 Okay, welcome everybody. I think quite a few are still joining, so let me maybe wait a few more seconds while some of you connect to your audio. My name is Elisabeth Weinberg and I am the co-head of the economics department. It's a job that I share with my colleague Hannah Vargawi. Welcome to this brief talk about the SOAS Economics Department. I'm joined here by my colleague Tobias Franz, who is convener of the MSc Political Economy of Development, as well as by Adam George, who is currently a student with us. He was a student with us last year on one of our postgraduate taught programs and then he transitioned into the PhD program, so he can he can speak to his journey from the MSc economics to the PhD economics. So the way I want us to proceed is first I want to say a few things about what we see as distinctive about the economics department at SOAS. And then I will hand over to Tobias, who will talk about what that means for you in terms of the kind of degree programs we offer, the approach we take in our curriculum, etc. Then Adam will say something in terms of what that means from the student perspective. So how do these things that how we understand our department translate in the student experience? And then before closing, I'll say something about where do your studies at SOAS take you, because obviously we are very well aware that as you choose to do your master's somewhere, you'll have a canine on what opportunities that's going to create for you as you leave the institution. Now this is very informal. You are welcome to unmute yourself and speak at any point in time or interrupt me if you have particular questions, but we will also have a dedicated space for a Q&A at the end. However, before I start the kind of more formal review of what the economics department at SOAS is, I was wondering whether you wanted to share your ideas in terms of what you think the most important challenges are for economics in the next few years or in the next decade. So this is just to get a sense from our prospective students, how you understand what the big challenges are for the discipline in the next decade. So if you want to either unmute yourself and speak out or make some suggestions in the chat in terms of how you understand that, that would be wonderful. Tobias, just to you, I can't see the chat because I'm sharing. So if you pick up what happens there, that would be wonderful. Yes, I'll do that. So give us your thoughts in terms of what you think are the most important challenges for economics in today and going forward if you want for the next decade. Hello ma'am. I'm Josh and I'm joining from India. Hello. I am interested in developmental exams. So our community, a question for me in my humble opinion, the biggest challenge currently is to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the shocks due to the pandemic. And after that, progressively it is both has to do with inequality, the rising inequality and the deep economy and how the inequality is causing inequality. Inequality income is causing inequality in education, how that is going to reflect in future deep economy jobs and incomes of people. So I think that will be some of major challenges. Thank you very much. That's wonderful. Any other suggestions on major challenges and please either speak up or feel free to feed them into the chat. Hello. My name is Jerry. Hello Jerry. Yeah. For me, the biggest challenge that we currently face is the multiplication of poverty across the world as an aftermath effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. The recovery path does not seem to be clear yet. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else wants to add to that in terms of very important challenges that we face today and that we are likely to have to deal with over the next 10 years? Any other thoughts? Anything in the chat, Tobias? No, nothing in the chat. But do feel free to say whatever you think. There's no wrong answer. So we just would like to hear from you also what you're interested in and learning from potentially doing a degree at SOAS about a particular challenge that you see in the world, maybe in the country that you live in. So please don't be shy. I mean, I think the main issue that's been raised already is the big theme around inequalities. I hear rising inequalities. I hear labor markets in terms of gig economy. I hear multiplication of poverty. The aftermath of COVID-19. What's the recovery path going to be after as we and hopefully when we emerge from the pandemic? When I asked some of your colleagues who joined us on campus last week for an on-campus event, I heard similar themes in terms of the most important challenges for the economy. To that they added perhaps issues around the role of China in the world economy. Some of your colleagues spoke about the environment as a massive challenge that we are facing. Challenges around how what is going to happen with globalization? What are the newly emerging patterns around trade and production and financial flows, etc. So I think if we think about the most important challenges across that we are going to face in the discipline, it's nice to think about that in conjunction with the members of staff in the department and the particular kind of issues that they are engaged with in their research. So I've heard one of you saying rising inequalities. We have quite a bit of work that's happening within the department, in particular with an interest on intersecting inequalities. So the way in which inequalities intersect across different structural features of the economy, including gender, including class. And so we have, for instance, Dr. Hannah Bergawi, Sara Stevano, Surbi Kesar, a very strongly interested in issues around intersecting inequalities. We have specific work that's going on on informalities in the labor market. So one of you referred to the gig economy. So we have Satoshi Miyamura and again, Surbi Kesar, who are