 So very welcome, very warm welcome to our session today on introducing you to the taught postgraduate programs at SOAS, we are very happy that you're joining us. And perhaps we start briefly, so what we're going to do is we're going to give you a brief introduction to our sales and Kanika is going to start and then I follow. Then we're going to talk a little bit about the research culture and directions of the SOAS Law School to give you a bit of an idea of who we are and to also impress on you that our teaching program is very much research led. So what we do in our research is reflect that in our teaching. And then we're going to tell you a little bit about the structures of our, the structure of our MA and LLM programs and then allow you to ask questions. And we have a PowerPoint, but we thought it's nice to actually start our, to start us off with actually just being able to see each other. So I'm going to hand over to Kanika, please. Thank you Martin. Good morning everyone. Oh, good afternoon, depending on where you are in the world, Kim, while Martin and I are talking if you could give us co-host privileges please so that we can share our PowerPoint when it's time to do that. So I'm Dr. Kanika Sharma. I am at the Law School at SOAS. We're now the School of Law, Gender and Media. And my own research is on, thank you Kim. My own research is on a colonial legal history of South Asia, where I'm particularly interested in the development of women's rights and transnational feminist movements in the late 19th century. But I also look at the way in which images, architecture and theater are used in political trials in the Indian subcontinent. And towards this end, I'm working with the theater director at the moment to stage a commission of inquiry into the political trial, I argue, the political trial of the last Mughal emperor by the East India Company in 1858. So that's a little bit about my research as we're going to talk to you through this session today. We'll also talk to you about how, how as Martin mentioned, our teaching is research led. So we like to bring in our research into our modules as well. Over to you, Martin. I tried to multitask and also write a quick text to one of our, to Labiba Ruxana. So I'm going to do this and then I'm going to turn back to our session. You can see what I've just written in the chat. Yes, no, thank you very much, Kanika. So as a Kanika and I actually share a research and a teaching interest because we both have an interest in South Asian law and we co-convene one of our, I think flagship modules at the School of Law. It's a module called Law and Society in South Asia. And for next year, actually, this particular module is going to change and made more post-graduates specific with a particular dedicated post-graduates MA and LLM stream for this module account. It's still being co-taught with third year undergraduates. My own research interest, well, I've been at source for quite some time. So I think I still retain a strong interest in South Asia but from working very much on the role and impact of Islam on the legal systems of South Asia, I've also bunched out a bit into environmental law and more recently also in dispute resolution, arbitration, mediation, again, with a reference to South Asia. I'm so sorry, I've got this Siri thing which kind of goes on in the background. I need to disable this somehow. And yes, I think both Kanika and my research actually flows directly into Law and Society in South Asia and in my case, my environmental law interest also leads me to co-convene with Professor Philippe Collet a course on Law, Social Justice and the Environment which is a compulsory half module for anyone doing and specialism in environmental law either at MA or the LLM specialisms. Yeah, I think this is, we both, I mean, of course, published, I also co-edited the yearbook of, actually I'm the editor-in-chief of the yearbook of Islamic and Middle Eastern law. And you will see when you visit the School of Law website that one kind of hallmark of our law school is a strong kind of publication culture. So we publish from the School of Law a number of journals, including the Journal of African Law, the Journal of Law, Environment and Development the Journal of Comparative Law and our post-graduate students also actually publish the source is it Kanika, the source law journal? The source law journal, yes. And each year actually there's a call for students to participate in various functions in that journal. We also have, and then I kind of hand over to talk a bit more about the content of our research but in terms of structure and outlets we have a number of research centers. In fact, Kanika is the director of our center for Asian law. But yeah, I won't kind of bore you with a long list of all these centers but if you visit our website you'll see that we have four or five research centers specific on particular regions or areas of law. And again, kind of welcome students to become member of these centers during their studies at source and all these centers have kind of various activities mainly in the form of conferences and lecture series. And Kanika, in fact, I think also prepared a few wonderful slides about our research directions and what we informed, what principles, ideas and values inform our research. And I just hand you back to Kanika now, please. Thank you, Martin. So I'm going to quickly share our screen if I can see where to... Huh. Kim, it seems you might have to give me host privileges