 So hello there, I can see quite a few of you waiting and online. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for joining us today. What I will do is take you through a quick presentation of what the global corporations and policy degree is about. And some of your questions will hopefully be answered through the presentation. And for the rest, I will be very happy to take questions if they go along. You can just pop me your questions on the chat box, and I'll chat right back to you. OK, so here goes. Thank you for your interest in the MSc Global Corporations and Policy, first of all. Hopefully this will keep your interests enough to move forward to the next step. So here goes. You've obviously chosen the GCP program because you think, so has is an extremely interesting place. And so has is probably one of the most, this will probably be one of the most rewarding and fruitful decisions of your life. So has not only has discipline expertise, whether it's in the social sciences or languages and culture or humanities, but also very, very deep and driven regional expertise. We pride ourselves in the work that we do, the research that we do and the teaching that we do on developing countries and their interaction with the developed world. So has, in that sense, is a very unique place where you get the, if you want, the other side of the global perspective, which is what can sometimes be called the global south, who want a better world, of course. And the teaching quality, of course, is extremely high. We have extremely committed teachers who bring in a lot of their field experience and work experience from the Middle East, from Africa, from China, Asia, and actually use it in their research and their teaching. And that, the combination becomes a very enriching experience for students, potential students like you. So, and the Soyuz Library, I mean, I will really not be able to give you feel of the Soyuz Library, unless you're standing on one of the balconies and looking down into the five stories of just books and books and more amazing books from all corners of the world about all kinds of really interesting subjects, academic as well as a lot of current affairs, magazines that you can dip your fingers into. So the library is also another incredible resource that so as students have access to. And we have about 3,000 online and distance learning students, just about a little less than double than that on campus. But together, our online and our campus students make up a cohort of about 8,500 students. So we're not huge, but we like to think of ourselves and we are indeed, we are small, compact, tightly knit, and therefore highly specialized. And it's very easy for us to provide fairly bespoke attention to our students as and when they need them. And the student experience in Soyuz is also quite something, incredible. You have to be around as an online student or a campus student to know that, it can be a most rewarding experience. Our online students are, as you can see, fairly spread out across the world. A fair number of first students come from Europe. Another large proportion come from sub-Saharan Africa. We have a fair amount from across the Atlantic from the Middle Eastern, North Africa and Asia. So it's a good worldwide mix in a particular cohort you are likely to have colleagues from all across the world. The last class cohort that I remember I was taking had somebody from a small fishing village in Alaska. And it was quite a pleasure for her to be part of this world and for us to take our world back to her. And that's what, it's not just an online degree but an online degree, it so has opened you up to. Really, coming to the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy, it is quite a multidisciplinary center that we have having so as. It's not your usual center which focuses on a discipline. We draw faculty and researchers from a variety of disciplines. They could be from international relations. They could be from economics. I am from, I'm my disciplinary background is economics and political economy. They could be from diplomacy. And that also makes CISD an extremely rich source of teaching and research. And the masters that we have available, you can see them, global diplomacy and two other pathways to global diplomacy, at least in North Africa, South Asia, three other extremely popular programs. One is global energy and climate policy, global corporations policy, which I'm talking to you about right now. And masters on Muslim minorities in a global context. So that rounds up the CISD offerings that we have. And of course, we also have some MOOCs that you might be interested in and we've got them listed out there for you. They can be a good sort of starter for 10 before you move on to something that's much more in the mode of a masters over two years. How does studying online work? This is something that lots of students are curious about and very, very correctly so. Most of us have been through campus experiences and sometimes we can be a little unsure about what or what the online experiences and how it translates, how the learning experience translates online. I can certainly tell you from how the teaching experience translates online, it is as rewarding. We get, when we talk to our peers, when we talk to students in the virtual learning environment, when we're discussing feedback with them, it is as interactive, the energy is as high and as a student, you want the best, I think, combinations of online learning is that you get the same content, the same enriching content, but with the flexibility to do it at your time. And that to my mind is something that is extremely advantageous about the online degree and especially the way that it's been modeled, the online degrees are modeled in SOAS at CISD. You can do the learning at your own time, but you also have a forum where if you have a question, you want to flag up a discussion, you can actually type in something and you will get a response soon enough from either one of the faculty. Or this is something that as somebody who does campus as well as online teaching regularly, you actually pick up a lot of your learnings, far more of your learnings from your peers. And you'd be surprised as to how much a source of knowledge and learning appear to be a learning can be. So you get obviously what your convener and your tutor are telling you and from your readings, but you also get to learn a lot from what your peers are putting out there. So it's shared perspectives, it's shared information, you might get hold of a reading that you didn't know existed, but is extremely important to your research, or you might actually get interested in a research strand because somebody, one of your colleagues, put in a comment or a question that made you think about your question in a very different manner. You'll be surprised as to how rewarding peer-to-peer learning can be. So you, as I said, you get the best of this mix. You get teaching, you get the content, you get the flexibility, and you get this very rich theme of peer-to-peer learning. So you get, and you get access to the online libraries of both the University of London and SOAS