very focused on that. When we think about post pandemic recovery paths, we have quite a few economists that are either macroeconomists or structuralist economists that are thinking about that in the context of a specific region. For instance, Tobias, who is here with us today, is very interested in understanding these post recovery, these post pandemic recovery paths that are possibly emerging in the developing world. And he has a focus on Latin America. We have the macroeconomists like Yanisda Femos, Jantoprovsky, Kostas Lapavitzas, who think about that, but in some of them in light of the climate emergency that we are facing. And then if we bring it back to one of the other very life themes of the day, there is also issues around China, the role of China in the world economy. And then we have Dick Lo as well as Ulrich Boltz, who make contributions around that. So I think that across our department, we have a collection of colleagues who are interested in those very live issues of today, whether we're talking about inequalities, whether we're talking about recovery paths from the pandemic, whether we're talking about the reconstitution of economic relations globally with the rise of China, et cetera. And these particular interests have been validated in the sense that we have a very strong track record with funded real world economic research. So we have one of our colleagues, Mustafa Khan, who has been very heavily engaged in work around corruption and who has been very successful in securing grants from what is now called the FCDO, Performally DFID, to study ways, strategies of mitigating corruption practices in specific countries. So his big research project that is that goes by the acronym ACE for Anti-Corruption Evidence looks at the way in which corruption in specific sectors like for instance, health procurement or power procurement, as in energy procurement, can be mitigated across different countries. And the countries that he's studying are Bangladesh, Tanzania, and Nigeria. He's also been able to secure funding for a highly innovative research project that works very closely with the policymakers from within the FCDO as they are trying to test the assumptions that underpin the interventions of the FCDO in Nepal as it's seeking to support Nepal for a just transition in a post-war or a post-conflict, if you want, setting. We have also quite a few research projects in the climate space that are focusing around macroeconomic issues, mainly looking at the monetary policy sphere of macroeconomic issues. What should central banks do or not do as they are trying to support transitions in the economy towards better climate-aligned alignment in the way in which the economy is organized. And we have had research focused on female employment and the particular issues around inequalities, comparing outcomes across the regions of the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia. So this is just a sample of the kind of funded research that is going on in the department, and that goes to demonstrate once more the way in which colleagues in the department have a strong interest in those issues that are very live today. So I think it's quite apt for us to think of the science economics department as a unique department. We think of us as being world leading in the fact that we have very strong development economics traditions lodged within the department. There is very strong interest in various issues of economic policy, whether we're talking about interventions in labor markets, whether we're talking about interventions in the macroeconomy, whether we're talking about interventions in the financial sector. Our colleagues are continuously engaged in trying to think about how their research can impact specific policies in those spheres. And we also consider ourselves to be a world leading department in political economy with a strong acknowledgement across the various traditions that we work from within of the importance of power and institutions in determining particular economic outcomes. So we are actually the foremost pluralist economics department in the UK and perhaps in the world as we bring together a collection of feminist economists, development economists, ecological economists, post Keynesian economists, institutional economists, and Marxist political economists. So I think we're very unique in the combination of those various scholarly traditions from within economics that we bring together within our department. We're also one of the very few departments of economics that has a staff establishment with near gender parity. This is very, very unusual for an economics department to have so many female members of staff. Of course, we have very strong links to international institutions that are very engaged in the policy sphere, whether we're talking about different UN agencies, whether we're talking about different central banks. We have very strong links also to other leading universities. Now over the last few years and in light of what is going on in the world, we have also sought to bring environmental topics at the core of the teaching and the research that we do in recognition of the climate emergency. And we are very strongly engaged more broadly in debates in policy debates around global development. Again, whether we're talking in the global policy sphere and how that gets constituted as through the interventions of the World Bank or the IMF or interventions of specific UN agencies, whether it's the one focused on Africa, whether it's the one focused on trade or the one focused on labor markets. And that is again across the piece both in the global north and the global south. When we think then in terms of our teaching, we like to think about our teaching in terms of four words that start with ours. We think we like to think about what we offer through our postgraduate curriculum as speaking to the main issues that are facing us today in the real