to be able to share screen at the moment, please. Kanika, I can do it as well. I practiced it beforehand. He just did, so I can... Oh, Brighan, excellent. Because I can't... If you have difficulties, I can do it for you. If you want to do it, Martin, because for some reason I can't see the option to be able to share PowerPoint. I just hope it's the right slide, but you find out. Bear with us. Oh, thanks, Martin. I can see that. That's perfect. Is it all right? Yeah, if you would just... If you want to do a slideshow. Give me a second slideshow. Got it. Wow. Okay. This is... We've done that already. Martin, you'll have to go through the slides because you'll have control over them. Yeah. So here I'm going to keep my microphone on this way so that you can give me... So here we just have the presenters, the audience. So this is Kanika and my email addresses, but you also find this again on the SOAS website. Do you want me to go on? Yes, please. Okay. So if you're looking to do your post-graduate degree, post-graduate degree at SOAS in law, you've got a choice of two streams, really, two programs. You can either choose to do the LLM stream, and that's for those who have a prior degree in law, but we also offer an MA stream, MA in law stream. And that's for those who perhaps are interested in law, but don't actually have a prior degree in law. And I'm going to come back to that in a minute. Now, the speciality of SOAS, we were set up in, I want to say, 1916, and we were set up to look at particularly Asian and African legal systems. And that is something that we continue to do so today. So our speciality is a unique focus on the legal systems, social legal challenges, and jurisprudence that is emerging out of Asia and Africa. So as Martin and I both said at the start, we're both South Asia specialists. If we could go back, please, Martin. Thank you. So the options in front of you as you choose to join SOAS would be you either choose to do an LLM again, depending on whether you have a previous law degree or not, or you choose to do an MA. Once you've chosen those sort of broad streams, you've got choices and programs within them. And we're going to come back to that in a second. While you're choosing those, you could, of course, also choose modules outside the law school. So you could choose modules from languages, culture, arts, humanities, politics, economics, entirely up to you. So you've got the choice. For some streams, you will have to choose at least one core law module or two, depending on what degree you want. But there is flexibility for you to create a program that best suits your needs, from picking and choosing from across different schools. Can I just add to this, Kanekar? Of course. So, yeah, thank you. So I think this is the point where I made, and I think perhaps makes us stand out also in terms of MA and LLM programs. You can do a total of 30 credits outside the school of law in another kind of post-graded model. For some modules, we suggest that you actually liaise with the program conveners of the MA and LLM just to see that it's suitable. I mean, in years past, for instance, students were interested and still are in, for instance, studying Arabic language, but sometimes underestimate the real workload and associate it with actually doing another language. But otherwise, we always encourage our students to, you know, branch out and take advantage of this amazing kind of learning environment and range of courses offered also in other departments of source. Thanks, Kanekar. Thanks, Martin, if we could go to the next slide, please. Yeah. Great. So in our LLM programs, we're particularly interested in sort of broad themes that all of us across the law school work on in one way or the other. We're particularly concerned with studying law as a form of power that can be used to either marginalize people as to oppress people, but we're equally interested in looking at how can the people themselves use law to overturn oppressive structure. So how can law empower individuals? So law as a repressive oppressive tool on the one hand, but equally law as something that can empower the population on the other. And this is particularly relevant to Asia and Africa today because we see this in the everyday lives and interactions of people with law in these regions. We're also interested in issues of intersectionality and intersectionality simply is the idea that as human beings, we are different identities intersect with each other. So my identity as a woman intersects with my identity as a brown person, as someone of South Asian heritage and ethnicity, and all of those identities intersect. And we look at the way in which law relates to other structuring forces, other structural ideas, including race, gender, sexuality, and class. And this is something that comes up repeatedly, no matter what you might be studying. You might be studying environment, but we were also still looking at the impact of environmental law on issues of race and gender. And at the heart of all of our work is the question of decolonization. And I know that decolonization is a buzzword these days, but I'd like to think that so I sort of was on that wagon long before many of the other universities have jumped on it. And the question of decolonization is a big word, but the question is really simple. The question is given that law was central to the colonial project, and given the fact that post-colonial state systems are based on the colonial legacy, how can we think about