 Hi, good afternoon everybody, good evening depending on where you are. I hope that you can hear me or hear us. Hi, actually good morning maybe to some of you. We don't know exactly where you are in the world, but welcome to this webinar on global public policy and of course some background information on the CSD, the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy and so on. So thank you all for taking part in the webinar. I'm actually joining CISD in five weeks if you look for me on the web page and I'm not there yet, that's fine. And I'm here with... I convene the MSc in Global Energy and Public Policy both on campus and online and I convene the MSc Degree in Global Public Policy. Now the Global Public Policy Degree online is an outgrowth of our work on campus where we've been teaching global public policy for the last eight years or so and we've developed our work over those years and have turned it into a degree and so I'm leading on this effort together with my colleague Janan and Dr Gersh, who is the Centre Director and Mike, do you want to say a brief word or two on your role? Well, I'm going to be... I'm going to be a co-op engineer actually in the United Programmes in Australia in this strategy. That's basically my role right now and we should probably proceed with the presentation. So what we're going to do is we're going to run through a few slides which explain a little bit about the program and a little bit about what it's like to study it. And then we'll have an opportunity at the end for your questions. So we're going to run through a few slides which explain a little bit about the program and a little bit about studying it so as and then we have the opportunity at the end for any questions you have. And if there's anything that pops up... Okay, if there's anything that pops up while we're talking, please feel free to use the chat function that many of you are using right now actually and we'll be happy to answer anything that we don't cover in the slides at the end and we'll also have a Q&A session towards the end of our time here and hopefully we can answer these questions. If there's something more detailed that you need to know about that we can't answer in this time, I'll leave my email address where Harold can leave his and you can... Okay, so let's begin. Let's turn to the first slide. What makes SOAS special? And we believe that SOAS is quite a special place. Well first, our regional expertise is in note for those places, Asia, Africa and the Middle East where the world is really important, where it's changing and it deals with knowledge that's going to make our students competitive in the workplace now but I think especially in the workplace in the coming decade. We're also providing ourselves in the work that we do with our students and the teaching quality which has been ranked very highly over the last few years by our students and the national student surveys who've been ranked first in London and that's not just because of the way we engage with students but also in terms of the size of our seminars and you will find that in online as much as on campus in terms of the numbers and the level of engagement that you receive as a student here. So we have a huge number of very experienced and dedicated staff who will focus on these areas and we have wonderful professional services that provide support for the students and for us to allow us to offer the highest level of support that you can and you should expect that you need to study well and you have access as well to fantastic library resources. We have one of only five national research libraries in the UK and that's a considerable asset. We have probably the... I think we do actually have the best collection on Africa in the Middle East and in Europe probably in the UK and Europe. Finally I should add to this that of course the library resources and the quality of the library are very important but all the readings that you require for the course that you might do here with us at SOAS are provided for you online. So you have access to a very wide range of readings either their journal articles or their digitized monographs and that's something that means that you have access to both the resources of the SOAS library as well as the resources of the University of London more broadly. To add to that we make a strong effort to make sure that the materials you need to do your research, to study and so on are available online. That's becoming increasingly easy in the UK because of open access policies which create incentives and often require academics to put at least one copy of the publication that's been funded by research online for you to access freely. In addition to that is Harold Litchend. We have huge electronic libraries as well. So there may always be one or two materials that you may need that you may not be all fine online but we are able to help you define local resources to compensate for that. The final word on SOAS, our student body is extremely diverse very dedicated students from all around the world so what you can expect as you would join one of our courses if that is indeed what you're going to do is you would work with a cohort for students from all around the world with professional backgrounds, with academic backgrounds various different age groups as well which makes for a really exciting and productive work environment for you. The thing is that's the question I'm going to stop. So access to literature is then limited to soft copies, right? No, access isn't limited to soft copies but we try to make as much of what we need you to use available to you in the easiest way possible. So can you speak more about any other... I mean in terms of access to actual hard copy books you would have that access if you wanted to come and use the library, you could do so. It's entirely possible for you to do that in an actual physical way but a lot of our students, oops that's one, a lot of our students are physically unable to do so or do not choose to do so so everything that you need and require for your work will be made available online but you may also wish to have access to actual hard copies to talk to you. Okay, so speaking about students we're going to go to the next