 Thank you very much. Good evening or good day or wherever you are. Welcome to SOAS. I was hesitating when I heard short presentation. I'm not sure how short it's going to be, but if there's burning questions, please shout interrupt and I'd try to get it within the time scale. Some of you, I think we've already met it, maybe early events or indeed if some of you are already here at SOAS. My name is Lutz Martin. I am a professor of general African linguistics so my interest is in African languages. I'm half in the Africa section, half in the linguistic section of the school of languages, cultures and linguistics. And I've been at SOAS for a very long time since the 1990s really. So we can, you know, I'm happy to talk about that as well. But today I have two things really. One is a general overview of the program, the MA African Studies and the department in which it is housed, which I'm going to go over quite swiftly because the main point is I want to talk about what sometimes is called the African language renaissance that is taking stock of recent developments in the sociology of language, language use African languages in the African continent. And then also we can in the Q&A look a little bit at the role of language learners and the work we do here in relation to that. So the background on the program, Allah, don't let me do it. Yes, now I'm good. This is the SOAS highlights. I, as I said, I want to, you're probably familiar with it. It's a great institution, focus on African Asia, really strong research, a strong library, very diverse, very international. This is SLCL, the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics within the SOAS background. The languages we teach, there's six languages. We usually teach Amharic, Hausa, Somalis, Rayleigh, Yoruba and Zulu. And we also focus on literatures, cultures, linguistics and translations. This is about studying Africa. So these are just some talking points if you like starters of discussion about things which come up again when we engage with students in the MA African studies, which I think is probably the main program we're talking about here. But again, we can come back to that in the Q&A. There's questions of diversity and unity to what extent is the continent? Can we talk about Africa? What does that mean there is diversity within, but there's also a sense of unity. There is the question of ancient history, this is the home of humanity, if you like, but also very high youth demographics. I'll come back to that in a moment. Of course, colonial legacies and decolonization are really important in the SOAS context at the moment as well. So that's something which really features for quite prominently. I think probably all of the modules we are offering. There's questions of complexity and perspective which links to that as well Orientalism, Orientalizing are some of the terms which come up there. There's an interesting relation between town and country urbanization and the effects that has in many different ways in politics and economics and education and culture, of course. And then also a question of position and sense and margins and where we see ourselves. So our new director, Adam Habib, who you may have come across many different contexts in the last couple of days. But he talks about that rather than we are looking towards the global South, we should be thinking of global problems through the lens of Africa and Asia. So that's a question of perspective and where do you stand and where do you sit yourself, yourselves or ourselves. And that's something which feeds into the module as well. This is an outland of the African studies. This we can come back to, I won't dwell on that. And I think the information should be available elsewhere. These are some examples of modules which are part of the program. As you can see, there's, it goes from literature, from music, politics, law. It's a wide range of interdisciplinary courses from which you can build your own program. This says, thank you, please ask any questions. You're welcome to ask questions, but we can probably do that in the Q and A. Let me reduce a little bit. Yes, unless there's something really burning. If there isn't anything burning, I'm going to continue and go to the, I feel like the main title of this afternoon's presentation, the African languages Renaissance. So what I have in mind with that is I want to look briefly at African languages as a background and then look at colonial histories of devalorization, that is marginalization and giving less value if you like to African languages. So that links back to the discussion we had earlier about decolonizing. And then this phenomenon of the language renaissance which is a question we have with the last 20, 30 years and then come to a little summary at the end. This is a summary of the world's languages. And there are about 7,000 languages in the world. About 30% of these languages are spoken Africa. So the number I have here is 2,110. It is very difficult to count languages and also you see that's 2009, it's changed a little bit. So we have to take this with the grain of salt if you like. But as a general tendency, I think that's about correct. So Africa is linguistically very diverse and very rich. If we look at the physical map, so this is map of the world. And again, we talk about actually what maps mean and geographic representations mean. But what I want to show here is that all the little orange dots are a language. So you can see there's a clustering of orange dots actually around the equator globally. But in the African