decolonizing law? How can we think about in Asia and Africa moving away from the European influence, moving away from the Western influence, and the imperialism and colonialism that that first interaction was wrapped up in? Martin? Yeah, no, thank you. I just wanted to, I mean, I, whenever I kind of write on South Asian law, it's always kind of, almost kind of surreal sensation when you write the years of the legislation, which is still kind of being used and current in South Asia. So we have the contract act of 1872, the Indian and Pakistan penal code, both from 1860. So, you know, you just, you can't get away from this kind of colonial heritage. So the next slide, please, Kanika. And let me know if you want me to take over, but I think you're doing it so, so very nicely. I'll do to the end of this one. And then you can take over. Okay. So these are our degree programs. As I said, we've got two broad streams. You can either do the LLM stream, if you've got a previous degree in law, or you can do the MA stream. By and large, the two streams overlap. So for instance, you could do an LLM in environmental law and sustainable development. Equally, you could do an MA in environmental law and sustainable development. Similarly, you could do human LLM or an MA in human rights conflict and justice. You could do the dual degree in international law or in Islamic law. We do have some specific LLM only streams. And these are an LLM in international commercial and economic law and an LLM in law and gender and an LLM in law development and globalization. So by and large, there is flexibility for you to be able to choose the program that you want. And the same stuff is available as both as an LLM and an MA. Some, however, are restricted in entry to those who have previous law degrees because they are LLM only programs. You might be in a position where when you're entering the law school, you do not actually know yet what you would like to do. And for that, all you might actually have very broad interests and you might find these streams restrictive. If you're in that position, we also have general streams. So you could just do an LLM in law and you can just do an MA in legal studies. These are general programs that don't require you to choose specific modules. Now, I as part of my work at SOAS also, I'm the MA in law program convener. It is the MA program is something that I'm very strongly believe in. And the reason that I do that is because I myself don't have an undergraduate law background. I actually don't even have an MA law background. So I'm someone who did an undergraduate in journalism, did a masters in politics and then moved to a PhD in law. And I think this is one of the beauties of the programs that it doesn't require you to have decided at the age of 17 that you wanted to do law and stick to law throughout. You may have changed your mind midway. You may now want to do law and the MA in law program is happy for you to join us. And I think actually we need to think about this in a broader way. No matter what degree you have previously, whether you have a degree in economics or politics or sociology, you bring that knowledge with you to law. And part of the SOAS sort of agreement is really to have, to look at the social legal rather than the simply legal. So we welcome this interdisciplinary background. It's something that will hold you in good stead at SOAS. Martin. Yeah, thank you very much. Do you want to continue, Kanika? Or do you what you want? You could. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm just going to continue with the theme of what Kanika just said, namely that in fact, a number of our colleagues actually don't have a kind of classic law background. And in fact, you know, because the way we ended up in the law school already kind of gives you a hint that we actually didn't want to become kind of solicitors in magic circle law firms, but we were interested in studying and researching law and very much law in the SOAS approach, if I may call it that, which as Kanika explained really kind of draws from a number of disciplines. And in some ways, in some areas, perhaps law is as a black letter law narrowly defined the least important part of what we actually do in the school of law. Kanika already hinted at the kind of history of SOAS, which really kind of started up very much as part of the colonizing project. SOAS was founded to train civil servants for dispatch and deployment in the British Empire's colonies. But oddly enough, I think this particular heritage also kind of allows us now to critically engage with that history and also take advantage of what is an extraordinary collection of materials, including legal materials on South Asia. So we have the other reference library on South Asian law. And you will see that the same applies in terms of our collections with other regions of the world. Talking about resources, we are incredibly well placed in London. So we are right next to the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, which has one of the, if not the, largest kind of law libraries in Western Europe. You're also able to use the library in Senate House University of London. And in fact, the law school is now housed in this very nice architectural kind of gem in Central London, the University of London, which actually inspired the 1984 depiction of the Ministry of Truth. And Truth is, of course, all we are all about. So let me just go to the next slide. Yes, so we've already talked about our