slide if I can. So as numbers, we have about 3,000 online and distance learning students from all over the world. This is quite a large percentage of the students we have and so as we probably have we've got 5,500 students on campus sometimes that goes up to 6,000 or something so about a third of our students and so as are actually online and distance learning students. So it's quite a large community and online students are a big part of that but one of the good things is we're not huge but we like to think of ourselves as having quite a big community but the good thing is that we're not too big and we're not too small. We're small enough that we're very tightly knit and our staff can be very highly focused in their areas of specialization but we're big enough that we can cover the train adequately and we're big enough that we can offer the kind of expertise that you need to further your studies. Yeah and I would add to that that of course over the last few years our online distance offering has grown so the number of students that are working with us online has gotten bigger over time and so has our shift or increasing focus on the online student cohort and the provision of administrative and support services for you which I think is obviously a good thing. I think one of the best things about this speaking from my personal experience and how we deal with students is that we don't fit everybody we don't force everyone to fit into a particular mode of studying a particular sub theme or subtopic and really the kinds of theses that you write it's really very bespoke and we devote a lot of time to supervision both online and if you're on campus in person and students really enjoy actually especially the thesis part of our breakdown and so on so that's one of the good things about being a smaller university. Now we're also extremely diverse so our online students come from all over the world we're shading in the areas that we cover here Africa, Asia, Middle East well that's Middle East, North Africa a substance here in Africa but a lot of our students come from Europe and America because I understand we even have students from Alaska so our online students are barely well spread out across the world like I said a large fair number of students come from Europe large proportion come actually from sub-Saharan Africa and we have a fair amount from other parts of the Americas from the Middle East and North Africa and Asia so we have quite a mix worldwide in a particular cohort you're going to have colleagues that come from all over the world and this is one of the things that an online degree does is it opens you up to the rest of the world to reality okay coming to CISD coming to the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy it's quite a multidisciplinary center that we have here at SOAS and it's not your usual department or center that focuses on a single discipline because many of the issues that we face now understanding the contemporary world can't be dealt with simply through politics or economics or through historical analysis it requires a multidisciplinary approach and so we kind of emphasize that in our programs we draw faculty and researchers together who come from a variety of disciplines and you may have programs which you deal with people who come from economics, journalism myself, military history so you could have people who come from military history like myself or diplomatic history like Sun and Rolf or Gann Plasher or Irfield and this gives us an extremely it makes CISD an extremely rich source of teaching and research and the masters that we have available for you you can come to them from different approaches with different areas of interest in mind Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and we can give you the kind of range and depth that you need to understand the issues that are relevant to these programs so that's... oh I see okay so NFA since when and why did you decide to offer the MA Global Security and Strategy and we'll be coming to that slide later on but that's something that we're offering that's new actually it came out partly because of my own interest in dealing with the Vietnam War and dealing with the One Belt One Road fraternity going through if I could pause for a second, my area of expertise actually Myanmar and Bangladesh and so the changes that are taking place in the ocean now are of particular interest to me as a military historian I've dealt with the emergence of armies and military history and politics in Asia from the beginning of the 20th century until now and so I was actually interested in the shift in power well after the Cold War the shift in power went away actually from the United States and more to the world of great powers and the role that China and India are going to play in the course of the upcoming century so I thought it would be a great idea and I think other people have agreed if we looked at how countries like China and India evolved their own grand strategies in the context of you know America still residual influence in large parts of the world and it's very strong impact on the Middle East in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria I should add to this that the CISD has had a 10 year plus history of teaching international security as a module on campus and in the last few years also as a very successful module online so we have experience in teaching in this space and our experts at the center including the director Dan Plash including Mr Mike Jani you is the other speaker here obviously as you guys know bring strong experience and background in security and strategic studies so it's a natural outgrowth of the work we've been doing and the expertise that we have here to be offering such a master's degree now a few more words from me in terms of the available degrees there's three degrees which we offer on campus the main global diplomacy NMA in global diplomacy NMA in global corporate policy and an embassy in global energy and climate policy now we offer these three also as online programs you can study it either as a master's degree only where you can study it with a focus on the Middle Eastern or Africa region with a focus on South Asia and soon to come with a