context, in particular, high density of languages spoken West Africa, Nigeria that comes out very, very clearly. But across the continent also in Kenya and Tanzania and in Ethiopia in the South, and then less density, but still quite significant number of languages further South and further North. There's quite a bit we can say about the structure diversity, so I don't have much to say about this at the moment, but if you have questions, I'm happy to engage. So there's lots of interesting things we can say about consonants, that is particular speech sounds. Tone, another element of speech sounds in West Africa, you know, Euroband, Hausa are famous tone languages, for example. The normal classification, the way languages classify nouns like noun classes in Bantu languages are very famous for that, like in Swahili. The way languages conceptualize temporal distinction, terms aspect marking, information structure, this is how in interaction speakers and here are structure that contributions to highlight certain things. And then word order is another element of languages. Look at, and this is a research project we are currently running, comparing Bantu languages in the southern half of the continent. And there we see that each color dot is a different form of noun classification. Again, we don't have to look at the details, but it's this sum of the strands of work we do at Swahili, which are important across the field of African languages languages. This is just an indication of important language of wider communication. This is slightly intuitive, but you can see that the big languages are from Arabic in the north. And then we have all of Yoruba Ibo in the west. Somali is big as well in the Horn of Africa. Swahili, of course, is the biggest African language in terms of overall number of speakers. And in the south, we have Zulu and also Africans, the Germanic language arising more historically related to Dutch. And again, we can argue and think about what does it mean to be an African language? Actually, we could think about what does it mean to be a language? But for the time being, I just take that as assumed. A bit of historical background. African languages have sustained and supported the cultural, social and economic activities of the continent for millennia. There's obviously a long history of languages in the continent. And the study of language can help us to understand the history of the people and the society speaking them. And we know that in the course of the history, African languages have been associated with or sustained, if you like. For example, periods of expansion where languages and with that cultural practices traveled, established polities like states, empires, kingdom cities, but also important patterns of multilingualism, which is really important in the African context and elsewhere, but certainly in Africa. This is a map of African language families. It's a metaphor, hence the scare quotes, but it gives an idea how different languages are related. And that is quite interesting to study history and prehistory, like long-duration history, about six, 7,000 years, 10,000 years, maybe even, and try to understand what happened, what is the social history, the cultural history, how did people interact and relate to each other? And if we go a bit closer to time, so this is in our processes, people have made about the spread of Bantu languages, originating from Nigeria, Cameroon and spreading eastwards and southwards to the present distribution. And then people ask whether it's the languages spreading or the speaker moving or combination of both. And so that takes us about 2,000 years before present. And here's another map representation. This is 15th and 16th century. So that we can see more diversity in the historical record. And we can see different state formation happening with the Hausa states in the Northwest associated with Hausa, but also with Fulani. If you look at the right-hand side map, the little darker arrows in West Africa, that's Fulani speakers. So you can see the languages widely distributed across the whole belt in West Africa. And then in both maps, actually, if you go on the east coast in the left-hand side map, the little black dogs, these are Swahili trading towns. And we know that Swahili spread through urban trade routes driven by the Monsoon trade. So there's a link also to the Arabian Peninsula all the way up to India. It's thinking of the ocean as connecting rather than dividing. And there's also a link, if you go further south, there's this circle with Zimbabwe. That's great Zimbabwe, the gold trading polity and economy. And that was linked to that trade as well. And you can see this is cultural history, but language often helps to get a clearer understanding of what happened. And then the final slide I have on this is Swahili literature. So we have records of African languages. And this is, the record itself, this is 20th century, I think on 19th. And the text is most certainly older. It's a very famous poem, the Al-Inki Shafi, it's sometimes translated as the soul's awakening, where the poet laments the downfall of the traditional Swahili culture, even in the 19th century, and which the downfall of culture was portrayed very vividly as almost like painful, as like physical pain and even death. So there's lots of culture stuff in there. So the Swahili manuscript, this is actually housed in Sours. And we have quite a number of Swahili manuscripts and a rich rich resource for studying. You can see it's written in Arabic script. It's not Arabic, it's just