 Welcome on a Saturday morning, it's we're running this recruitment day welcome talk in a slightly different format the way that we have tended to run them at so as before. It's nice to see other colleagues here too, and we're going to be talking to you collectively about the different programs that we run at so as thinking about with this particular focus on why we need humanities in a STEM world. So there's a focus here on interdisciplinary thinking, and it's nice to be here with colleagues from a range of different programs and disciplines because I think that reflects the way in which so as education is itself very interdisciplinary and I think we can draw that out in the course of our talks today too. So my name is Eleanor Newbegin. I am a lecturer in the history department at so as I'm here representing the undergraduate history program, and I'm going to pass over to my colleagues to introduce themselves to you first to so I will go through the order in which you appear on my screen Nages. Salam sob bechir. Hoshom adid. My name is Nargeth Farzad, and I look off the Persian and Iranian studies at the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. Welcome and lovely to see you, even though I can't see all of you. Thanks Nargaz. Wenshin. Good morning, everyone. My name is Wenshin Ooyang. I'm Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at SOAS. I'm the convener of BA Arabic, Single Subject and Joint Degree as well. So I'm here to represent Arabic. Ahlen was ahlen fico. Thanks, Wenshin. Andrew. Hi, good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to be with you. I'm representing World Philosophies. I'm a lecturer in World Philosophies and I also oversee the first year programme of World Philosophies. So if you would come and study, you would work with me quite a lot for the academic advising side of things. Nice to meet you. Thanks, Andrew. Ahlen. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Ahlen Cummings. I'm the admissions tutor for the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, which means that I deal with our Japanese degrees, our Korean degrees, our Chinese degrees, and our kind of overarching BA East Asian Studies degree. Nice to meet you. Great. Thanks, Ahlen. Ida. Hi, Barigani. I am Ida Hajivayanes, and I'm lecturer of Swahili here at SOAS. I convene the brand new BA Africa and Black Diaspora, which kicks off this September. And I hope many of you will join us. I'm also convene of MA African Studies. I'm in the same local department as Wenshin and Narges. And also Ben. Thank you. Thanks, Ida. Ben, over to you. Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. So my name is Ben Murta, and I'm a lecturer in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics. I work on Indonesia, on Indonesian film and literature, and I'm here today because I'm the convener of the BA Languages and Cultures. Thanks, Ben. Andrea. Hi, everybody. Good morning. Dajahaw. I kind of feel compelled to also add something in a different language. So I'm a synologist in the study department currently convening BA Global Liberal Arts, which is an intrinsically interdisciplinary program. And maybe that's what I want to say at this point. So that's the program I'm going to talk about later. Very good to see everybody. Thanks, Andrea. And Maria. You're on mute, yeah. Yes. Hello. I'm representing the linguistics department at SOAS. I'm the undergraduate program convener. And I'm also looking after the students in their first year and second year. So if you join SOAS, you will be seeing me a lot, both in lectures and in one-to-one meetings. It's very nice to meet you all, and hopefully I will meet you in person as well. Brilliant. Thanks, colleagues. So again, welcome to everyone who's here. Just to explain a little bit about the format for this hour. We've got a series of questions that we're going to discuss together and draw out, we hope, some information that's useful for you who are listening. You'll see there's a chat section here in the webinar. Please do put questions into the chat, and we'll pick them up where we can. We'll pick them up in the course of our discussions, but we'll wrap up the conversation between us, certainly by 1240, to pass over to all of you for some more questions and answers that come then. So we will be talking specifically about the programs that we convene, but we want to start off and frame this discussion by thinking more broadly about how SOAS degree programs work and what they contribute to the world, what you will gain from studying in our programs and in an institution like SOAS. So we have got our first question, which is connected to the kind of themes of the panel. I will put it in the chat for everyone to see and for my colleagues also. And so the question we're going to start with is what are the urgent questions or challenges within the subject areas that we represent? What insights can your subject bring to a world that we increasingly see as a STEM world? STEM tends to dominate the way we think about knowledge and our current state in society. We're all obviously from a more humanities background. So I'd like colleagues to open this discussion with some thoughts about what their subject and what doing a degree in that subject can bring to this more STEM focused world. I wonder if anybody wants to kick us off. Yes, Wenshin, over to you. And we're going to keep this quite tight. So I'm going to start, frame this, because in our school languages, cultures and linguistics, we focus on languages and the humanities, literature, culture expressions, and so on and so forth. And we put a lot of emphasis on languages because today in the 21st century, we live in a multilingual and multicultural world. And we need to understand our languages, the languages we share and do not share in order to understand how we identify ourselves, define our identity