focus on East Asia as well we offer NMA in global security and strategy in global corporations and of course as I mentioned before global energy and climate policy public policy just like the global security and strategy is a new addition to our offering which we are starting this year so again this is also an outgrowth of the work we've been doing for a long number of years perhaps one more word on the MOOCs MOOC stands for Massive Open Online Course so that's a course that you can do and participate in usually in April I believe it is every year that is entirely free you can go through a number of different study sessions and learn about core topics in the four spaces that we offer our MOOCs in at the end of it you can get a certificate of a small additional cost but you don't need to get that necessarily and we offer MOOCs in diplomacy in research methods in the United Nations and in energy and climate policy by way of helping to prepare you for some of the work that you might be doing as part of a master's degree with us at CISD we're going to turn to how the software works so in terms of how it works how to study online work and we have a lot of students actually who are curious about this so most of us have been through campus experiences and sometimes because of our backgrounds in campus experiences we're a little bit uncertain about what an online experience is and how that would translate to the kind of learning experience you have and what we can say is from experience but what generally seems to be the case from experience here is that the teaching experience translates online it's very rewarding we get a lot of feedback, we talk to our peers and when we talk to students in the virtual learning environment we get feedback from them the energy is high and students are very positive about the program it's got a very high approval rate I forget which year but it's recently right 95% approval rate from students and actually in terms of the degrees awarded to our students actually do I forget how much percentage better than on-campus students and that indicates the quality of the offer feedback of course on the modules we offer but our retention rates are very high of 90 plus percent which compared to the rest of the sector is a very high retention rate retention rate means students start the degree come on to courses and decide to actually finish it rather than say okay maybe halfway through that it's all too tough or too difficult or not really tailored to my needs and we're quite happy I should say that we've been successful in that regard I think the most important ingredient here is flexibility so it allows the way that distance learning operates allows us to deal with you more individually than we might have to if we had group campus sessions, it allows you to be flexible in meeting the requirements for the course so that if you have personal obstacles that emerge you know a family crisis or you're sick or something like that there can be good bespoke restructuring or an adjustment. A question that we often get in terms of how it works perhaps not so much the actual process but the comparison which might mention between the on-campus and the online is that the readings that you engage with the materials, the topics that you have are there is no appreciable difference between on-campus and online, you cover the same materials you grapple with the same critical questions you're tasked with utilities become to that later in terms of explaining how that works and the degree that you receive at the end of it is the exact same degree and exact same quality of degree that you receive on campus. Maurizio I'm going to pause for a second because Maurizio asked the question for the distance learning courses are there any mandatory lectures require you being present in London no is the answer you do not need to be present in London as part of your degree that's the purpose of the online training is that everything is provided online you are able to if you are in London to attend special seminars that we offer we're also offering you the possibility to partake in our study tour you're also of course very much welcome to be part of the graduation ceremonies on campus you're also welcome to use the library resources on campus if you if you wish but there are no mandatory on-campus lectures that you need to attend so I can say a quick word on that the activities in terms of how it works per unit what you do is you do four courses as part of your degree one after the other at the end of each of these modules you do a small research module to help prepare you for your dissertation work the research that you do for the dissertation the writing that you do for the actual dissertation might mention this earlier as something that our students think is very rewarding because it brings together the work that you've done of the course of the two years and really gives you the chance to develop your field of interest as a significant piece of research so you do these four modules that takes you almost up to two years at the end of those four modules you then engage in your dissertation module which is module number five and that completes your study with us and after two years you've completed your work on the degree assuming that you've gone through this successfully now the activities in a way that for each of the four modules that you undertake you will be tasked with six different exercises starting with a small exercise to familiarize yourself with the content of the course and with the research work you required going up to much bigger exercises text critiques for example on which you receive feedback from your cohort as well as us as course convenience and your associates primarily it will go all the way up to writing a larger essay for which you will be prepared as part of these activities you receive feedback on each of the six activities and it builds up your ability your knowledge your understanding in the space of this module and the topics that it covers and the essay of course is a marked piece of work and when that is completed successfully you can move on to the next module and then work way through the degree we should add that in terms of support you'll have a