the script being used for writing Swahili, Ajami, sometimes it's called. And so this is a really interesting field of study, which we and other people pursue. Let us move to the colonial background. In the colonial times, we had marginalization, devaluation, underdevelopment of African languages. We had the rise of negative attitudes, the introduction of colonial languages into the linguistic environment. Political colonial agendas, of course, language ideologies, negative often. Language invention and linguistic essentialism, we can come back to that essentially, essentially reducing people to one homogeneous group and labeling them often with a linguistic label. And also there was a link to pedagogy and politics. I have a bit more on the pedagogy. This is a French language policy, education policy in Senegal from the 1920s. The fundamental problem in the education system in Senegal is the use of the native language, a spoken but unwritten language as the means of attaining the teaching of pupils. So lots of things are wrong here. African languages are seen as a problem and they are seen as less valuable because they are unwritten, which is actually not true because there's lots of Ajami writing as we've just seen. But also the sentiment is problematic because there's nothing wrong with the spoken language. So you can see here colonial prejudices seeping into the education discourse. That is British policy in Tanzania, again from the 20s. And the guidance there was that the tribal language, so the thing tribes already again is problematic, should be used in the lower elementary standards of grades, a lingua franca of African origin, Swahili in most cases, in East Africa, should be introduced in middle classes of the school if the areas occupied by large native groups speaking diverse languages. And the language of the European nation and control should be taught in the upper standard. So there's a very clear sense that natives are not as good as Europeans, Europeans are uncontrolled, but there's also hierarchy of languages, community languages are lowest, then the lingua franca, the language of wider communication in the middle, and the European language on top. And this hierarchical thinking got reinforced in all kinds of different policy documents in both language and cultural policy. And then South Africa, of course, we know that suffered tremendously, not only under colonies, but also specifically under apartheid, which is the segregationist colonial racist policy which obtained from the 1940s to the 1990s. So the Education Act of 53 says that natives must be taught from an early age that equality with Europeans is not for them. There's no place for the Bantu in the European community above the level of a certain forms of labor. So we know apartheid was this really, really divisive and suppressive oppressive. And that then also fells into the education system. There was a very famous uprising in 76. Some of you may have heard about that. I can't quite remember it actively, but to me it was very vivid when I grew up. This was really important. And that was about language in 1974. The apartheid government required black schools to use Africans and English, and the students objected to the use of Africans. They thought that's regressive, that's associated with apartheid. And they wanted English, which is in another sense problematic. We come back to that. But so in June 76, there was high school protests across this country starting, and so way to in Johannesburg. And the police was very unprepared, had a very, very strong, heavy-handed response. And 176 students died. All of them obviously unarmed young people. So it was a really traumatic moment in South African history. And in some sense, a turning point. This was the beginning of, like if it wasn't, then that was the last straw of apartheid. And in a sense, the beginning of the downfall of apartheid, which took another 20 years to come to prison. But this, I think that was really important in the national psyche. And for us, it's important that this is about language. Now let us fast forward and look at the present day and the African language renaissance. I'm happy to ask you later whether you think that's an overstatement with renaissance. So during the colonial period, African language experienced marginalization, suppression, negative attitudes. We've just seen that. After independence, many African countries adopted a one language policy, often promoting English or French. So that was the link between the Soweto uprising and the demand for English rather than Isizulu, which could have been also on the agenda. So English and French remain quite dominant. But then in the 21st century, we have seen the onset of what sometimes you can call an African language renaissance. That is the recognition of African language and public policy, the development of multilingual policy and education and public discourse, and the birth of new linguistic varieties such as Sheng, Pijian or trans-languaging practices. So here are some language policies in the 21st century, South Africa, the 1996 constitution, very multilingual. I think I have a slide about that just now. Cameroon language and education project to recognize the multilingual nature. Ethiopian federalism also meant that, so in Ethiopia, Amharic was the main language really for a very long time. But the more federalist policy meant that other languages also had public recognition. In Uganda, the main area languages act out the use of African language and education. Even Tanzania, which is a very