and determine our sense of belonging. So that's number one. The other very important things why we need to study literature and culture is that, right, and these two are part of the humanity subjects encoding history, right, is that the humanities is the place where we work out our identity issues in the sense of individual sense of who we are, but also our sense of communal belonging. That's number one. And more importantly for me at the COVID-19 is showing us that it is a place where we work out the ethics of living or our ethics of living for every day. And today, more and more, we're going to have to think about how we conduct ourselves individually and in community because whatever we do, we may endanger others. And this is really the most important mission of the humanities. And this is the mission that the social sciences and the sciences do not address. And this is what we teach you, right, languages and humanities, how to read expressions, cultural expressions deeply in order to understand the politics of identity and the ethics of living. Thanks, Wynton. Andrea. Thank you. This gives me a really good kind of cue to come in with the Global Liberal Arts Programme because the point of the Global Liberal Arts Programme is to bring the humanities and the social sciences together. I mean, obviously not the STEM sciences as we don't teach them at so, but going into the social sciences as far as we can go at this institution to bring the value of the humanities into the world that we study. And I just wanted to read out, I've come across a quote in a reader's letter in a newspaper recently from somebody working in a bioscience department who said that the sciences will save our lives, especially in the face of climate change and current and future pandemics, but the humanities are going to be what makes those lives worth living afterwards. And I first kind of saw this and thought that that's interesting, but thinking about it, I think it's actually not true because without the humanities system, sciences won't even save our lives because they in themselves can't really have an impact on people's behaviour on the way people treat each other, on the way people live with each other. And I think that kind of links quite nicely to what Wenjin just said. And this in my mind is the value of the humanities and is to come back to the Global Liberal Arts Programme, the value of that programme that tries to bring these different aspects of human life on earth if you want of life on earth more generally together. And it's an interdisciplinary programme, so the advantage of that in this institution obviously is that you can draw on all the different areas that are offered at SOAS. Thanks Andrea. Andrew, do you want to come in next? Sure, thank you very much. I was just reflecting when Andrea was talking about the, you know, that the STEMs won't be able to save their lives or save our lives on their own. And I was reflecting on the deep interdependency between the humanities and STEM subjects. And I think it's a great example of how we approached philosophy here at SOAS. So I want to give you a quick example. In December of this year, University of Maryland researchers in the field of robotics published a study about the way in which they could use robots to help with social distancing. And they're trialling out in various countries. It's not just something they're doing in America, Maryland's in America, but across the globe they're trialling out these robot programmes. So I want to take that thought, bracket it for a second, share another story and then come back to it. I was recently in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia for a conference. And one of the things I noticed is there's this phrase in English I use a lot called to sit in the sun in London here. It's always very cold and rainy, so when the sun comes out I'm really excited to rush in to the sun and sit in the park. I learned very quickly that you cannot say this in Arabic in Riyadh to sit in the sun because it's not a particularly good idea because the sun is so hot and it's not something that is a part of what people think to do with the sun. And this is a fantastic example of one phrase not being able to be translated across two different languages. And so coming back to the robot example, what's very interesting about that is it's interesting to ask the question, you know, can we simply deploy robots to help us with issues like social distancing across the globe? Or do we need to, when thinking about how to do that reflect on the cultural specificity of what may be appropriate in particular cultures when deploying STEM solutions. I think there's a deep interdependency between how we approach these global solutions. And world philosophies helps us think about those questions because it asks us think about the limits of certain solutions in the same way that I as an English speaker can't necessarily take my phrase to sit in the sun and use it in Arabic in the same way that we might not be able to deploy robots in the same way across the world to help with social distancing. So those might be some of the interesting types of things we'll grapple with at world philosophies at SOAS. Thank you. Thanks, Andrew. Does anybody else want to come in next? Ben, yeah. Hi. Yeah, so I'll try and follow on from the discussion. So I convene that the eight languages and cultures. So if you take that degree, if you do it on its own, you will most likely be doing a combination of the study of a language, which could be an African language, a language from the Middle East or a language from south or Southeast Asia. And you'll be studying that in combination with the study of film and literature and other types of cultural texts, along with some of the modules from other parts of the school, which which focus on region, for example. And I guess why is this