research culture and research teaching. What I might do with you very briefly is to actually go very, very quickly back to our structure here, our degree programs, because I don't want to just say a little bit about the academic year, because we still have a few hours left. So when you start at source as an MA student, you attend a two-week prior pre-session course, which will give you inductions into various areas of law, and will enable you to actually follow and grasp the law-specific content of the modules you're going to study. And in fact, this year, Karnika was the program convener for this pre-session and module. You then have to take 100... I completely forgot about the pre-session. So just to quickly tell you about the pre-session. If you're an MA in law student, the pre-session fee is part of your fees already, so you don't have to pay extra. It's a two-week session that we do just before the start of term. So it's usually in mid-September for two weeks. And it is a session that very quickly in two weeks, it's an intensive session that introduces you to legal terminology and ideas, because some of you might be feeling apprehensive about doing an MA in law without a law background. And this is really just to put your mind at ease. It is also something that LLM students can choose to do. And you pay a bit extra, but you can do it. And it's really popular for students, such as Lucia right now, who asked, well, I've got a civil law background. Will I be able to do an LLM? We often encourage you to do the pre-session, because it gives you a quick training into common law over two extensive weeks. So for those of you who are a little bit apprehensive about are you the right fit for this program, like you are interested in it, but you may not have the vocabulary to be able to go into the modules. I highly recommend the pre-session for that reason. Yeah, brilliant. Thank you. Thank you, Kanika. I'm glad we covered that. So you join us either the middle of September or towards the end of September for enrollment. You will then be given a source email address, of course, and access to our kind of mood blackboard learning environment. And you'll find that this is going to be your main resource for module specific readings and information. So each module has a blackboard site, this discussion boards, and so on. You need to take in order to get your degree. You need to accumulate a total of 120 credits of taught modules. At the law school, we have either full modules, which stretch across both the first and the second term, and we have half modules, which are taught only in one term. So in theory, you could also take eight half modules in order to actually get up to your 120 credits. In terms of assessment, all these modules have different types of assessment. And if you go later on into our source website, law school website, and you enter the module specific information you will see at the bottom, the assessment, you will see that most of our modules are not any longer taught exclusively or in fact at all by written exams. And certainly Kanek and I always kind of debate new forms of useful assessment, which is fun and gives you an opportunity to research and be creative. So we try to do this, and you'll see the same in other modules. Most of our old post-graduate modules really are seminal styles, so you're expected to do advanced reading. Each module normally has two hours of tuition or meeting time per week, and you would be expected to really do reading in advance. So if you're used to a university culture, which is more lecture based, where you go into a lecture theater and just take notes, you would have to kind of readjust a little bit because we really want students to participate in discussions and exchange views and really learn and develop through that particular form of interaction. You have the option of doing a general master's with no kind of specialization mentioned on your degree certificate. The same is correct for the MA in legal studies, and then you'll see the list of different specialisms. If you take one of these specialisms, again, you can check our website. There's then a particular portfolio of modules you need to take in order to qualify. Once you've done your tort course, you're going to go into the kind of Easter vacation. If your modules have written exams, you would then sit these exams between kind of May and June, and then comes a really exciting part. We then have a MA LLM dissertation colloquium, which is a one day event where students present their ideas and initial work on their dissertations. That work would have started in the beginning of January when you would be looking for supervisors and be allocated to supervisor for your dissertation. And in the summer, then you're expected to work on your dissertation. That is now 10,000 words, Kanika, is it? It is now 10,000. It's 20,000 words. Apologies. Some of these word limits are kind of shit. So it's now for both MA and LLM students, 12,000 words dissertation. You hand this in on the 15th of September. And yeah, then this really in terms of from your own perspective completes your degree if you do it full-time. Or of course you can stretch it across three academic years if you're doing it part-time. And then you'll be the power holder of either an MA and LLM certificate. And yeah, this is our program structure. And the next slide underneath fast forward is then going to talk about what can you do with a source MA or LLM degree in terms of careers. Kanika, do