University of London. And a lot of the most interesting journals are available online, and a lot of the most resourceful books are actually available as e-books nowadays that goes with the wonders of digitization. And the SOAS Library actually provides you online access to a vast universe of academic resources out there. So if you think it's all flexible and you can do your own thing, well, no, that's not it. There will also obviously try and put it on. Not try. We put in structure there for you to actually help you plan your study goals. It can be flexible to the extent of what your study goals are going to be because you have the structures. We give you a proper course guide before you start. So you do the online module over two years. You take four 16 week modules in those four years along with a small dissertation module that's tacked on to the end of every online module. And then apart from your four course or subject modules, the fifth module that you actually end up taking is your dissertation module which you submit right at the end. And I must say the process of writing the dissertation is one of the most fun and one of the most enriching for students across the board, across all our online programs because this is one piece of work where you synthesize all the learning that we provide you and that you pick in your four modules. But it's also the one bit of work that's truly yours. And you are able to put in your world view what you've picked up, how you make sense of the world, of course in an academic framework and then you present it to us. So that's pretty much how, and you do have two modules in our compulsory but you're also able to choose two modules of your choice as in when the module choices open up for you as the sessions go along. So you are also able to pick and choose at least for two modules of the four that you take and you're able to come up with a fairly interesting mix of subjects by the end of your master's program. And of course you get all your course materials online if you want to do some extra browsing as I said at the beginning of just a little while ago. A lot of our resources are available online at the SOAS Library and the University of London Library. So you'll never be short of resources or help because you'll have an associate tutor, you will have a personal tutor, there is a dedicated administrator for online students at CISD and of course as a program director for every program. So you're covered, you're pretty much covered with any sort of issue that you might if at all face. And the sort of submissions that you have to make a part of the dissertation, we call them activities because these are activities that you do online and submit electronically. So we call them activities. You get bespoke feedback for each and every activity that you submit. You have six through a module over the 16 weeks and not all of them, if six sounds daunting, that's not exactly how it is at all. They're small, but therefore they're intended to make you think and it's your final activity which we call activity six, which you can compare to an essay in a regular campus module. So that's how we also make sure that along with your study sessions and the academic material that you're going through and the topics that you're going through every week are also actually graded on the basis of what you've learned and what you submit. So that's pretty much how the teaching and how the examination component of it goes. And as I said, there is help throughout, right through the 16 weeks where you're taking your session. So if you have a problem, you can flag it up to your associate tutor, you can talk to your personal tutor. If you put it out on the forum, somebody, one of your colleagues who's also a student on the same module can come in and take you through a solution. So there'll always be a response at the other end waiting for you, whatever your query might be. The MSc Global Corporations and Policy module in general has actually started becoming quite popular since we had the financial crisis and since we realized just how important these global behemoths are. And it's not just in the financial sector. If you look at technology companies, if you look at pharmaceutical companies, they straddle borders. They are huge owners of technology and therefore of profits and therefore affect lives in many ways than just affecting the lives of people who consume them. These are organizations who work with government. These are organizations that work with NGOs. These are organizations that work across the interest group spectrum in any society. And that's what makes them so interesting to study and makes them so relevant to study. You get a little bit of how corporations are viewed in international politics because they can be political creatures. They are most definitely legal and economic creatures. And of course, their footprints are across the globe. So an American corporation might be headquartered in America but it might be doing most with R&D in Europe paying its taxes somewhere else and have its biggest market in perhaps India and wanting desperately to get into China. So for developing countries which are looking to become more economically capable, more stable, provide more employment and income to its citizens, something like a multinational corporation is or could be the answer or is it the answer? That's the kind of journey that we take you through on the global corporations and policy, of course. So it's not just about studying what a multinational corporation is. It's really a multinational corporation plugged into the way it affects social life, economic life, political life and policymaking. And that's why we have the word MSc, corporations and policy because multinational corporations are shaped by policy but something that has increasingly become a subject area of research, multinational corporations are increasingly making policy or at least influencing policy. And that makes them extremely important actors in domestic political economies and in global political economy. So once you take the program, you actually have the language to engage with this kind of policymaking and it does not mean, in fact, it certainly does not restrict you to working for one such corporation. It means you can actually straddle a lot of sectors and find careers in a lot of sectors and our students have actually gone ahead to do exactly that. They work in global corporations. They work in policy. They work in the third sector. They work in NGOs. They actually even work in a lot of organizations like the young dad or the WTO. And there is actually a wealth of career opportunities because this program gives you the information and the ability to go engage in policymaking in an area that's actually affecting all our lives in a very relevant and in a very real job. So that is the MSc Global Corporations and Policy. I am very happy to take questions if you have any more questions about that. As I said, the structure of it is that you take one core module. It's no longer two core modules. It used to be two core modules. So now you have the flexibility to take one core module and three elective modules. So