useful and why, apart from the fact that I don't think we should forget that watching films and reading literature can bring us a great deal of pleasure and joy and moments for reflection in our lives. And I think that is important in our world. But if we're thinking about also why it's important sort of following the discussions from Wenchin and Andrew and Andrea and so on, I think I'm going to try and give a very specific example which relates to some of my teaching and research. So not coronavirus, the current epidemic, but another one that we with or parts of the world or some people in the world have been living with is HIV. And I'm sort of really interested in thinking about how HIV is talked about in popular discourse. And so we've had the example from Andrew where sometimes the same language or the same expression doesn't mean the same thing from one country or from one language to another. I'm also interested in how the same messaging doesn't necessarily mean the same thing, even in one language. I work on Indonesia, and the messaging on HIV, for example, it rather depends if you're someone who thinks you're at risk of HIV, or someone who's simply concerned about the other people who might be at risk of it. Maybe it depends on whether you're someone who lives with HIV, or someone who doesn't live with HIV. And so, because one of the key things we need to think about if we're thinking about medicine and health and so on. So all of the information necessary, but the facts if you like about transmission of illnesses and, you know, stopping smoking and this that and the other. But what we know is, despite all of that information from the scientists, we're not always rational people and we do all sorts of things in our lives that other people won't say why on earth are they doing that and so on and so forth. We find that texts, web series, comics, television, film, literature are really good ways of finding out how different people within one language community within one language culture are thinking about these ideas, contesting these ideas, and sometimes coming up with new solutions. And that for me is super interesting. And that's why I think there's a vital role for the humanities in thinking about the sort of strong sciences, medical sciences, if we're going to talk about that. Thanks Ben. Maria. Yeah. I'm going to talk about the point of view of linguistics and why linguistics would be useful. So okay linguistics is very much connected to languages, but linguistics in reality it's the science of language so basically we learn how languages are structured how languages are built, what is the backbone of the languages. And I thought about giving actually an example says to make this a little bit more explicit and to understand how linguistics are connected to languages and how linguistics are connected to science as well. So I'm going just to share my screen if it's possible. I think it's, yeah. It's a very, very simple example from from English, of course. Okay, so what we're doing linguistics basically we look at the sentences from different languages here what you see is basically English languages. So here we have a problem in reality that we are trying to solve we are trying to figure out why certain sentences here are not correct in English and you can see actually the sentences in B that are not the correct ones. We are very, very closely at certain sentences that are native speaker sentences, and then we are trying through reasoning to reach a generalization, and to see why there is grammaticality or ungramaticality in a specific language. So we make a hypothesis we test the hypothesis with generalizations. And of course this particular skill is extremely important in general because it allow us to develop our problem solving. It allow us to develop our analytical skills. It's a, it's a, it's a transferable skill that can be used across all kinds of disciplines. And that's why I find actually linguistics so fascinating because it can be linked linked to many other disciplines and it can be linked into many other disciplines. And of course this has a lot of applications and connections with culture and across the world. So that's from me for now. Thanks Maria. I'm going to. I'm going to move on to our next question but allow people to connect it to it to it to so either absolutely do come next, but I am going to open up the next question we've got for people is about how the distinctive so as approach, how, how, how so as as approach is distinctive to this learning area. So thinking particularly about how the way that these courses are framed at so as gives you something unique into these questions. Colleagues have been talking about this already, but maybe if we can kind of lead with that question to, but still thinking about this kind of this knowledge in a STEM world, but either over to you. Thank you very very quick. So I was just going to say that is in a, when we all look at the, I mean common situation now in the world. I mean containing it is very much a social question. And what is happening with Africa, we have not had vaccines in Africa as such, but it has not impacted us as much as other parts of the world. We all think, and I think you need to understand Africa. You need to understand the key tensions linked to Africa. It's diasporas need to understand aspects of continental and regional sort of like approaches to Africa within Africa. And with all this, you'll be able to talk to tackle today's problems. And that's just what I was going quickly to say. But again, moving on to your second point very, very quickly is that our program, which is the Africa and Black diaspora sort of like tries to negotiate all these tensions that that I've just quickly mentioned. You will, you will, you will actually centre the continent, you'll be able to to work with the experiences and perspectives from the continent, its languages, its people, these cultures, and through that, you will tackle today's problems. And I think that's what I will, I will just bring to the table. Thank you. Thanks, Ida. I'm sorry to rush you. I mean, there's also a strong interdisciplinary element to the new BA too. So yeah, if you want to add to that, yeah, feel free. Yes. So I mean, okay, very much so. This, this, I thought I had like a millisecond. This new program is very interdisciplinary. I mean, we could probably call it transdisciplinary. You'll be able to to work with almost all our disciplines at SOAS, low social, social anthropology, economics, politics, language and cultures, world philosophies, all our degrees at SOAS. You combine that with with Africa and Black diaspora. And you have a degree that is very contemporary and tackling today's issues. Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you. We're all talking about collaborative working and I'm being very authoritarian here. I apologise, but I'll come back to people too. Alan, do come in and connect the two questions if you'd like. Yeah, I mean, I'll just say something briefly about East Asia. So obviously one of the things in our degrees we want you to do is to learn the language. So we try to teach those languages, Chinese, Japanese and Korean to the highest level we have. We've got a great record of our students doing very, very well in speech contests and obviously language is one of those ways into understanding a culture. You know, you sort of, you are the language you speak and the language you speak is the way that you understand society. It's the way that you understand the world. But language, of course, isn't all that we need you to understand. We want you to understand. So we have language modules which run alongside modules, which also teach you about the culture of East Asia. And one of the things that makes our approach distinctively different from other places in the UK is that of course, yeah, we want you to understand about the history, the society, the culture of Korea, Japan and China individually. But those, you know, that region of East Asia, it has a long and complex and very, very interrelated history if you think about religions like like Buddhism, if you think about social ideas like Confucianism. And even if you think about writing systems, those are kind of shared across across the region. So we have introduced new modules recently, which are trying to get you to kind of think about the way that East Asia is related to itself. And of course, in the 20th century, that interrelationship has often been quite a conflicted one. If you think about, for example, a history of imperialism in East Asia, and that's a term that we very often think about as something that the West has done to the rest of the world. But East Asia provides us with a really interesting way to kind of think about the way that imperialism can work outside of that West versus the other dynamics. And that's the reason that we've started a course called East Asian imperialism, which is thinking about the way that that idea of imperialism has worked particularly through the 20th century, late 19th and into 20th century in East Asia. So I think I should probably stop there and hand over to someone else. Thank you. Thanks, Alan. I think Nargis is going to come in next. I just wanted to add a little thing that if you have researched the history of so as you realize in terms of languages, you know, over 100 years ago, it produced some of the most famous renowned world, the world that we used to use orientalists who were these phenomenal philologists who dealt with text mostly. They were often polyglots, certainly used multi languages from ancient to classical to modern languages of 100 years ago to study the regions of Africa, particularly Middle East and South East Asia. However, this has evolved. They looked at the text and formed opinions. Nowadays, we try to train to nurture a group of extraordinary dynamic students who join us who would my earphone keeps dropping out who will learn these languages who will then go mostly if they wish to go on their year abroad to put these languages that they have learned and the cultures. Examples of which they have absorbed through us to put that see that in the real context. So we are very conscious that all the language skills that we try to transmit the reading, writing, listening and speaking, but that cultural element needs to fit in with this extraordinary young dynamic world of Africa and Middle East in particular. That they need to hit the ground running and have a much more overall understanding and in the degrees as all my colleagues here refer to it. They are truly interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, sometimes perhaps in a transdisciplinary that you understand you and we try to hand over to you in a capsule this understanding of this extraordinary regions of the world. And we do that in my department through the study of languages, literatures and cultures. Thanks Nages. I'm just going to jump in and say a bit about history as well as the program I'm representing. Everyone's talked about the way that history is part of the programs that they're teaching and we work closely in the history department with colleagues in the languages and cultures department and the East Asian languages department too. But I think what this also does is because we have this different focus. You do learn about European history at SOAS but that's not the central point of our degree and that's one of the things that makes it truly distinctive compared to BA degrees in other British universities in particular. We start with the formations of Asia, the African continent, Middle East, questioning those formations too. But that requires us to think not just what's happening in these regions, but what does history