world, some of which I have already mentioned or you have already mentioned, so the issues around inequalities, recoveries, the environment, etc. We also like to think about our teaching as rigorous in the sense that we would like to teach our students what's at the cutting edge of the discipline, even if then we offer them an alternative approach where they can then do a compare and contrast across different scholarly traditions within economics, both what we call mainstream, i.e. what is taught in most universities, and then what we offer from within alternatives, from within heterodox economics. We have also reformed and updated our QANTS teaching, where we are now trying to teach our students skills that they can put to work as they leave us immediately, where they to join, for instance, the research department, etc. Our teaching is regional, it draws on the very strong regional expertise that we have lodged across our colleagues, across the regions that SOAS is focused on, so we're talking Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, but we have recently also acquired expertise in Latin America and that allows us for quite again unique comparative perspectives across different regions, broadening now to incorporate Latin America, and our teaching, especially at our postgraduate level, is very strongly research-led. So the colleagues that teach you will draw continuously as appropriate on the research that they are doing or on the research that is happening by other colleagues in the department. So with that, I'm going to hand over to Tobias, who is going to talk a little bit more about what this means specifically for you. Yeah, thank you very much, Elisa, and also welcome for me. So what Elisa was saying, one of the main appeals of the economics department that SOAS, and I think also known for worldwide, is that we don't sort of buy into neither the theoretical nor the empirical narrative that you might see in more mainstream institutions or mainstream departments, but rather question sort of these theoretical approaches that are also broadly known as orthodox economic theories that propose general equilibrium models that essentially are focusing on that the market kind of works perfectly once left to themselves. So what we are doing in our research and also in the teaching that especially at postgraduate level is to not only learn these orthodox theories, but then learn them from a point of view where they have weaknesses and where there are gaps in this kind of literature that does not explain what Elisa would refer to as real-world economic phenomena, such as rising inequalities, labor market changes, and increasing informality and so on that you guys brought up. And then we critique that not just by pointing towards these gaps, these gaps that exist, but then also bridging these gaps with alternative theoretical and empirical approaches, which is also known as heterodox economics or pluralist economics. And this is where a lot of the teaching is focused for you to learn the orthodoxy, but then also very much engage with heterodox and alternative approaches to critique the mainstream and to actually question the way in which economies are working right now. This is also of course paired with very rigorous and not empirical, but methodological training both in quantitative techniques, such as econometrics and interpretation, of quantitative results, as well as qualitative techniques. So all of the master's programs, and I get to that in a little bit, have methodological courses that you will have to go through and then learn how to use quantitative as well as qualitative techniques. Part of it is also learning how to write codes in R for data analysis, for economic modeling. If you're interested in that, there are different programs where you engage more with these kind of more mathematical and statistical techniques. And there's other programs such as the MSc, Political Economy of Development, or the MA Economic Policy, where it's more focused on not so much on regression analysis, but other methodological approaches, but we can get to that in the Q&A. Yeah, we don't only do in our teaching, we don't only provide empirical and theoretical and methodological training, but also we apply that to economic policy analysis, to economic policymaking, so not just critiquing the way in which economies are organized, but then also really proposing alternatives from our critiques in ways in which it could improve economic policymaking and then tackle these issues that you guys raised in the beginning of this session. Yes, as I said before, we are world-leading in heterodox economics, and also what Lisa pointed out, we are very much regional focus, but this doesn't mean that we look at these regions in isolation, but rather we have a very global approach. So we look at the way in which globalization, the integration of different regions into global value chains affect development outcomes, affect inequalities and affect properties in these regions. So we do take an approach that looks at it from a more global perspective and then apply it to these different regions. We have different programs, there's the MSc Economics, Development Economics, the MSc in Political Economy Development, International Finance and Development, the MSc in Economics and Environment, and the MA in Economic Policy. So as I said before, different programs focus on different issues. Each program has different sets of core foundational modules and theory methods and advanced topics, as well as a wide range of optional modules with a sectoral and regional focus. As I said before, the MA Economic Policy and the MSc Political Economy of Development do not require you to have an in-depth knowledge of economics or of quantitative economics for the MA Economic Policy, even you don't require a first degree at all in economics. So we are also open to those applications that are not in sort of the classical