monitoring Swahili policy in 2015, modified that a little bit. We have minority and endangered languages activism. That's really important. There's lots of endangered languages in the world and that also has brought languages to the fore. With education and literacy programs, also in African languages, speech and language technology, NLP is natural language processing and automatic translation for African languages has become important, also in the context of mobile phone technology. And in many ways, if you've traveled recently in Africa, context in Africa, and mobile phone technology is almost leapfrogging stuff here. So electronic payment is much more advanced in many African contexts than in this country, I think. And we also have the African Academy of Languages, which is a branch of the AU, the African Union, as specifically promoting languages. There's lots of elements coming up. This is African official national languages, sometimes the difficulty find, but I just want to highlight here, all the yellow ones are countries with half an African language as natural language on the left-hand side, so the country column. And the language column on the right-hand side, respectively, these are the African languages. And I haven't brought an earlier shot, but if you go back 30 years, say, there's many, much fewer African languages in the picture. So there's really been an increase in the recognition of African languages at a very high national level. So this is a South African example. I noticed that the post-apartheid 1996 constitution, the official languages of the Republic are Cepedic, Souto, Ciswan, Ciswati, Chivenda, Chitonga, Afrikaans, English, Isin, Nibel, Isiqan, Zulu. So you have 11 national language and actually South African sign language was added later. And the reason for that is recognizing the historically diminished use and status of the indigenous languages of our people. The state must take practical and positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of these languages. So there's political impetus to revalorize, if you like, African languages. This is just a snapshot of Swahili, how that works out. This is, I've taken it from a different presentation, that's bilingual. So there's Swahili on the slide as well. But we see here on the left-hand side, the Lurayetu, Faharietu, our language, our pride, you can see the link between language and national identity. The middle one, Pata Chapara on the corner, it's a multi-lingual sign from Nairobi, which uses Shang, I come back to Shang. The top right-hand side is just bilingual signage, again in Nairobi. And on the bottom right-hand side, it's the annual meeting of the Swahili society, or Swahili, let's say society of Kenya. And then you can just see, this is illicit scholarship in Swahili. So there's a real impetus here as well in East Africa. And this is Swahili being taught in different countries of the world. And there might well be more, but you can see there's quite an international community of language learners of Swahili. The pre-final one, I want to talk about youth languages a little bit, because that's another interesting dynamics playing out at the moment. African urban youth languages, sometimes called AUYLs, are in-group languages, and their speakers are typically young youth, hence youth language. Structurally, AUYLs, African youth languages, are characterized by innovation and a particular manipulation of linguistic forms which are consciously changed and altered. So I don't have examples here, but I'm happy to take that up on the Q&A. By undermining and subverting standard varieties, they can be seen at questioning social power relations through language, so that's the social element of it. And the prevalence of African youth language in the African linguistic context may be related to the strong youth demographics in many African countries in the sense of relative disenfranchisement of these groups. So many African leaders are quite established, old even. So if you look at Uganda, for example, the power structures haven't changed that very much. But many, many African countries have a very, very high number of young people. And this relation may well account for the need, maybe, or the desire, or just the... So it happens that the form of expression becomes prominent, which then gets picked up as youth languages. So examples are Sheng, very famous, maybe in Kenya originating Nairobi based on Swahili English and other Kenyan languages. And actually Sheng speakers are no longer young, anyone necessarily. So Sheng has really gone out of this in-group language status to a much wider language form in Kenya. There's Sepitur in South Africa, Tsozital in South Africa, so that's probably the oldest attested one. Tsozital is an old word for gangster. So again, you can see it comes historically from a marginalized group of people, but then gets wider. Luya and Uganda and Nuchi also quite famous in West Africa and Koteboa, which has been elevated quite swiftly to very high status in the context of Koteboa. These are just little examples. On the left-hand side, it's get to FM radio station and the official Sheng station as it were. And you can see the voice of the youth and home of urban music in Kenya. And on the right-hand side, a former colleague of ours was just moved to Kenyatta University in Nairobi, writing on Sheng the rise of a Kenyan Swahili vernacular. And the final thing I want to talk about is African Englishes because there's been a long tension between African languages and English and that continues. But