look like if you look at it through these different regions. So there's a fundamental questioning of what that discipline actually is. In terms of the earlier question in terms of thinking about STEM, we have in the West at least a very dominant narrative about historical progress that often goes from living in caves through to technologically connected cities. What you'll see in the degree is how problematic that narrative is, how that narrative itself has a history that arises at a particular moment, linked very much to Western imperialism. Imperialism is more broadly not only sitting in the West, but closer connectivity. And so what the degree will give you is a knowledge of what's happening in the different regions we teach in SOAS, but also thinking about what the past looks like, different views and contestations of that past. The politics through which invoking the past, the politics of invoking it, how that's used by different groups. And question also sort of who gets to tell history. And that's also one of the things I wanted to bring out here and connect to some of the things Narges was saying, because you'll get distinct courses at SOAS, but you'll also be working with a very distinctive student body. Our student body comes from many different parts of the world, different diasporas, and I think one of the things we're all taking seriously is lived experience as itself being part of the discussions that we're having here too. These are regions that people live in, love in, fall ill in, use science in, express their humanity in. And so that working with your cohort is also really key to understanding these regions and studying how we understand it. And we tried to tie that into the history degree through things like a dissertation, through studying different sort of thematic approaches to history, thinking about different perspectives to use, different kinds of sources. And that dissertation is often a place where people bring a very personal element to the way that they study history, you can use the dissertation to focus on something that's quite particular and distinct to you. Are there other people who want to talk a little bit more about the programmes? I'm conscious with Maria and then Andrew. Yes, just to talk a little bit about linguistics. Linguistics actually, the linguistics department at SOAS is the oldest linguistics department in the UK. It was founded in 1932 and this makes it quite unique because it has a very long history. And of course the other thing that is unique about linguistics at SOAS is it's a joint degree and it can be combined with any languages available at SOAS and with any disciplines available at SOAS. So there is a lot of diversity in terms of the modules we offer and also the choices that are there for the students and also the students themselves. I mean, more than 50%, I would say they are non UK students. So this makes this degree very fascinating on its own because by just joining at SOAS you will get to meet so many people from all over the world. And you will experience so many different cultures without actually needing to go to the specific language or to the specific country where the culture is available. At the end of the degree, we also have a dissertation that all the students will need to do and they are really, they can combine all their interests and they can show what they have learned throughout their degree and also show what they would like to do from that point onwards. Yeah, so thanks. Andrew. Thanks very much. I want to like give a quick snapshot into what a philosophy degree at SOAS may look like with a quick story. So you may know the story of Socrates, who was said to be the most wise person in Athens because of the fact that he realised that he didn't necessarily know a lot but he was conscious of that. He was at least he owned the fact that, hey, I don't know much. It's called Socratic Ignorance. It's something you might have studied at A levels or in secondary school. Well, what you might not know is that Socrates' teachers and their teachers and all the people that would have been training him were frequently studying in Egypt, and there was a huge intellectual exchange between Egypt and ancient Greece. And when you go back into the Egyptian hieroglyphics, you actually get the idea of wisdom being essential for philosophical insight in the hieroglyphics themselves. And so when we teach Socrates, we do teach Socrates, but we teach it through the lens of the intellectual exchange that happened and how the idea of wisdom stretches all the way back to North Africa, much older than necessarily you get with Socrates. And that's a great example to the three approaches we take with philosophy. First of all, it's critical comparative. So we do look at two different or two or more different ideas, but we don't just say here's this idea and here this idea. We put them into conversation. We ask about where's the limit of one of this idea? What can this idea learn from this idea? Second is it's decolonized. So in the same way that we look, we don't just say Socrates started off philosophy, we kind of help understand that there was a longer tradition to shift the balance of power. And then third of all, it's interdisciplinary to tell you that story I had to use skills from my colleagues in places like the history department in places like the linguistics and foreign languages department. Otherwise we take philosophy and put it in conversation with all the other different disciplines. And so that's kind of three ways we do it at Soas. You can either study it as a single honors to just do world philosophies, or you can do it alongside some of the other degrees that my colleagues are talking about so you can do it as a joint program as well. So that's a little bit of the insight into how we do philosophy at Soas. Thanks. Andrew, I'm going to pass over