your core module understands the multinational corporation in a globalizing world. There's a bit of theory of what a corporation or a firm is. And then we move on to understand how the multinational corporation actually interacts with the world around it, with government. What role it plays in policymaking and affecting policy. What are the factors that actually determine foreign direct investment. And an interesting question that sometimes that probably doesn't get asked around enough which is when a multinational corporation adopts a location and another country hosts it, what are the effects on that country? Yes, we know there are effects in terms of environment but does it affect the country politically? How exactly does it help? That particular country increase its, very simply speaking, increase its per capita income. Does it actually have an input into economic growth of developing countries? Is it possible for countries to use the technology and the employment provided by multinational corporations to increase their own income growth? And which brings me to the other very interesting question. Technology is at the heart of how countries grow of how economies grow. And multinational corporations increasingly have access to that technology. What does that mean for the developing world from here on? So those are the kind of questions that your core module will help you grapple with and answer. For the three elective modules, you actually have quite a few that you can choose from. You can see some of them on your slide, cultural diplomacy, diplomatic systems. If you have a slightly more diplomatic bent of mind maybe you won't work for work against the commercial attache in your country's consulate or your country's high commission somewhere. This would be a really good combination. Other kinds of combinations. So you can actually, you can choose from your combinations both in terms of your academic interest as well as your career interest. Something like global citizenship and advocacy could along with the multinational corporation degree give you into a career with an NGO. International economics, you might be able to actually work with teams in multinational corporations who are moving to other host locations in the world. So you can pick and choose and come up with subjects that are most relevant to you whether in terms of academic pursuits or whether in terms of career pursuits. And there is enough from that list possibly to satisfy most people's considerations really. And again, I'm very happy to talk to these once we're done. There's something else that this online program provides you that very online programs provide you which is the opportunity to go for the CISD study tour. This happens in June which is possibly the best time to visit the continent of Europe but apart from that you also visit some extremely relevant international organizations. So you have sessions at the United Nations in Geneva, you have sessions at the organization for economic cooperation and development which is the OACD and how these sessions essentially work is that one of the students. You normally go for these study tours in conjunction with the students who are also studying this program on campus so it's a very good mix. It's an opportunity to know your actual cohort who are also on campus as well as your cohort who study with you online and students chair sessions and then these organizations and representatives who will give you a background of where they're coming from the kind of work that the organization does. It's not quite a public relations exercise because they can be incredibly candid when it comes to the kind of work they do, the limitations that they have and the advantages of working for an organization like them and their relevance. The one thing about SOAs students and I've been for half a dozen of these study tours now my time is SOAs and the one thing that SOAs students are known for are asking the difficult questions so somehow SOAs students actually bring out the best in most of these speakers who represent their organization. So this is an incredible plus to everything else that you are getting at SOAs. You not only these very relevant people these organizations it's a very good opportunity to network, to learn more, to add a practical side to what you're learning. If you have any burning questions or doubts about some of the things you're being taught you can get them validated or disproved over here and it's also an excellent chance to meet your cohort. So all in all the study tour is something that's quite a unique experience for a particular program and it's tailored to students of GCP. And you can see some of the list of organizations our students have visited and they are extremely relevant in today's world. For instance a lot of our students who came in didn't know what the World Intellectual Property Organization was but once you know them and once you realize the kind of important work you're doing with them of real disagree it actually makes your knowledge base far more relevant to the world that you'll be going on to navigate at the end of the degree really. So yes, the UNTAD, WTO, WIPO Institute of Sustainable Development, the OECD. The OECD is an interesting topic because while they represent the interests of the large developed countries the OECD also has some fairly interesting research operations across Africa and Asia and that's actually the interface which we like to present to our students when they visit the OECD study tour. The application process. I'm sure some of you have been through this by now but how it works is that we notify you within 10 days of your application of a conditional offer and of course a conditional offer is it means that we need some proof or some other information that's required before we can move on to the offer being unconditional. Supporting documentation of course you need a passport or a national identity card proof of English language if it's required certainly your transcripts. In a few cases you might be asked for references that can often happen. Maybe you've left academia for quite a while and at that time program conveners can certainly ask for references and once that's provided the offer moves on to unconditional. And your entry requirements is a minimum first degree with good grades in any subject which is equivalent to a UK second class, upper second class of course. And for this particular program relevant professional qualifications or experience are always welcome. Some of our students might have finished with academia some time ago but maybe they're working in very interesting fields in Africa or are working for SoftBank in Tokyo with about a decade of career experience behind them. We actually welcome applications from students with these kind of profiles. So as you can see and of course you have to write a personal statement. We do like reading the personal statement with some interest. It gives us some window into what you are looking for as students on this program. So I'm going to stop here because I've also run out of slides and I would be very, very happy to speak to you chat with you if you have any questions.