there's something interesting happening that's there as well. So we have colonial legacies, of course. English was introduced in colonial times. There's global English as an international language. The role of English education is important in this context. There's an element of elite closure sometimes. So the access to ex-colonial languages like English and often is linked to the formation of elites, the language and exclusion, the famous Nigerian linguist Ayub Ambosh writes quite extensively about that and other voices across the continent have mirrored that. Their speaker attitude is that English is seen as modern, as given access to good jobs. And sometimes they are seen as neutral in a maybe non-social way, but in an ethnic way or cultural way. And the interesting thing I'm after really is the appropriation of English. That is, we now talk about South African English, Nigerian English, where English has taken root, if you like, in African contexts. So one famous proponent, yes, that's all that's the 60s, you know, a chair, but you may have come across that. The price of world language like English must be prepared to pay a submission to many kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost, so it's a balancing. And he should aim, he, he should aim at fashioning out in English, which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience, but it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home, but also to suit its new African surroundings. So this is the 1960s, and now fast forward, and the heat turns into she. This is Chima Mandangosi Adichi, who in 2020, actually earlier than that, I think 2019, she became a source, honorary professor. So she is part of our community, but she says in an interview with the Oxford English Dictionary that my English speaking is rooted in an Nigerian experience, not in a British, American or Australian one. I have taken ownership of English, and I'm really interested in this notion of ownership, which changes the bullpuck a little bit. So the talk of ex-colonial language slightly becomes less relevant, maybe, in the context of modern English users on the continent, who are much more assertive about their relationship to the language. So this is just a little example. So there are different varieties of English. So are these different Englishes that's a long discussion people have? Are the lexical differences different words and the answers? Yes, phonological differences, accents, yes. There's a question of standard and orthographic development. And of course, ultimately, it's about social linguistic power. At the examples I hear first on the left, it's Aish. Is it English? That's South Africa by a colleague of ours, Raj Meshri wrote about that. The middle one, that's the new BBC, newish BBC World Service News in pigeon. So this is now in a different spelling. If you have a pigeon speaker, you can read it in English because you have to look twice. And on the right-hand side, it worked by Alfred Bregea from an Nairobi University, actually not Kenyatta, on Kenyan English. So there's interesting things also happen in that sphere. So to summarize, African languages have been strengthened over the first two decades of the millennium. Across the continent and globally, African languages are valued as important tools of communication, identity, and empowerment. At the same time, the pervasiveness and potential of multilingual practices, practices have been recognized in communities and in the classroom. I haven't spoken much about education, but the use of different languages in the classroom is something which is also coming much to the fore at the moment. And then finally, teaching and learning of African languages as we do here, as well as research and scholarship increases knowledge and empower students. So that's a bit of a sales pitch, I'm afraid. But there's other things we can draw from that. And with that, this is just a summary slide and a visual impression. We have the pigeon and the bottom left is that's the Aqalan, the African Department of Languages, dedicated to the promotion of African languages. Sheng, we've seen on the right-hand side, the final greeting, if you like, Neville Alexander, the linguist and language activist from South Africa, who was very, very vocal in promoting multilingual education. He also was an ANC member and supporter. He served time in Robin Island and he passed away in 2012. Sadly, much to the moment by many, a very, very positive, active, creative thinker and advocate for African languages. And with that, we close with the picture of Neville because we talked a lot about Kenya as well. Thank you very much for that. I think I'm done with my presentation and I'm happy to take some questions. So again, if anybody would have any questions either about our programs, about the content in terms of what you might study, so us in general, then please do feel free to drop them into the Q&A box. I can see that we haven't had any questions in yet, but do feel free to ask anything you would like. And then maybe I can also introduce Alice to you who's in the session today, who is one of our current students. So maybe Alice, you can just give a quick overview of who you are and your time at SOAS and your studies that you've had so far. Sure. Hi, everyone, I'm Alice. I'm a third year BA African student, so not a master student like you are probably interested but still I've had some experience studying some of the languages. So I studied Amharic and Swahili and still currently doing Swahili. What can I say? So I'm originally