to Andrea because the global liberal arts degree is structured in, it is very particular to Soas, and then we'll have one more set of questions for everyone. Okay. So in a way you could say that global liberal arts degree is the quintessential joint degree, it joins everything if you want, which is a wonderful opportunity but can also be very challenging. So the way it's organised, you have to kind of cover what we call for different tracks within that program, which is the first one is focused on skills and kind of thinking about what you do and how you do it. The second is a global track where we ask you to pick modules that are not focused on any particular region but try to think globally about whatever part or subject or discipline that addresses human societies, nations, the global situation, in any kind of aspect. So that's the bit that's really challenging. You need to get a sense of what you want to do with it and what you want to get out of it, with which we will help you from the start and throughout the degree. The third track is a regional track where we ask you to look at particular countries, cultures, regions, ideally adding a fourth track, which is about language but if you feel that you don't want to study a language or feel uncomfortable with the idea of being marked on a language, you can also instead study literature or arts related modules that use language. So ideally the literature. So the idea again is to have an approach that looks at language, at the way language is used in order to get a better kind of almost inside understanding of culture. Careful with that bit. You'll see even if we study languages that outsiders, we are still outsiders, right? I mean depending who you are and what you're looking at. So this is the rough structure that is replicated throughout the three years of the degree. There is a module called an introduction to global liberal arts, which basically gives you an entry point to get a grasp on all the different areas of the humanities and social sciences and to discuss with your teachers and with your peers how you might bring these together in your programme. So there is a great deal of time that actually is devoted to, which might be a kind of an attitude to how to formulate problems, questions, how to identify the issues that you want to study and research that you can then take further through your degree and to your dissertation in the final year. So there is a great deal of freedom and a great deal of responsibility but also a great deal of support and we will have a new colleague joining us next month in fact will be totally dedicated to working with a degree and with the students studying on that degree. We think that this is a very exciting programme. As I said, that brings all these different aspects together and you can end up working in law, economics or marketing or you can end up being a journalist or working in the creative industries. So there's a huge range of things and the key thing is that you are aware of or get aware while you're studying where you want to go with it and how you want to use the resources that this institution offers. Thanks Andrea, that is the perfect segue into our final question, which is about where people go through doing the degrees that they study with us. I'm not going to do another round, partly because I expect we're all going to say quite similar things. I mean, but I will give people a few, you know, when Chin, I was going to ask you to come in here, but maybe colleagues could put into the chat, some of the places that they know their graduates go to. And in the meantime, I'd also like to encourage people in the audience to put their questions into the chat, into the Q&A box and into the chat down the side because we want to hear from you, we're here to answer your questions. So feel free to put them into the chat and we'll take them up in just a few minutes. But when Chin, do you talk about where? Very quickly, you have heard my colleagues describe the various programs that sell us in a way in the same way Arabic, whether it's single degree or joint degree, work in the same way that joint degree is combinable with any language or any subject pretty much. And we are multidisciplinary, we're the colonial, but we're also activists. We believe that literature and language can help you be political. So in that sense, Arabic is very versatile and our graduates go into very diverse fields. So we have graduates who are in the Chatham house, we have graduates who are in the arts production, theatre productions, we have journalists, we have professors and educators, we have language teachers in high schools. We have, I mean, sort of everywhere, you can say it is very diverse, we have graduates working for NGOs as well. So I mean, you know, a degree in the humanities languages humanities makes it very diverse. Brilliant, thank you. Or in services as well. Yeah, we put a few things in the chat. Does anybody else want to add anything here too? The current mayor of Haringey is a history graduate from SOAS. So yes, the variety of different positions, Ben. So I did a degree in history, actually, history and language, I combined the two, very glad that I did. Yeah, SOAS degree as well. But I was just going to say about careers, one of the things about a study abroad experience, a year abroad experience or the new summer abroad that we're introducing for undergraduates in our program as an option as well now. One of the things that many students get from that is contacts in the region. You know, if you study Indonesian, for example, at university there, you're studying alongside Indonesian undergraduates and so on, you're making connections. And quite a lot of our students after their period of study abroad already have the beginnings of a network where they will be able to go back to the region that they've spent their period