you want to take over? I just come in for the second year as well. Please, yes. I'll let you know that the dissertation is a very key component of both the LLM and the MA program. As Martin said, most of our modules are 30 or 15 credit modules. The dissertation module is actually worth 160 credits. So it's out of a third of your total credit count. You have to take a total of 180 to achieve an MA. So it's quite central to your final mark. And it is something that we encourage you to start thinking about as early as possible. So for instance, as MA program convener, it's only last week that we had our first dissertation on the job. So this is not something that we just say, right, go away and somewhere do your dissertation. It's something that we work with you throughout to help you have the ability to write a dissertation to think about what you want to work on and look at the best ways in which the law school can support you in doing a dissertation to the best of your abilities. So don't worry about it. It looks like, oh, we're going to go over in the summer and write it, but you'll be supported with the process throughout. No, thank you, Kanek. I think that is a really important point you're making. So the dissertation, work on the dissertation, really is in a sense your fifth module in the first and second term. And in fact, formal supervision will stop in the summer. You know, you have kind of emergency access to a specified member of staff, but your supervisor themselves will actually have stopped the formal supervision once it comes to the summer. And I just see there is a, I didn't turn it over who asked very quickly about the PhD program. And let me just address this before we go into career. So there are two additional postgraduate programs we offer. And the first one, and we didn't mention on the slide is called Masters in Research, the M-RES in Law. This is in structure, not dissimilar to the MA or LLM, but has a more focused component on research skills. And the dissertation is significantly longer than for the MA and the LLM. And this M-RES in Law, we have envisaged and introduced as a kind of stepping stone towards doing a PhD. So if you want to do a PhD, but you somehow feel or we feel that you're not quite ready for being plunged into the deep end of a PhD research, we would very much encourage you to do the M-RES in Law and use this as a stepping stone to actually go into the PhD program. For admission to the PhD program, of course, you need an excellent PhD proposal. You need a postgraduate degree. It doesn't have to be Law as Kanika explained, but of course we would kind of pay attention on the quality of your research proposal and within your previous kind of academic work we would pay particular attention on your writing skills and the marks, for instance, you achieved in an MA or LLM dissertation. So I think the one thing I would like to impress on you, those interested in PhD is to take the M-RES in Law quite seriously because it's an excellent way of easing yourself into the PhD and to ensure that you complete the PhD on time. So we've got 17 minutes to 11 London time and I know that both Kanika and I actually will have to leave before the hour finishes because Kanika has teaching and I have a meeting which I can't shift. So Kanika, shall we go to Korea's or is there anything else on the program? Korea's is fine. Perfect. I just fast forward to this slide. So why Martin's doing that? Just to make clear why we didn't touch on the PhD here, we look at our postgraduate programs in two ways broadly. Once the top postgraduate and that's what we are discussing today and the other ones are postgraduate research and the M-RES and the PhD fall within the PGR stream where today only discussing the PGT stream. But if you want to have a broader conversation about the PGR screen, you've got our email IDs, feel free to email us and Martin and I can respond to queries there as well. So just so you know, it's right now in November that so as PhD applications open up. So if you're thinking about your proposal, do get in touch with whoever, have a look at the staff profiles, see who you'd like to potentially work with and get in touch with them to see whether you're at a place right now to already submit an application or not. Right. So once you've finished, Martin very nicely brought us to the summer period where you're writing your dissertation and you submit in September and then you're ready to return to the world with a new law degree. And a lot of careers are open to you. These are some of the careers that our past students have done. Often people end up working with non-governmental organizations, pink tanks, governance and policy institutes. So this is one of the key advantages that SOAS of course offers is an in-depth knowledge of legal systems of Asia and Africa and of course many of the people who study law in UK don't have the same advantage. So this is what sets you apart from others and increasingly as we're looking at a globalized world, NGOs, institutions are looking at for people who have a knowledge not just of the legal system but of how that legal system interacts with other systems. So SOAS is ideally placed to give you that knowledge. Of course many of you may already want to know that you want to do, to practice law. You want to be a legal practitioner. And if that's what you want to do, you can of course, you can practice law immediately or if you're doing the MA law conversion course. And it's really