from London, but I have experience living both in student accommodation and in my father London. If anyone has any questions, feel free to put them to me in the chat as well. What would you say drew you to studying at SOAS in terms of the subject area? Thank you. It's one of the only places in the UK that does African studies and it's well known for that. So when I did come to SOAS, started doing research for essays and assignments that I had, all of the research I was doing happened to be written by like ex-SOAS students or ex-SOAS researchers and things like that. So it's like that is like the centre of African studies in the UK. And also I chose it really for the languages. So I really wanted to continue studying Amharic and there's not many places in the UK that teach Amharic. So I really wanted to come to SOAS to learn Amharic and then Swahili was part of my course and I've really enjoyed learning Swahili and I'm now currently in Kenya, still trying slowly to improve my Swahili. And the Swahili teacher either at SOAS is amazing, would definitely recommend her. Just like very passionate, others do it about like sharing the culture and the language. Really wanting you to get them like the best of your experience at SOAS. Yeah, and I think that's one of the really interesting parts I think because you don't just learn the language itself and how it's made up really. You actually learn about the cultural aspect of it and you learn about the culture and the people over time and again how that adapts within the language itself and the historical content of it. And I think it looks like much of what you went through in terms of looking at the languages of Africa, in themselves are very diverse and huge. There's a lot of change that's happened over time and influences that have come in. So I think that's a really interesting part of it. So again, if anybody's got any questions and they would like to know more about those areas please do feel free to put them into the chat. But even if it's just about the general experience at SOAS please feel free to drop anything into the Q&A box. And that's just at the bottom of your screen if you hover over with the bottom of the screen you'll see that the Q&A box in there for you to drop any questions in that you'd like. I know it's always hard to be that first person to drop a question in there. So... I'm also happy to talk more about the program structure. People are more interested in that. I wasn't quite sure because this is the second open evening as it were we are running. So I wasn't quite sure how much background you have on the program structure but actually I'm not quite sure how much there is on the web because we just revamped that quite a bit. So I think for the better actually it used to be very, very unstructured. So essentially do whatever you like, which is nice but you've left a bit like, what does that mean? Whereas now we have slightly more structure it's still very flexible but we have slightly more structure that we say, these are the modules you have to take and these are the options. This is how it works together, which I think so we are running it for the first time next year. So you guys if you're coming for it you will be the first generation which is nice because you can shape it a little bit and then also feedback but I think it's probably better than the previous very unstructured approach we have. Yeah, I mean, look if you'd like to go into more detail on the structure, please do feel free. I think that might also bring up some additional questions. I can see one question has been popped into the chat which comes from Elizabeth and says what are the benefits of studying African studies? Ah, plenty. I think so it depends a little bit on the background. I think many of our students come from maybe like degrees like history or modern languages or politics at a wide range but what most of them share is that in the course of the undergraduate studies they discovered that they're really interested in Africa and that was part of Africa and all the modules. So if you do music, for example, you do like Bach and Brahms and Kendall but you also do a little bit of African music but then people felt I want to focus on that and then they come to the African studies because it's the regional focus which is at the far, if you like. In terms of program structure, it's very interdisciplinary. So it takes your outset of disciplinary thinking and you're allowed and able and encouraged even to combine different modules from both arts and humanities and social sciences. And I think, so that is important. I think the academic benefit, I think it really pushes you to think almost outset of the book, to engage with the geographical region and look at that from so many different perspectives. I think that is probably the biggest challenge but also the biggest advantage. So that's the academic benefit. The more the career professional benefit is I think any job or professional context which has African interest is a potential job market. So that be it in journalism and politics and economics, the city, of course we think of moving to Africa and working there, that's many of our students is that's one of the, at least the potential career option. And I think we probably have on the website little examples of students trajectories, what happened afterwards and where they are now. And I think a lot of our students go to Africa for at least a period and then get experience there and then might come back. I can share if you like. And I think one of the other aspects