of study abroad in and actually begin to develop some sort of career get work experience and so on and so forth. A lot of people don't end up working in that particular place forever. You know, people get married, people have families, people do all sorts of things and careers go in all sorts of different directions. But it's often a good starting place where people can get experiences and find out new things about themselves. And obviously it brings an enormous plus to their CV to be able to say I studied for a year in Zanzibar in Kenya or I studied in Iran or I negotiated visa problems in Vietnam and so on. And these are real bonuses that you can bring to your CV that you can impress your employer, whether it be going for the civil service in the UK or something much more exciting sort of overseas. Thanks, Ben. We've actually got a question that's come in from Sarah, that is about the logistics around taking a year abroad when you're doing a language. And Sarah asks how do we apply to the university abroad and finance it with tuition fees? Is it through SOAS, through the specific department, or the university will be studying it? Could colleagues talk a little bit about the logistics of how people organise that, Alan? Yeah, thanks. Yeah, I'm happy to say something about that. In our case, we send students to Korea and Japan and China, also to Taiwan as well. And the way that year abroad works, basically you pay a reduced fee to SOAS for that year abroad, it's around about £1,500 or something like that. And in our case, so we send students to those countries and that fee you pay to SOAS will cover your tuition in the countries where you're going to study. You've got to get yourself there, of course, you've got to pay for flights. You'll also have accommodation and just kind of eating and kind of general living expenses to cover, but you will also get your student loan for a year abroad as well. And for Japan and Korea, there are also specific grants that you can apply for, scholarships that you can apply for, and we guide you through the whole process. For China and Taiwan, we just have one university each where we send our students, but in Korea and Japan, we've got about 20 odd partners, Korea is kind of getting up there as well. So we kind of guide you through that process of making an application to one university there. I'll hand over to Wenchyn, I think. Wenchyn and then Noges, yeah. For Arabic, it's much easier. We used to have four destinations, but now because of COVID, we're closed down two. We have two now, one in Jordan, Amman and the other in Nablus. Again, you know, you pay tuition to SAAS at the reduced fee, and we take care of the rest. In addition, we actually organise the year abroad for you so you don't have to worry about it, you don't have to do anything yourself. You just follow what we tell you to do and we'll get you to Amman or Nablus, and hopefully after the COVID, we'll have two more destinations, one in North Africa and one in Egypt. Noges. I just wanted to add very quickly that depending on the student finance, the financial package that a student receives, there are occasions when they can be compensated for the flight and sometimes prohibitive cost of visas that they need to apply for. So it's well worth investigating that, but we tell you there, as Wenchyn mentioned, you'll have endless sessions. The year abroad does not happen until often the third year of your study, so by then, you know, all the ins and outs of it. And also be aware that as a British institution, we need to defer to the government advice, so we live, we deal with the very turbulent parts of the world. And if there are, for example, because of political situation, a destination is now listed as essential travel only will have to negotiate around that and perhaps come for alternatives. But by the time you start your studies, we will know all that. So do bear these fine minutiae of the programmes in as well. Brilliant, thanks Noges. Eda, but could I also encourage you, Seth, to ask the question again about year abroad, if colleagues could enter those in the chat, that would be great. But Eda, do come in too. No, thank you. I just want to talk about the Africa year abroad. So we have Zanzibar and Kenya at the moment. Zanzibar one is very exciting because they offer you a two-year resident visa. And through that, you're able to, I mean, I've got a student who is now at the BBC, Focus on Africa, because she was able to go back and work at a broadcasting institution in Zanzibar. Good experience, then now she's here at the BBC. So the networks that you build while you're there are just fantastic. We are also now extending with BA Africa back in the diaspora to Quazulu Natal and Vitz. So that's still in the books, but it should be happening soon as well. But just be aware that with Africa sort of like year abroad, you do have to pay for the visa, for the travel and for accommodation while you're there. But accommodation in East Africa is quite, is very, very reasonable. You can rent a three bedroom flat in city centre for $300. Whereas if you want a room, you'll be a lot less. So it's a very exciting prospect. I mean, it's very exciting, I think. Thank you. Brilliant. Thanks, Ida. Okay, so we're now got a series of questions going, which is absolutely fantastic. Jen Huang, forgive my pronunciation, was asking about whether or not the joint degrees extend to social sciences that are taught at SOI. So politics and law, as well as the subjects we represent here, they do. And if colleagues would like to speak about that, please, please raise your hand and do that. The second question we have is about assignment types. So in liberal arts and politics and philosophy, there's an expectation that lots of work will be essay based. But do we use other more creative assignments? Yes, we do and increasingly so. And so again, if