training, have gone through courses that include econometrics, macroeconomics, microeconomics, but might have only taken a module in economic policy or in economics 101 and so on. So there are ways in which you can enter the department without having gone through classical economics training in your undergrad. And of course, with our teaching that is provided throughout these modules, you will also be prepared to write a dissertation by yourself under, of course, the supervision of staff members and experts in the field. And there you can apply a lot of the things that you've learned to a single piece study that you can engage in over a few months during the summer. You find more information, of course, on our programs and do feel free as well to reach out to the program conveners of these programs. So on our website, every program has listed a member of staff, so just write them an email. They'll be more than happy to answer any questions that you have. Besides our traditional teaching, we also have a number of events that are running throughout the year. We have a saw as economics seminar series, which during the COVID pandemic was a webinar series, but now we're very much happy to be back on campus with that in which we organize speeches and seminars and invite people from across Europe to join us on campus to give a talk on a new book that they published or some new research project that they are engaged in. So this is also a way in which you can engage with colleagues from across different universities and different world and different countries, sorry. We also have ran different events during the COP26 to increase some of the focus on the environment where students also participated actively. Tobias, can I just add, just to highlight also, so we have these extracurricular events as in, for instance, our seminar series. But I think what's also nice that you can pick up from the program of the current term is that these are on a wide range of different issues. So you can see there is issues around what's going on in the UK with the recovery or not of corona. Then there is a whole different seminar that's about what China did in the 1980s and how it reformed its price system. And again, we have something very different, which is on financial inclusion and poverty, etc. So there is again that wide diversity of interest that is reflected across the various events that we organize. Yes, thank you, Elisa. Yes, apart from these extracurricular events that you can engage with in terms of seminars, we also have a variety of student societies and groups that are led by students, such as the SOAS Feminist Economics Network, in which students meet with some members of staff to discuss a certain text or to discuss a certain issue outside of the curriculum. Also the SOAS Economic Sustainability Working Groups in which members of staff, as well as students, engage not just in literature in the discussion of literature, but also in the way in which we can make SOAS as an institution more sustainable and what are the ways in which we can suggest to the running of SOAS to be more in line with sustainability goals. We have a decolonized SOAS Working Group, both at the school level as well as one that we are currently putting up in the department. So this is also something that you can engage in when you are at SOAS. And finally the SOAS Open Economics Forum that organizes events outside of the department. This is purely student-led and we, of course, support them in various ways to organize events and discussion groups. Yeah, and I think that being said, let me hand it over to Adam, who will give a perspective of a student and what that all sort of felt like being a student and how that has led him to then apply to a PhD in the department. Thanks. Thanks, device. Yeah, so I'm Adam and I was a MSc student last year, so during the COVID year, as it were. And I guess I should probably start by talking about why I chose SOAS or why I was looking at SOAS. And I think this very much echoes what Alisa and Sebastian are saying about heterodox kind of pluralist approaches. Something I knew I was interested in and I saw SOAS and saw kind of the work they were doing. I watched some presentations from staff members at SOAS and thought it was quite impressive. Again, this was during COVID, so seeing effectively how staff at SOAS were kind of approaching these issues in a way that I didn't really see from other universities. And I think it's all linked to this kind of heterodox global perspective, which I really do think sets SOAS apart. And as a student, I think that absolutely feeds through, as Debass was saying, to how how economics is taught. So it's very research-led, very much, particularly in some of the second semester modules. But in the first semester as well, you're talking about you are very much having discussions about research, kind of ongoing current research that lecturers are undergoing themselves. So it's very interesting. You feel like you're part of something quite, quite special, I think. As a student, I did get involved, I'm still involved in quite a few of those groups that Debass just spoke about. So the Open Economics Forum, particularly, I watched some of the, some of the stuff they did before I joined SOAS and I got involved when I joined and have continued to be involved this year in my PhD. The Open Economics Forum, just for context, is the student-led part of Rethinking Economics, which is a global group that was set up after the financial crisis. Just kind of say that we need to bring more pluralist perspectives into economics in university and then there's Rethinking Economics where they talk about teaching economics in a different way. I've also been involved in the SOAS Sustainability Research Group, which is somewhat aligned with the kind of research I do. So I'm looking at the kind of ecological, macroeconomic ecological space. And I was involved in that last year