is a very slippery slope the dangerous road probably would many many would argue which also turned into very early attempts to modify the human embryos and apparently one or two experiments which have been carried out in China over the last couple of years which triggered needless to say quite a lot of concern in the areas of bioethics and relatedly more generally to the area of public policy the sort of questions we pose within the program within the models are precisely is this a public policy issue what shall we do about it what are all the consequences of living such technology unrestrained in the possible use there is a lot of uncertainty attached to it it's not quite well known the sort of side effects that genetic edit the edits could produce to the very organism but also to the environment so for instance there is the idea to use this technology in order to affect the reproduction of some vehicles of diseases like mosquitos for malaria but it's it's it's unclear in extent to its genetic edit of mosquitos could have repercussions on the on the general environment and to ecosystems and therefore there is an uncertainty which does pose a policy concerning how are we going to regulate these technologies what we like to do also is to observe how diverse the response could be across across the world so just for the sake of time as an example the regulatory response to the rise of CRISPR has been so far quite different in the US with respect to the European Union in the US tried and tested a regulatory framework for biotechnologies since the 1980s has been in place and more recent adjustments have been brought to BEA in order to tweak it in such a way as to accommodate to the rise of new techniques for changing the DNA of organisms in the case of European Union historically and therefore there is a legacy from the past and institutionalist path and there has always been a more caution towards a genetic modification as it was incorporated by a GMO directive and rather than a policy initiative it was a ruling of the European Court of Justice a couple of years ago to assimilate the more recent techniques for genetic modification to the previous ones but that's not the end of the story because from the side of scientists and also industry there is the claim that contemporary techniques are not quite the same as the previous one and therefore the ruling of the European Court of Justice is not quite on spot and instead new regulations should be delivered designed and delivered in order to better cope with the emerging emerging technology so we face a sort of dilemma across how to regulate new technologies in case of CRISPR on the one hand we have an extreme like to ban everything don't do anything with a DNA of organism the other extreme could be the one just allow everything to be tried and tested and out of our research development business initiative we may hopefully come out with improved productivity and novelty of products but actually there in the middle that's the real concern of public policy how to design public policies by means of regulatory tools at disposal and so what we teach we always refer back and forth in between evidence and theory and so we look at theory to identify a number of policy tools which have been identified from those which use communication, novelty to those which use authority those which use money like subsidies or taxes so treasure tools and those which deploy organizations like public sector agencies in order to steer the course of a particular policy policy domain the point of course is the one of how to design precisely the regulations we are going to use and on which particular application of these technologies so we need to map out what this technology could do so for example genetic editing could be used for an intended beneficial effect or a harmful effect and the questions are around the externalities of the use of this technology our externalities going to be beneficial for others at the same time or neutral indifferent or harmful and here we can map out various prospects for the use of a technology from diagnostic tools which would be beneficial for everyone the very opposite for a biotechnologist attack which would be something quite detrimental or destructive for everyone and then in the middle there are a number of potential applications many of these emerging technologies have the feature to be of dual use as they are called so for both civic but also for military military purposes and so from drugs and therapies to gene drive to genetic sabotage or even genetic weapons which may target even particular particular populations they do pose quite a number of issues so although we may think that the extreme to allow anything to be tried and tested and the other extreme to ban anything could be easily related to the more optimistic and the most pessimistic prospects of the use of the technology it is really there in the middle gray area actually it's a yellow area here in the slide where most of the policy issues arise and to understand what could the government really do in order to promote more discoveries around the new technology but also to steer the development of the technology in the most advantageous way of these is about genetic editing of course but what we discuss in what we teach relates to other other technologies so from applications of the blockchain to the one of artificial intelligence for instance or nanotechnologies there are similar issues here and there of course we do pay attention to to the global scare implications of such technologies could occasionally produce more leveling field across countries for instance let's think of emerging economies with which can leapfrog and to embrace digital technologies in a relatively fast way but other technologies especially depending on the regimes of patents for instance could actually result in advantages to a more powerful players already there in the industry like for instance multinational organizations who can who have more resources to afford to patent a new a new generation of seeds for instance which may have negative effects to farmers for instance all over the world especially in those countries which rely on the primary sector for for the economy and so we need a social scientist to anticipate the consequences of these technologies also for societies and the end economies so I have to stop here and apologize for having been a bit fast possibly on occasions but of course the main purpose is just to provide an insight into what we discuss we try our best to stay on the top of trajectories of development of technologies and