dedicated associate tutor you'll have a personal tutor, you have the program director or the dean for the program and you have a dedicated administrator and all of these people are devoted to making sure the program works for you and that you're a success in your studies actually the support I think is probably even better than you might find on campus in a larger program so let's turn to you, did we cover online course materials yeah I think we probably if you have questions about that please let us know I'm going to turn to the program structure it's laid out very clearly here in terms of the structure each of the ME programs has 430 credit modules and then equally there is a 60 credit dissertation module that adds up to 180 credits and that's what you need to get a master's degree oh and I forgot to mention we mentioned the study sessions here later, study trips okay so we'll come back to it if you have questions oh I see, Michael the diversity obviously we have a question from NFA Michael the diversity among students who are referring to earlier does that also apply to the professors and lecturers yeah fairly so what do you want to I can speak to an extent so we have a pretty diverse body of people you'd be working with depending on the module that you would be engaged in so we have lecturers, course conveners associate tutors from all over the world and of course there are not more men here we also have women lecturers and associate tutors so you will be in quite diverse hands for example, the associate tutors working on the global public policy and the convener for the global public policy recently we know and is now fair Lesniewska who bring their own expertise, their own knowledge Yanan Song who is the co-convener of the degree with me so we have a pretty good gender spread and we have a pretty good spread in terms of the backgrounds from around the world and also what each of the conveners and associate tutors brings to the table in terms of their own expertise for example Mike has a very strong expertise in strategic skills and he brings that in but some of the people that you'd be working with on other modules with the backgrounds you've mentioned before we have as you see in terms of the elective modules that are possible for you to take as part of the course a variety of different people you would be working with that's not just a bunch of white blokes so we had another question from me the modules say they are subject to availability how many of the electives tend to run each section each session and how likely is it that the module we are interested in will be running each session how many of these electives run each session the majority of the electives run each session sometimes when they are smaller more niche topics it might be more difficult to get them to run every single time the thing to do here would be that you might not be able to do it in the session you want to do it but you might be able to do it the year after so we will always try to ensure that during the course of your study each of the two-year length of the program you would be able to take an elective that you're interested in and the majority of them will run in the session but some of them I can give one example because I also convene the Global Energy and Climate Policy Master's we have an elective in Finance, Sustainability and Climate Change which is quite focused on Sustainable Sense that does not run every single session but it runs every other session so there's always an opportunity to take the module it might not be in the slot that you had envisioned but you would be able to do it at later stage so we have another question I'm going to from Tom before I answer your question I'm just going to say that as we have on the bottom of the screen it would be for level for 2019-20 is 12,000 pounds total or 3,000 pounds per 30 credit module and that allows you to pay in installments which a lot of students find very helpful Now Tom's question is if you're paying per module does it cost more or do you only pay for the 430 credit modules and not the 60 credit dissertation module that's one of the great things about installment payments the thing to remember here is that if you only pay for individual modules and only do the modules the 4 modules but not the dissertation module you do not end your studies with an actual degree in hand so you can of course do that, you can get an exit award after doing the 2 modules you can get an exit award like a postgraduate diploma after 4 modules but you do not get the full masters and of course it should be in your interest to complete your studies with a master's degree and that's the difference between doing individual modules or paying the whole lot and going through the dissertation module as well and pushing yourself to undertake your own independent research and making a real contribution to the field I think currently if I'm reading discussion correctly he's saying there's no additional fee for taking the 60 credit dissertation if they pay for the 430 credit effectively it's incorporated because after every module as I said earlier after every session that you do you have a small research module tacked on as part of it that's 4 in total and they then lead directly into the final dissertation that's basically inbuilt into those 4 modules in the process that you undertake that you then also write your dissertation so there's no additional rate that we charge for this for these steps. We have another question from Andy Platt at what stage of the course are you required to decide on a dissertation topic? We have as part of our small research modules, the dissertation modules have really worked that we want you to do to prepare an outline, prepare a draft for a research idea and for a dissertation topic so within the first year we will want you to think about the topic and to develop a research design if you will into this topic which you will then use at a late stage to write the actual dissertation now we understand very well that sometimes these ideas of material availability of the readings and maybe the people you'd like to talk to as part of the qualitative research interviews might not be available etc etc so sometimes topics change