that you've kind of touched on is that in terms of your previous studies, so say you have studied economics or politics or development studies or business or history or any of these areas, you can then go into an African studies program which looks at all of those areas but in one particular region. And it's a region that has a huge amount of history and change and development still happening at this point. And also if you think about topics such as migration and diaspora, well, it brings Africa really into kind of the forefront in terms of that. So I think it's about kind of looking at your previous studies and then what you might want to go into further and how different regions of the world are kind of, they're all important at the same time but what they can then bring to you in terms of how it will change and how it has changed over the last 100, 200, 300 years and over the next 100, 200, 300 years. And also I think what you just mentioned came with the diaspora, that's really important as well. So I sort of, I didn't want to go into too much but I hinted that you can question the validity of geography. This is just one representation of reality which is based on land and water if you like. But there's many different other ways of representing this. So African studies in a less geographic sense, of course relates to African cultures and languages globally. And there's a huge diaspora communities in London and the UK and all parts of the world. There's Africa, China relations. There's South, South, Brazil in particular but also South America and Africa connections. And that all comes into African studies. I mean, the very notion is very contested in a sense and everybody can sort of give it their own content and their own interest. But there is a real global element to it as well. So before I share my screen, yes, we're good with time. And there's a question by Amelia about for the final dissertation, is field for compulsory and covered dependent? Yes, well, that's the other problem. Or desk based research dissertation more common. I think so it's a one year master's program and that puts certain limitations on field work. So the beginning is very packed. It's coursework modules from October to December and then it's a little bit of a Christmas break and then from January to March effectively. Then there's a month of Easter break that and potentially that's the time where you can go on field work. And then term three starts which there's no active teaching but it is quite busy. There's talks, there's events, there's workshops, there's still homework to be done and then start and think about the dissertation. But in principle, that's another time to go and then it's the writing up time which essentially it's sort of August, September where you don't particularly have to be in London, I don't think. Not quite sure what the regulations are but let's say you don't have to be. But you can write there but that's writing not field work. So I think most dissertations are research library desk based, maybe with the small and parent component but of course COVID has changed it and two is one, all our PhD students are deeply frustrated at them because they can't do field work but the silver lining if you like is that we have huge discussions at the moment about how to mitigate it because it's not just PhD students, it's all of us. I was supposed to be in Kenya last summer for field work. I still haven't been, I have projects sitting there, collaborators sitting there, funding sitting there but every time I ask can we extend it because I can't travel? But so then the question becomes what is the way around it? And then so people are much more familiar with remote researching. So using Zoom for example, now it's very common which like two years ago, very few people knew about Zoom. So Skype, that was the thing we used to use but that's quite clunky nowadays when you look at it. But so this has become more common. So there is a way that sort of empirical work first a richer data research can be done at infant and form the thesis. And then the question becomes to what extent it becomes field work? Is field work, does field work require traveling to a place and doing work? Or is field work also staying where you are but interacting with people in Nigeria for example if you're interested in neuro identities? So you line up people and to interviews by Zoom and maybe work with a collaborator there and you have a joint project and you have group discussions and then the question is to what extent is that field work? So it gets quite blurred in a sense. But I think partly the constraints are that it's a one-year masters unless you do it part-time that gives you more time and more space for these sort of things. But it's a full-time program, it's one-year. And it's not easy to get field work time in there. And at the moment with COVID, of course that's hard and even the post-COVID reality it's not entirely clear what that means for traveling because the other effect of course is environment. So once we're over COVID, there's climate change and that influences the traveling as well. Sorry, can I just take the next question? But for students interested in Asian-African diasporas how do we balance courses in multiple departments? Two answers, I think. So there's an anthropology, certain anthropology, there's modules about, specifically about diaspora studies. And there's a SOA center for, I think it's called Center for Migration and Diaspora Studies. So the research is there, the expertise is there. To what extent are