tendency in in society of course I'm happy to take questions concerning the specific very short mini lecture which I did otherwise Christine and everyone I believe we could go back to the more general presentation concerning school of finance and management and our programs to conclude that part of the presentation and then to see if there are questions in the Q&A session thank you Alberto let's see if there's any short questions on your presentation first and then we can go to general questions does anybody got any questions for Alberto presentations fairly engaging and a high level stuff Alberto so I enjoyed that but let's see that's why I'm making an M okay let's come come back to that so people have a chance to think about their question and let's go to some questions that have appeared in the chat about entrance requirements and also about scholarships that we can cover so um in terms of somebody asked you know could they could they um come and do international business having done an LLB the answer is yes provided that you have a first or good second class honours bachelor's degree um you can and by that we mean it should be equivalent to a what we call a 2-2 bachelor degree in the UK um and we're quite good at matching you know don't worry about you we understand how to match qualifications from around the world to the UK qualifications relevant work experience can also be um very helpful and we welcome that so we would look at that we look at applications in the round um so we look at your educational background we look at your work experience and if your English is not your mother tongue then we would look at your um uh English language qualifications and we require 6.5 in IELTS overall with 6.5 in writing and speaking six in reading and listening so that's the entrance requirements there was a question on scholarships and I've put into the Q&A our pages on scholarships and actually I could just share that screen if it's helpful for people to show you the range of scholarships that are there or you can just copy that link from the chat but um in order to share the screen Alberto we need to stop um sharing the presentation so let me see if I can share my screen now so this is just the scholarships page for talkmasters programs from the SOAS website and I've popped the address for this page into the um the web and into the Q&A session and it links to our web pages so there are scholarships um for any talkmasters program uh for those from India and also from the following uh non-India countries Syria Iran Iraq Palestinian territories these are the Felix scholarships there's international postgraduate scholarships for any talkmasters program from East Asia Japan and Korea Southeast Asia India Pakistan Americas Middle East Africa and Europe and then there's a number of more specialized scholarships so just leave that there for you to look at on our web page and um we can you can email either Alberto or I if you have any further questions um and you'll find us on the school of finance and management um web page I'll stop showing my screen there um are there any other questions that people have about the programs about scholarships applications entrance requirements Christine you may notice there is a question uh which uh says uh can you say a bit more about how to go about finding a supervisor is if one is interested in pursuing a research degree yeah um that's a good question so the best thing to do is to go to um our website again and um let me just um maybe I'll show my screen again let me just find the right page before I do it so this is the um home page of the school of finance and management and I reached this page on the SARS website by clicking on this departments tab at the top and there you'll see all the departments of SARS listed and I went to school of finance and management clicked on it and ended up here if you go to this staff button this is the faculty you'll see that all of us are listed here with a little bit about our research interests so I'm there my research interest is industrial organization policy innovation sustainable development and corporate governance and I also do work on the governance of professional sports leagues um which is a rather niche area but I suppose my main area is innovation and regional differences in innovation activity across firms but you can find um so you know Alberto is here you can find everyone's research interests in the department and so if you're thinking of doing a phd in a particular area um just drop us an email so it's got all of our email addresses there drop us an email so I'm thinking of doing a phd in this area the more information you can give the better the more idea you have about your research proposal the better I often get sent research proposals to comment on and um that's really the best way to go around finding a supervisor and just don't be afraid to talk to us um it is a little bit tricky to phone these phone numbers your find won't work at the moment because we're under lockdown at the moment and we're all working from home so email is the best way to contact us and then we can speak by phone or zoom or some skype or whatever once you've made the initial contact by email um yeah just hope that answers that question um a moment please another question I'm going to read out um English language proficiency is usually a setback from most of us coming from uh English language speaking countries um of which our language instruction is English but we still must go through the English yeah I think that's probably right now I have to say that um we on the academic side don't deal with the language requirements that saw us um but if I don't know the answer to that to your question that I suppose this isn't the case Maggie do you know the answer yes I know can you hear me so basically um what we do there is a list if you if you go through a website with English language requirements you will see that we've recently updated our requirements and we are now um we can consider you know um making students self-exempt or IELTS exempt if they studied in an English majority speaking country or if the university's language of instruction was English so again you will need to my advice would be if your program was taught was delivered in English uh you will just need to provide um statement you need to send it to our to our English assessor and then uh there will there will be able to make a decision whether you actually need to take an English test or not and I know that in Africa we have a list of universities with English medium of instruction so English language and I know