important to remind you that this MA in law is not a qualifying law degree. So it does not allow you to practice law. If you're interested in practicing law after an MA in law, you will need to do a conversion course. You may also want to think about our senior status LLB program. Our senior status LLB program is a two year program which is a qualifying law degree for those who have a previous degree that is not in law. So that's a two year program. It's a usual LLB is a three year program. The senior status compresses that into two years. It's an intensive program. And I do mean intensive. You do take more modules than what you would do in an LLB but it is crucially a two year program. So if you don't have a law degree and you want to practice law, you might also want to think about the senior status LLB. A lot of our students also end up taking, as Aadha Tunji asked, the route to academia. So they start thinking about their MRes or potentially if you've done an LLM or PhD students have had previous SOAS LLMs. And of course that's not necessary. You don't have to have a SOAS LLM to enter the SOAS PhD program. Martin. Yeah, no external kind of there's really not much to add. I think, yes, I'd also like to stress that our students really tend to go into kind of careers which have a kind of transnational element. So work for UN organizations for let's call them global NGOs or civil society organizations. A few of our students also in the end kind of end up working for government departments in their home countries. And I must say now that I've been working on the publishing law for almost 30 years. I just find kind of my students almost anywhere in the world. So if I go to a conference in Dubai or in Singapore there's a very strong likelihood that I will also meet one of my students and in fact all of us kind of make an effort. So I was at the conference in Dubai last week and met my PhD student in Abu Dhabi in the evening for a supervision session. And this is kind of yes, very much a kind of source event which kind of seems quite normal from most of from all of us as staff and supervisors that is perhaps in the context of other institutions still a bit unusual. Now what we haven't done in our session is give you much information about kind of practical matters and for this really we have other parts of source and which will give you information on scholarships, on accommodations, on fees and so on. So Kanaka and my contribution here is very much on the academic program but the number of ways of getting more information on the kind of practical matters. And let me just see questions. Yes, questions. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to stop the slideshow now so that we have another kind of five or six minutes in our session. So I'll stop the slideshow now and now I can see the full screen. I see at a totally high. Now I can see a few people. So do you have any questions for Kanaka and my staff or indeed for Kim who works for the recruitment section of source. Please go ahead. We've got a question in chat from Lauren from New Zealand and Lauren asked just wondering how long the conversion course is. My background is in anthropology, sociology and policy. The conversion course is usually a one year conversion course but just I can say a bit more about this because I did one. So hi Lauren from New Zealand. This is also a long way. I think you're slightly almost beaten by our James from Hawaii who is also in the chat but I'm not sure from London speaking what is further away perhaps New Zealand but yes. So actually the entry into the legal profession in England is changing now. So if you wanted to become a barrister and you don't have a law degree you will still have to do the conversion course. I think it's not called. I think it's called now the graduate diploma in law and basically it just consists of the seven foundations of legal knowledge subjects and there are various kind of providers in the London area which actually offer this conversion course. I myself did it in the early 90s and I must say it was very hard work but in some ways also an efficient way to actually get a qualifying law degree. If you wanted to become a solicitor you don't need to take a qualifying law degree any longer. This has been replaced by the solicitors qualifying exam SQE and you can sit these SQEs without having studied law albeit that your chances of passing these SQEs without having studied law are quite low so in some ways also the formal requirement has been relaxed the substantive element of knowing quite a lot of law in order to pass that hasn't really hasn't really changed so it's still very worth if you wanted to become a solicitor to do for instance the as Kanika said the senior status or the conversion course and to my knowledge for the conversion course you actually need a UK undergraduate degree it has to be a UK degree in order to do this or for that matter a UK postgraduate degree I'm going to mute myself Just to add to what Martin said so as we don't actually offer the conversion course the conversion course is something that is external to us and as Martin said the conversion course very strongly focuses on the seven core UK law modules you've got property, tort, public law criminal law etc and often they might not actually give you sort of that so as flavor because you'll be just doing UK law so I do think that the if you know already that you want to practice law the SSL it will be the senior status might be better because it