dedicated modules that we have to check and we can check on the website? But quite in general actually, so taught modules are only always like stepping stones or scaffolding if you like, for you to fashion your own interests. So these are just things to start the discussion to provide entry points. But if you're interested in diaspora things then any module I should think will be able to allow that. So I'm teaching a module which is related to what I just talked about called a language identity in society in Africa. But my understanding of Africa is quite complex and fluid if you like. So actually we had a session, we had a guest section for session, somebody in Nigeria, somebody in London both work on Yoruba Diaspora. So that, and we had diaspora students in the class. So then students wrote essays on diaspora topic and that become entirely consistent with the course content. So with nothing unusual. So that I would imagine works for all modules. But I take this opportunity, if I may, to share. Yeah, I just add to that. So you are able to take some of the modules from the Migration and Diaspora program that we have. So those would be on the open module list. But also you are allowed to audit some additional modules. My only caveat with that would be that always think about what you're doing in terms of your program and whether you have the time to add in a whole other additional module. So when you audit modules, you don't necessarily do the assessments for them but you do go to the lectures and sometimes the seminars. And it's always just important to factor in that time. But there's lots of open lectures that happen at SOAS as well. And the moment we're running a seminar series for the migration center for migration and diaspora which is open to everybody. So there'll be lots of different things that you can do at SOAS both in the classroom environment and outside of it to build up that knowledge on various different areas like migration and diaspora and kind of then bring that into your program in your own way. Absolutely. I think part of the problem is studying here. Actually, it's just so much. I mean, it's wonderful because it's so rich. But for my interest, I could go, I mean, now with COVID it's different, but even then, like before COVID, I could go to a SOAS event almost every evening. There was almost something, a lecture or guest speaker or workshop. At least once a week, I would try to manage and even that's hard. And that's on top of the normal modules. So there's lots of things to inspire, I should think. But just looking at this slide, I have appeared. So these are examples of modules. And at the moment, I can't quite guarantee that they run next year because I think we haven't quite done that yet. But it should be fairly soon that we have a more or less definite list of things which are running. But these are modules which are part of the MA African studies. And you can see, so there's policies of Africa, political life in African cities and African feminism. And that, I mean, maybe the first African force, African feminism, I can guarantee you that has a wider view of Africa where diaspora I think in certain will come in there. Atlantic music, players of mediation of African popular music, that looks very much at Cuban music as well as Latin American music and North American music for that matter. Modern contemporary arts, the language identity, I talked about contemporary African literature. African literature, again, it's a similar fluid notion of what counts as African literature. But again, diaspora literature certainly would be in there. Economic development there, that's the basic data will come from Africa at the margin. African philosophy, again, combines that. And then what made me think of it was this African and Asian diaspora in the contemporary world. So this is a model explicitly in the title, including the diaspora and the thinking across both African Asia, actually, and diaspora communities. And then finally, law and post-colonial theory, again, that will be informed by their global thinking. So I think diaspora really, it's a very important element of this discourse and will come up in so many different ways in modules, in seminars, in talks, in your own work, in the dissertation. And it's both common and welcome and there's lots of expertise, I think, in the building. Okay, I'll just see if we have any final questions coming through. Does it look like we have any for the moment? So thank you all for joining us. We will be wrapping up the session about now as well. So I hope that's been helpful for you. Do feel free to join us at any follow-up sessions that we have. Do feel free to reach out if you have any questions. So through our website, I'll also put my email address in the chat box for you. And so if you do have any follow-up questions, do feel free to contact me with those and do go onto the website. We have lots of events coming up over the next couple of weeks and months that may interest you. Some are taster sessions so you can actually listen to a lecture or two. And if you haven't already been to our events page, there are already a number of taster sessions registered up there. So thank you all again for taking the time to come. Thank you very much, Liz, for the presentation. And thank you very much, Alice, for giving us a students view. And we wish you all a good evening or a good day or a good night, depending on where you are. And I look forward to interacting with you more over the next few months and also if you join us in so as for your studies.