with reading groups and continue again to be involved this year. And I've started to organize some stuff myself as part of that. And I guess to contextualize all of this, that was all during a pandemic. So everything was online. I'm sure now that you can actually go into campus, I think there'll be even more interesting things that students can get involved with. And then I guess finally on how, like what I'm doing now and what I did after the Masters. So I saw some of you going into the Masters that I was interested in looking into a PhD and into research. And I raised that quite early with a convener of my course. And yeah, there was a lot of support there, a lot of support in how to write the proposal, how to go through that process, which is really important if you're applying for a PhD because it's a little bit opaque from the outside. So getting that support was really useful. That's not to say, and I guess Alisa's going to talk to this, not to say that the only thing you can do after a service degree is going to research, but I just, there's definitely support to do that. And yeah, my experience with PhD is very good, although that's not necessarily relevant to you yet. But yeah, I think that's probably all I had to talk on. Yeah, so I'll pass back to Alisa now. Thanks a lot, Adam. And just picking up on a few of the issues that Adam raises. So of course, this is online. So you cannot see the beautiful campus that we have in the heart of London, but I'm sure that you will have an opportunity to see videos about that. Also, our school, the, I mean, SOAS, University of London is quite an intimate college. We're relatively small if you want a university across where we are situated in Bloomsbury. And that means things are quite intimate in terms of where we get to know our students very well. There is a very strong staff-student relationships that develop in particular with our postgraduate students. And then one issue that perhaps wasn't mentioned by Adam, but that always strikes me with our student body, especially at the postgrad level. And that leads me to what I want to talk about next in terms of where will you go after you graduate from SOAS. Is that we have a very diverse student body in terms of aspirations. And I think that brings a particular richness to what happens in the classroom and outside of the classroom. What I'm trying to say is that you will be studying with your peers who will have very different ambitions in terms of where they want to take their studies, what they want to do in terms of their career. But that means that in the classroom you get very lively debates around questioning particular issues from various different angles because people come with a different view on, you know, both on the economy as well as in terms of where do they want to take the knowledge that they're acquiring. So I think that particular diversity in aspirations has a specific richness to the kind of dynamic that we get in the classroom as well as beyond in terms of the cohorts, how they come together and how they operate or act as a community. And I think that year on year we see even despite COVID, for instance, we had last year a postgraduate student body that had developed a strong sense of community. And when we had opportunities to bring them on campus late in May for a set of events, we could see that despite all the physical hurdles that, you know, confinement, lockdown, social distancing, etc. had imposed, there was a sense of community. There was a sense of all of them belonging to that one kind of species, which is being a Suassian or being an economics Suassian, etc. So I think that's quite nice. Now of course, if you're going to make decisions on where you're going to do your degree, you want to know that you are going to be successful in securing, you know, that career path that you are charting for yourself. Now, hand on heart, our postgraduate students go on and do wonderful things. We are each year tremendously amazed by the successful career paths that our postgraduate students embark upon as they leave us. Some of them will have come to us by way of work and so they're already on a particular trajectory. But so we have very, very strong employability records. As it says here, nearly all of our students will be either in employment or studying and then a few won't and if they aren't then perhaps they are taking up particular caring responsibilities, etc. Equally for our postgraduate research students, I don't know if any of you are here with an interest in our PhD programs, but we graduate our PhD students to very, very successful and highly skilled employment. What does that mean in terms of our graduates specifically? And I think that to demonstrate those two points, very successful careers as well as diverse career paths, I thought it's nice to speak to six specific students and the career paths that they have developed as they since they have left us. So if we take for instance, Blue Sisibeco, she was our master students in 2017-18. She did the program that's convened by Tobias, the political economy of development program, and she came to us as a chairman and scholar and as she left us, she returned to South Africa and now she's pursuing a very successful career as a researcher at a particular research institute called the Institute of Economic Justice that's located within Pittsburgh Center University in South Africa in Joburg. Now that's a very different profile from, for instance, Shreya's profile, Pillai, she did the MSc Development Economics with us in 1819 and she was actually seconded to the master's program. So her employer, Pais Waterhouse Coopers, paid for her to come and do her master's at SOAS and so she returned to her job once she had successfully completed her master's program. And we've asked her to come and talk to our students in the past and she always picks up on the very strong mixed method skills, both quantitative and