but we want you to also start thinking about topics fairly early on and nailing them down fairly early on because that helps you in your research and that enables you and gives you time to do the actual research work in the second year so what's the end of the second year? We're going to turn to the next slide so this is mine, this is one of the this is the new program, so the MA Global Security and Strategy Program it's a new interdisciplinary program and we attempt to examine the major three challenges to different actors in the world of climate and how some states are revising all of the grand strategies we're going to take a critical approach to the traditional way in which studies have been covered those that focus on the west and the global north and look more closely at Asian, African and Middle Eastern approaches to grand strategy, Earth, security and peace international collaboration, resolution of conflicts acquiring war technologies, building environment persons, climate change and life but we also approach a range of questions peculiar to the 21st century so how do we understand, for example, the shift a lot of the very high positive expectations that came up when the Berlin Wall came down Fukuyama's end of history and the Cold War and the security challenges that are now challenging a lot of the local security architecture just a few decades later how do we deal with the tensions that are emerging between the expansion of human mass expansion of human demography extreme and very rapid climate change in industrialization which are all interrelated how do we reconcile that with countries that only think short term in terms of state power and so on how do we negotiate those challenges and the attraction to ignore what's happening how do states evolve mechanisms that can help the world deal with, meet the promises from the UN and global climate change and we've also reached a point now where the science fiction of the past is no longer fiction so how is new technology particularly artificial intelligence going to impact the nature of conflict and how does that raise new questions about ethics and this kind of thing in war students will get a grounding of the subject and understanding of the concepts around global security and strategy particularly from a non-western viewpoint and they'll be able to apply this to the areas of business and commercial risk assessment the NGO sector maybe in military or foreign government service sophisticated critical understanding of the policy governance developments and I think especially the history that lies beyond this and also the future directories where things are headed so the degree builds on our campus teaching which appeals to people developing careers of global security service and government service and UK service and foreign service and those people who are working for commercial risk assessment firms or NGOs and to take one, I was going to take one module and look at it closely in the international security studies but actually we're already at 37 minutes so maybe I'll come back later if I need to let's go to your class next I have a question given the country's significance this seems to be a gap are there plans to introduce one I should point out that that's one of my main areas of interest because Myanmar is right on the initial step of the One Belt One Road and so actually I deal with China quite a lot and joining CST one of the things I want to do is introduce a very focused on China and the 21st century countries now Anika the list of electives here are different to the ones on the website which are accurate for example there's one on the website I'm interested not in this list and vice versa but perhaps you can answer that that's a very good point in terms of the list of electives this is an incomplete list of electives here perhaps also due to the fact that there's a bit of space constraint on the slide I will have to say the same thing about the upcoming slide on the upcoming slide on public policy which looks emptier that's an oversight the list of electives is considerably longer than here so what I would encourage all of you to do is to actually look online at the list of electives for our programs and there you will see a much more comprehensive list for each of these both of these two programs the point that Mike made on China is very well taken I should add however that as a centre for international studies and diplomacy we have historically not developed modules on individual countries we address very much cross cutting issues international economics, international security energy policy and climate policy without focusing necessarily only on one specific country now China has a very special role that it plays and is very big and important so Mike's module is very much welcome but other than that we have modules that focus more on regions so the global diplomacy MENA South Asia and the upcoming East Asia will address a number of country dynamics within those regions as opposed to only individual countries a quick word on the MSC in global public policy I got to the last point for dealing with China so it will be a regional and actually a trans-regional course but let's move on to the MSC Yes, so this is a degree I co-convene with Dr Yanan Song and I have been teaching global public policy on campus for the last 70 years it's basically a program and the core module is public policy which teaches a core set of skills that are required of policy professionals in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors at both international and national levels so whether you're aiming to be a policy analyst or to work as a policymaker or you're already working as a policymaker what you would need to do is identify policy problems you'd need to formulate evaluate and recommend possible solutions that would be involved in the implementation of these policies as well so what the module does is it covers key concepts, key theories and the program more generally as well, key concepts theories that would enable you to undertake a critical analysis of a given policy space so it can be in health policy, it can be in climate energy policy it can be in public safety and security, it can be in education, it