allows you to do those modules but it also gives you that so as flavor of being able to dip into modules of Asia from Asia and Africa and all those non UK focus if that's what you're interested in so you've got lots of options there I hope that answers your question Lauren we've got our next question from sorry I'm not sure Lauren what you mean you thought the course was outside so as the conversion course is outside external to so as the senior status qualifying law degree is something that so as offers it does however I'll give you an LLB degree and not an LLM or a master's degree depending on what you're interested in Nina from Japan asks are internships or work experience for LLM students common if common in what kind of sectors I would say yes they are very common most of our students are actually doing something alongside their studies I think increasingly students are aware that when they're going to employers at the end of their degree the employers looking for a holistic package so they're looking for extracurricular activities whether those are extracurricular activities within so as membership of law societies etc or whether it's activities outside so as where you work or in turn or any of that what sort of sectors do they work on I would say it's very broad it depends entirely on what you're interested in so again think tanks advocacy and policy units but also journalism and media NGOs that work with women's rights, human rights all of those are fairly common sectors for our students to be working in I can just we don't really have a huge amount more times if you have any follow-up questions you're always welcome to email us this very quickly goes through the other question participation yes if you definitely as I mentioned you can participate in research centre activities and in fact there's even a journal specifically to the postgraduate students so that is definitely an option international student research opportunities before that you want to touch on my next question on selection criteria for the LLM ah yes because actually I'm currently also standing in as admissions tutor so so basically you need to have decent grades in your undergraduate degree and if English is not your first language you also need to to produce a kind of English language certificate and we like you to also write something a personal statement which we look at and yes all of this ticked and looked at by our admissions team and myself you will get admission to the LLM so we've got we've got a couple of questions on research centre participation and I think you've already talked about it I think I also want to highlight one thing that we're doing from this year which is that you know we've because of COVID we've moved from an online only to a hybrid system this year we're slowly making our way to fully in person again and one of the things that we lost last year to a degree was just being able to interact with each other so what we're doing this year is weekly seminars we've got a group of law, gender and media two weekly seminars actually where we invite people from all over the world to come and talk to us about their research and all of these research seminars which are usually hosted by our centres are open to all our students so all our undergrad and master students have the opportunity to to learn not just from us but from all these people that we invite to come and have a talk at SOAS Evangeline asks that I was just wondering what hands-on experience opportunities were available to students during studies I'm looking to study international law and want to know if there are research opportunities available Evangeline do you mean research opportunities within SOAS itself or if you could type what you mean by that we could potentially come back Nikhil from India asks the same question I'm very interested in the work that the Centre for the Study of Colonialism Empire and International Law is doing I was wondering if general LLM students are allowed to be a part of it by a part of it yes in the sense that there are many of the seminars or conferences that they host membership of the centre it depends from centre to centre so I'm not actually sure what CESA's membership criteria is but I think it might be not open to PGT membership but will be open to larger PGT participation in their events I have a meeting with various participants so unfortunately I can't on my own shift the meeting so I need to say goodbye to all of you I sent a text you hope to see you in 2022 Kanika I think you also need to leave don't you yes I need to because Kanika's teaching Kanika please do you need to leave that's fine I will just put my email address in the chat box so if you have any questions that we haven't answered here today and you would like to forward them through to me you can do in that I will send them out to the various members of the team if that's easier for everybody and then just because I know a few people had asked about research we actually did a webinar about being interested in doing a PhD at SOAS in general and it tells you about how you make that application it tells you about kind of top tips for that so please do go on and watch that it's quite helpful just tells you about research in general at SOAS as well so if you want to email me with any other questions do feel free and I will make sure that those get sent around to everybody and thank you everybody for joining us today bye bye everyone good luck thank you bye bye thank you Kanika bye bye