qualitative, that she developed while she was at SOAS and how that is giving her an advantage in the kind of work she does as a consultant in the private sector when she's asked to do analytical pieces around a particular development in a particular market, et cetera. So someone working in the private financial sector but who is very strongly benefited from our keen real world engagement, if you want both quantitatively and qualitatively and how and what that means in practice. Now then a different profile, you know, Mascard, he did his MSc Development Economics in 1516 and from there he entered into what was then called the Department for International Development Entry Scheme. Now it's the Foreign Commonwealth Development Office and so he moved to the country office for Malay and Zimbabwe straight after graduating from us. Then again, another profile, Arup Chatterjee is an older graduate from us, he did the MSc Development Economics in 910, from there he went to work for the National Treasury of the South African government after which he moved to the Southern Center of Inequality Studies in Jo Berg. Now Anne Schoenauer, she was a graduate in 1920, she did the MSc International Finance and Development and she's the Deputy Research Head of what's an NGO that is providing advice in terms of how private financial firms can navigate if you want the regulatory environments around climate. And then finally Lorena Lombardozzi, she did both her MSc Political Economy of Development and her PhD in Economics with us and she went on then from there to pursue a successful career in academia where she currently is recently been promoted to Senior Lecturer at the Open University. So I think this gives you a sense across different programs, people come for different reasons but they do end up actually realizing their ambitions in terms of whether they wanted to be in the public sector, whether they wanted to be in the private sector, whether they wanted to be in the third sector or whether they wanted to become academics, the skillset that they gain and I think also the reputation of our post grant programs provides them with strong assets as they pursue those particular career aspirations. We also, I don't know if any of you know what's the ODI Fellowship Scheme, so the ODI is the Overseas Development Institute, it's located in London and they have this scheme that has been running for many decades where they recruit postgraduate students and second them into a particular civil service in the global south. So if you were to be successful when you are selected onto this scheme you would be possibly stationed in, let's see, the Ministry of Finance in Ghana. So we have had a very strong relationship from within the Soas Economics Department with this particular scheme and over the years we've been quite successful in graduating our students onto the fellowship scheme and then finally one other thing I want to mention before I hand over to you for questions is that we have this quite in tremendous resource, let me call it like that, which is called Soas Connect which is an e-mentoring platform where as a student you can connect onto it, you can indicate which region of the world you have an interest in and what particular sectors you have an interest in and the database, the software will then do a search in the database and try to link you up with the Soas alumni and that you then get connected to who can then mentor you over the internet in terms of trying to help you check that career path that you are pursuing. And I've heard of quite a few successful stories of people who had introductions by Soas Connect who ultimately landed in the jobs they wanted because they were told to search in this particular way etc. So I think this is quite a nice resource to keep the community of both students and alumni alive and to tailor that towards career paths for our students. So I think that's all I want to say at this point. I don't know if Tobias or Adam want to add something and just also little heads up do follow us. We have quite a live Twitter account. Our events get posted on Facebook and I think that's it for me. I don't know looking at Tobias and Adam, do you want to add something before we open up for questions? No, I'm happy to open it up to questions the student have or people interested in studying with us have some opportunities to ask their questions. Okay, I see a hand. Please do unmute yourself. I might not be able to see hands because I'm actually let me stop sharing so I can see who is here. Thank you so much everyone for this wonderful and informative session. It was very useful for all the prospective applicants. So I have multiple questions. The first one is in QS world rankings. So as is ranked highly in developmental studies particularly. So and I'm interested in developmental economics. So I wish to know how that academic quality and the and the prestige of so as in development studies percolates or spills over to the development economics course specifically because your website mentions it as a flagship course of the university. So vice what's so special with it? Okay, shall I answer that one and then we continue? Is that fine? So thank you very much. Yes, the development studies department has a very, very strong ranking in the QS league table. By way of information, quite a few of their staff members are graduates from our economics department. So they have gotten there by way of the so as economics department. But beyond that, given this whole given the fact that we are very renowned for the heterodox, the pluralist, the fact that we bring together all these different traditions that does pose a challenge sometimes for economics in times of being ranked as an economics department because we don't we are not necessarily able to access the same kind of say journals in terms of publications, etc. But in times of the prestige, the scholarship, I can guarantee you that the