can be a range of different policy areas and it helps you to understand the very complex and often very messy process and fractious process by which this policy is actually formulated then adopted and then implemented so what we're trying to do here is not look at policy in the way of just looking at the outcome of the policy processes i.e. policy papers, laws and regulation and its implementation but actually to look into the engine room and to understand the processes by which outcomes are produced the mechanics of it indeed so the module public policy and the program MSc in global public policy adopts an approach that treats policy as the outcome of politics and an analysis of policy as inseparable from an analysis also of political dimension so of course what we need to look at is we look at changing power dimensions we look at the role of race, class and gender in determining policy outcomes we look at a clash of different ideological traditions that have an impact on the choice of policy tool that you might wish to take going forward and that is something that cuts across a number of different country and regional dimensions the study of public policy theoretically has historically been very much a US informed one and so of course the choice of case studies has been very much US focused or western focused but we are taking a much more global approach that draws on examples and cases from around the world and looks at traditions historical theoretical traditions and practical examples from around the world I think that rounds out my comments on the MSc in global public policy and we can turn to Maurizio's question real quick How many hours do we have to help in per week? I mean it depends how many hours per week it depends on for example what it is, what your reading load is how quickly you read and understand material some people feel the need to read through a required reading two or three times to fully get the core of it and to take notes others perhaps only need to read it once or twice so of course there is a difference in this it will also change from week to week depending on whether or not you have an essay due if it's two weeks or one week to your essay deadline you may take a few more hours each week to write than you would in a normal so say for example in a normal week you might spend anything between well you have the online stuff between five six hours maybe a little bit more depending on the reading that you undertake in a week where you write your essays considerably more time than that you might find that the topic of that week is not your top interest but another week maybe that's the main thing you're interested in and you'll spend a lot more time on that particular topic so your interest can also be another factor in how much time you spend but of course if you're having fun it's going to go by very quickly what I would say is that for the day say if you compare it to on campus you might have three or four units that you do in the week but then of course on campus is only concentrated within one year not two years for each module that you take you might want to set aside a half day or a little bit more for the readings for the actual time that you spend in class and the time that you spend engaged with your associate tutor and the other people on the course so it's very similar online for the module that you do you take your day or your half day to do the readings to prepare for the module to engage online with your cohort and with the associate tutor and then maybe afterwards to do a little bit more reading because you've developed an interest around a particular topic or you want to follow up on something and clarify so the five, six hours can be an estimate it can be a bit more but not significantly less because you have reading and work to do so we're going to move on from my from the MSc global policy to in part because of time we're going to move on to did I miss the applications page okay well should we okay let's do the applications page here and I'll go back to the study tour we got the application process laid out here fairly quickly some of you have probably already been through this already by now it's D3-4 it's submitted online through the departmental website we have a we the CISD gets through the applications very quickly to give you a sense of what your position is because that'll allow you to get started with your studies usually the case that you're notifying within 10 days your application of a conditional offer and of course the conditional offer is it means that that we need some proof or something other information that's required before we can go on to the offer being unconditional supporting documentation of course could include maybe a passport or national identity card proof of English language proficiency if it's a certain transcripts may have to be translated to be accepted by the university and you might be in some case you might be asked for references that can take a while if you've been out of academia for quite a long time and out of contact with people you need to write those so it just depends on the individual and that's why there's some flexibility here once these things are provided the offer moves on to unconditional and your entry requirements is a minimum first degree with good grades any subject which is equivalent to a UK second class, upper second class of course and for this particular program programs for the CISD it may be the case that for some of these programs instead of academic qualifications you need to consider your professional qualifications or your experience. Yes, generally what we have done at CISD and I think that's a bit different at the Centre for International Studies that it is in other departments and so as in other universities we value a professional experience as well if you have worked in the space for a very long time and maybe your first degree isn't that strong but you bring 15, 20 years of experience somewhere or 10 years, we will look at your application in the round. There may be things that strengthen your overall application but you haven't done so well on your first degree maybe your first degree wasn't the kind of field or topic that you should have chosen and