that we would no longer ask students to take an IELTS test so again I don't know what your situation is you mentioned that you're from Cameroon but again if you'd like to receive more information feel free to to contact our our admissions so it's not that you will need to take an English test we just need to you know assess our admissions need to assess your application I was going to say that the language requirements are there with London let me ask you and you can put it in the q and a your answer what programs are you interested in and uh on which countries are you from I'm quite curious we're here in London but where are you and what's your home country you've got someone interested in international business somebody interested in um public policy management um other questions and if you if you don't have any other questions are Alberto whether you want to add anything um that we think we should cover now well not quite if not possibly just to share with a perspective as students that we always keep in contact with our past students especially after being a student that saw us you join a community of our alumni and in our programs we tend to keep these communities quite lively and to help people form networks so for instance since years ago I cultivate a group or LinkedIn of former students of the MSc public policy final for management and therefore we can track their trajectories and so I can I can see the positions they can take in government in consulting in the third sector in NGOs in many different different countries this is also an interesting opportunity to get some feedback about the tendencies of what is required in the job market and for example some of the last tendencies is apparently a growing importance perceived importance towards data data science data analysis and therefore right in these very days together with Cristina under the leadership of Cristina we are reviewing programs for the future but already since since next year we are going to introduce programs like public policy finance management and more attention towards the importance of data and provision of evidence which does inform evidence-based policymaking and greater use of digital technologies and I believe that that's a general trend that also in other in other programs is is more and more embedded I believe Cristina I mean why there are a couple of more inputs in the Q&A section. So a follow-up question to the PhD one you know should I my interest in development finance so school of finance is a good fit but what about the the department of development and the studies and department of economics well I mean it's the same thing if you go to that departments tab on the SOAS home page you can find the department development studies and look at the staff there and see those there are some staff there working in finance some of our colleagues across departments and also in the department of economics you'll find staff working in finance so just have a look at the staff interest and see where you think your research project fits best and talk to email you can email more than one person that's okay I mean don't go and try and keep it fairly focused try and think about what you really want to do and find the best match for your research topic and I guess the differences between us as a department is we're probably a little bit more methods maybe a bit more methods focused in our department on finance and so on and public policy but that's the the differences are quite nuanced between the departments I mean obviously development is more focused on development finance economics and what more on the economics of finance and where much more on finance and financial management including financial management in the public sector in the School of Finance and Management but I think the key thing for PhD is your supervisor and your research topic so you've got to find a supervisor that matches your research topic so that's how I would search and then a follow-up question on a full scholarship I'm from the Cameroon you need a full scholarship we understand that have a look at the scholarships page and then probably best to contact us in the School of Finance and Management to have a chat about that once you've found the suitable scholarship and I wouldn't let that I wouldn't let applying for scholarship delay you applying for the program you do need to have an offer of a place on the program and then apply for scholarship as well and then I'm trying to work I'm trying to work in that light we're hoping to be one of our students when they say so that's that's great to hear and we would like to have you at SOS so yeah please do contact us if you have any further questions anything else anyone wants to raise and the other thing I would just say that maybe you know hasn't come through is something I said early on we are quite sort of challenge focus at SOS you know there are kind of big challenges in the world at the moment you know COVID is one of them obviously but also climate change and migration climate change related migration these issues are very much of a concern to SOS so we do want to study and we do study those topics and try and contribute to solving those challenges and that may not be so obvious from our course titles when you look at them but the content is there on climate change on climate change and addressing climate change and how we can do that I mean Alberta touched on some of it in some of the issues in his TASA lecture on you wouldn't necessarily it's great to have that lecture because you wouldn't necessarily think all those topics are covered in public policy and financial management but they are so we do take on board these broad challenges that we face as a society any other questions we've answered them all? Alberta would you like to add anything before we close? Not quite if not just my thanks to those who attended this session and to those who will watch or listen it and looking forward to seeing you at SOS hopefully in presence when the conditions of the pandemic get better all over the world. And Maggie would you like to add anything before we close? I just would like to thank you and for presenting today again if any of our participants and questions what you can do you can email Christine or email Alberto reach out to them and ask more questions we have a student ambassador with us today and again I'm not sure if there are any questions about for example student life if yes you can you can ask and she'll be happy to to answer them oh yeah and I think we will yeah it's time for us to finish the session once again thank you very much