economics department shares the very strong traditions and within if you want development economics, it has a very strong brand across the world. It may not be reflected in the economics ranking in the QS world rankings. But in terms of if you if you speak to when we travel or colleagues travel across the world, the so as economics department has that very, very strong if you want recognition of brand in terms of development economics. So I can I can guarantee you that you you would benefit very strongly from the this advantage that we have in having such a collection of development economists as well as ecological economists, etc. Oh, thank you, ma'am. That's helpful. I have a few other questions. Can I just ask them? Yes, and then we'll turn to or shall we take first Jeremiah and then we return to you. Would that be fine? Absolutely, sure. Excellent. Just really really quick to this to this point. We in the economics department, given that we do focus a lot on development as well, what when we submit our papers, we often submit to journals that are not economic space journals, but rather development studies journals and that also improves the rating for development studies. But this does not take away the focus on the speciality that we have on development economics. So this is also another little caveat as well. So that sounds great. Jeremiah. All right, thank you. For me, I think it stands tall among the university all across the world. And recently after my counter with some of the scholars at SOAS in South Africa during the APOD program, African Program or Rethinking Development Economics, I already sent a mail requesting a question about the issue of deferments. I'm going to add this to it. When is the student defer a PhD admission? And within that period, what is the area of interest changing? What can the candidate do? You have to admit in the later year that within the period, your area of interest changed. What can the candidate do? And sometimes you're not interested in how one is supervising your work because of change of the area of interest. Okay. Thank you, Jeremiah. Can I perhaps make a specific suggestion to you? Is that you raise this question with our doctoral studies admissions tutor with Satoshi Miyamura at SM97. So perhaps I'll type it in the chat box, his email. So if you raise this with Satoshi and his email is sm97 at SOAS.ac.uk, he will be able to give you guidance on whether when you defer your PhD and how you go about changing the topic. I don't think there should be a problem in principle. It may need to be that a different supervisor has to be sorted in the department, but he will be able to engage you more specifically. So the email, as I put it in the chat, is from Satoshi Miyamura, and he's our doctoral student admissions tutor. So he will be able to be much more precise. But in principle, I can't see why there should be objections in terms of changing your topic during the period of deferral. So perhaps if you. Thank you, Jeremiah. If we return to Jasmine, do you want to follow up with the rest of your questions? Sure, ma'am. So my question pertains to the fact that there are two courses, MSE Economics and MSE Development Economics. So I have seen that by choosing certain courses, I can in fact cover everything that is taught in developmental economics in the MSE Economics course itself. So how would having MSE Development Economics help improve my resume rather than applying for MSE Economics and studying Development Economics related courses? Am I clear? Yeah, yeah, no, that's very clear. I don't know, Tobias, if you want to speak to that. Or even Adam, who is a student of our MSE Economics. As you decide which program to choose, you do separate things. What signal do I want to put on my CV? And how do I want to populate my program? It's true that our programs are quite modular in the sense that beyond the set of course, you can you can puzzle and you can create programs that look quite alike. So I think the MSE Economics will have some compulsory modules that you don't find under the MSE Development Economics. For instance, the advanced econometrics module is a compulsory module on MSE Economics, while it isn't on MSE Development Economics. But then beyond that, it's also a matter of signal. If you wish, if you already know that you want to be very much signaling a direction towards development economics as you leave us as a practitioner, then you may wish to do that kind of degree in terms of the signal it creates on your resume or on your CV. So I think you can puzzle and the degrees could look quite alike. So it becomes a matter of you then deciding what is it you want to flag. I don't know, Tobias or Adam, if you want to add something to that question. No, I think the signaling is of course important. But you also, I mean, we are in generally quite a small department in terms of the students. So the students know each other relatively well across the different programs. However, for example, me as a convener of Political Economy of Development, I try to get the different students together at least once a term to discuss something to just have a social event with them and so on. And that also, of course, attracts a certain kind of student. We discuss certain kind of issues that might be then different from, let's say, a convener of Development Economics that discusses different things with their students. So it also feeds into your experience of study, not just the modules that you take or the signal that you want to send out to employers, but also what kind of experience do you have. And I think that is different depending on which program you choose. That helps. Thanks a lot. So I have one more question. I have currently not decided on doing a PhD, but just so that I have my options open, what are the students' outcomes in getting into PhDs, apart from getting into SOAS, which is a great thing. Like in the other top US colleges or the