you haven't done so well but actually you really know your stuff and you know you should be on this degree so that's why we'll look at this, we'll look at your personal statement we'll look at the references we'll look at the things that you supply to us in the round and I think that can make a difference so even if it's not a first or it's not a 2-1 we do make these exceptions because we understand that people come from various different backgrounds and experiences and they bring strengths that need to be given a chance sometimes. We've come to a couple of questions in the first question whether somebody with professional experience on a master's degree, Dan, you, no undergraduate less something we would have to talk about but that's possibility. Another person asks well they're currently working on the BA thesis they'll submit in August can I still apply for the master's? Yes, that's also something you can do and we can talk to you about that. We accept applications throughout the year so we have a rolling applications process some departments will cut off in June or July for example or even earlier than that, that's not the case at CISD we will accept applications all the way through but if you leave it too late to the start of the academic year which online courses in October there's a problem with being able to process your application quickly enough from an administrative perspective so you want to avoid that but if it is in August if it is in July, August or even early September you would still be able to get your application in we operate quite quickly in terms of turning around your applications so I think that's not an issue and from my experience because I'm also an admissions tutor for two different programs i.e. I'm the one looking at all your applications this should be possible. So that's the program so far except for one element the study tour and we have study tours that go to several different places New York, Washington Ethiopia and also Geneva and where else? Ok so one of the aspects of this online program is that it provides an opportunity to go for the CISD study tour if you choose and this happened June which is probably the best time to visit Europe but apart from that you'll also visit some extremely relevant international organizations right here of some of them World Health Organization the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights the office for so on and so on and so on ILO and it's not just limited to these so students you would normally go for these study tours in conjunction with students who are also studying the same things on campus so it's a very good mix and it's an opportunity to know your actual cohort in person instead of just through online know the ones who are on campus as well as others who are studying with you online and when you visit these organizations representatives who give you a background of where they're coming from the kind of work that the organization is doing it's not maybe have you been on one of these? I'll give my best experience I've been leading the Energy and Climate Policy Study tour for the last 7 years to Brussels and Paris where I take my students to meet with the European Commission with the International Energy Agency in Paris with a number of lobby groups etc etc the idea is that you put into practice the things that you would have talked through in a more theoretical way throughout the degree and throughout the modules that you've studied and engaged with decision makers key policy makers in the relevant spaces now there are a number of study tours as Michael has already said not just the one that I lead we have the one to New York and Washington is one and the one to Addis in Ethiopia is one those happen in April and then we have the other study tours i.e. the one I lead and the one that is the operations one which happen in June as Michael has already said and it is possible for you to come onto these especially for you in terms of the security and strategy as well as the global public policy ones the ones to New York and Washington and Addis and perhaps the ones to Geneva might be the most interesting in terms of the organizations because the study tour that I lead to Brussels and Paris is very much focused on energy and climate policy which might not be everyone so it is a full week and it is a week in which you will do quite a lot of things quite a lot of meeting with experts and practitioners who will talk you through the things they do on a daily basis and who will engage with you to help you understand how a lot of the things you've worked through happen in practice and of course it's also a team building exercise that's a really neat thing to do at the end of your studies and caps this off quite nicely and if you have more detailed questions or personal questions anything you want to ask outside of this talk because we'll be finishing up in a couple of minutes send us an email and we will get back to you you know tonight or depending on the length of the question now I see Anna Fay is typing another question I will move to the last slide before it's being done it's a question slide so we're going to stop here because we're out of slides if you have any questions or queries we're more than happy to address them here in a few minutes if there's anything else or any other things that come up to you any thoughts that come up to you later on I'm going to send one of these two email addresses ok to clarify are the final degrees from the University of London or SOAS they're from SOAS University of London yes so maybe we don't have the time to go into the history but the way that SOAS would style itself in terms of its degrees and in terms of its official name is as SOAS University of London in our official title not just the word SOAS but also that we are part of the University of London so the degree is from SOAS University of London I should comment that the past when these presentations have been done I think questions were saved from the very end but actually I think it was much more effective to answer these throughout alright guys thank you so much we will field any and all other questions by email and yeah we're there for you so feel free to just let us know thank you