colleges in UK, how are the students' outcomes when it comes to PhD for MSc Development Economics? So is your question in times of what's your chances of moving from SOAS to another university to do your PhD once you have done the MSc Development Economics? Is that your question, Jasmine? Exactly, ma'am. The prospect of getting into a PhD course somewhere else also. I mean, I can maybe, Adam, I don't know if you have any feedback on that in terms of from the previous year cohort. But I mean, I know that those students that do well, so you would have to satisfy the entry requirements of the PhD program wherever you want to go. So often those entry requirements are 2-1. Some entry requirements might be passed. So the students that do well will be admitted onto PhD programs across those, I mean, the different universities that offer PhDs in Development Economics. So I haven't heard of people that have been frustrated, if you want, in their transitioning from our postgraduate programs to anything actually that they want to do, leaving us. So that was, I think, the point I was trying to make earlier. Students do actually manage very successfully to realise their aspirations, whether they stay with us to do PhD, go elsewhere to do PhD. We support students every year in our master's programmes too, as they apply for PhD programmes elsewhere, as we act, as we provide references, we give feedback on their proposals, etc. So I have not heard of instances where people have faced obstacles. But I don't know, Adam. Yeah, I guess I sort of echo that. I don't think there's like obstacles in the sense of a SOAS degree is going to be perfect, except for, and obviously, a high mark in a SOAS master's degree is going to be something that you will need to be accepted on a PhD. But I think the process of getting onto a PhD is kind of far beyond that, right? And it's far more about how the research proposal and how you make that, and it's quite an individual thing. So it's not so much, I suppose, it's not so much like maybe when you go from a bachelor's to a master's, it's a lot about just the mark in your bachelor's, whether you get on a master's and stuff around that. But for a PhD, it's more about what you're able to do individually. But speaking to that, I do think the support for that research proposal and the kind of individual work is very good at SOAS. So I guess I'll echo what Lisa said there. I can't think of anyone not being enabled to go onto a PhD anywhere from SOAS. I definitely had, thanks a lot for very basically answering all the questions. Thanks a lot. You're welcome. Are there any other questions from any of you? I can see we have a few minutes. Yes. Yes, Jeremiah. Yes, you spoke about, at the introduction, you spoke about area of grants that research are currently ongoing as SOAS. If a PhD student is interested in a particular area, what is the first step to be taken? Do you mean with regard to their own PhD or in terms of, I'm not sure I understand the question. Okay. If you are a PhD student, are you interested in a particular area that the University of Secure Grants works with the first step you are going to do? What is the first step to be taken? Okay. So I think, of course, as a student, you would be able to reach out to our colleagues and you would be aware as, you know, once you're here, you would get a sense of who are the members of staff, what are they working on, etc. And then you can easily, as a PhD student, build personal relationships with a particular member of staff focused on the area of research that you have an interest in. And from that, different types of professional relations kind of emerge, whether sometimes the staff member needs research assistance, maybe they will turn to one of their PhD students, whether they're thinking about applying for a different type of grant. And there will be opportunities again to write work for this particular PhD student in it. All these things have happened and all these things are possible. But it very much depends on who in amongst our colleagues is applying for what type of grant, at which point and what does the funding body allow for in terms of incorporating PhD students into it. But it's very, I mean, I think across academia so also in so as economics, it's very common practice to try to involve our PhD students as much as we can in our active research community. And that of course includes research funded research through grant bodies. But it's a very fluid kind of environment because it also of course depends on, you know, who's applying for what, which particular theme are they pursuing, whose research fits with that, etc. So it does happen. I think most of the colleagues in the department will have worked with their PhD students at some point in time, either in grant funded research or not. But we're very keen on that kind of collaborative effort, as well as taking off the mentoring role that, you know, that entails as a PhD supervisor, you want to prepare your student for, you know, the world after and that includes having done publications, etc. I mean, that mentoring is very key. Yes. I agree with you, Jeremiah. I'm just receiving a message from our SOAS organizers and they are asking me to wrap up as the next session will need to start very soon. So can I just thank everyone for joining us and thank my colleagues and Adam for being here this morning. And then any questions to us, please write to SOAS Economics or and look at the specific look at our pages and you will find all the details that you will need. And Adam has just posted his email also in the chat, if you want to take up conversations directly with him. Thank you very much for everyone for joining and hopefully we will see you on our campus in September 2022. Thanks everybody and do feel free to reach out as well TF2. I'm also going to write it in the box. Thanks a lot. Thanks for clarifying all the questions. Thank you everyone. Bye. Bye.