colleagues want to kind of come in and talk about that, that would be great. Andrew, come in and then went in. Yeah, just to quickly say on the question of degree options. One thing you might want to consider if you're kind of interested in philosophy would like to do social sciences. We do offer a PPE as well, which is philosophy, politics and economics. And so it does bring in those social science disciplines. We have a lot of students who kind of get a lot of benefit from our courses like logic, for example, and like critical reasoning and essay writing. So you do get those skills if you were to do joint between philosophy, politics and economics. So in terms of much more creative assignments, I have two examples. One is something that all of us pretty much all of us use is virtual presentation in the form of narrative PowerPoint or video. And in this assignment, you can just, you know, do gather the information put together your ideas and your interest together in the form of presentation and it's not about essay writing. So each module has its own way of defining what this assignment is. And the other one that I do now these days is in the second year Arabic literature class. It's called introduction to Arabic literature a modern trends. And in this module, I allow students to write a creative piece, a short story or a poem in Arabic. And then, but they have to explain how their creative work is inspired by reading in modern Arabic literature, for example. Thanks, Wynchyn. Nargaz. Obviously, assessment of languages are perhaps closer to assessment of STEM subjects at times because we do, although we have what we call, you know, formative assessments. I continuous assessments of homework submitted and all the skills, you know, listening assignments, speaking assignments, writing and so on and so forth. But all our language, at least I can speak for, you know, African, Middle East and South and Southeast Asia topics that they do have an example. We have midterm tests, but there is often as you progress, there are pro portfolio of work you have done, audio diaries, video diaries, posters, as Wynchyn said, you know, narrated PowerPoints. But there is a percentage of that work. So something like perhaps 40% is a final written exam. That in itself is reading comprehension, answering quizzes, you know, changing formats. So there is a mixture of formative and summative assessments. Thanks, Andrea. Yeah, just to add to this, I think in history as well as in the global liberal arts program, I don't know to what extent other programs have the same kind of option for the final year study project or the dissertation. We do have an option to use an alternative format. So the kinds of formats that students have used in the past, I think we're mostly kind of making documentaries with film materials. They either produce themselves or confined in archives, or using interviews they do with different people representing different communities that's the kind of project that we had so far. But could in theory also be the production of a podcast, or a website or blog, I mean any kind of media that you feel comfortable with or that suits the kind of project that you want to do. So this could be an alternative to the final year, what is it, 10,000 word dissertation. What does have to come with it is a documentation of the research and the project that you've been doing and the kinds of outcomes. More a description of what you've done rather than a polished essay, which is much shorter than the dissertation would be. I thought that's maybe an interesting to add, and we would actually like more students to take this up. So far we had a very small number each year, two, three, one. It's because it's new and therefore there is an uncertainty coming with it from the side of the students, but there is a lot to explore. As Eleanor said, we are currently in approaching an exercise that actually the aim of which is to be become more flexible and to introduce more options and possibilities into the ways students work is assessed, which unfortunately is somehow necessary. Yeah, thanks, Andrea. I mean, Anna's also asked a question in the chat that's about if there's a degree programme that specifically doesn't use essays. So we're doing this a single programme that doesn't use essays, but rather what we're moving towards rapidly is having diverse forms of assessment in all our degrees, and increasingly also having choices. Some people really like essays and there is a role in the case for essays, but there's also other people like to use other forms of expression and so the idea is to give you choices to make the degree work for you. I wanted to talk about a course that I teach in the first year for history and global liberal arts students, which is actually using the history of so as to think about how education and learning are combined together. And we're working with an organisation called the Brilliant Club that also provides some basic training in pedagogy, inclusive pedagogy, and the specific assignment that students have from that is to produce an output, either a blog post, a poster, a class, or actually an institutional vision research. Or an institutional visionary strategy that takes some of the intellectual knowledge they've got from the course and conveys it specifically to a non-academic, non-classically academic audience. And I know that there are other modules that are also doing these kinds of exercises, taking academic writing and readings and conveying them to a different audience. I think went in the example of the poem is fantastic. I really love that. It's very quickly. But also like we for those students who will be in language programs, they have an option of doing a translation project. And translation project is very creative. You're not thinking about just accuracy, but you can make it into a creative project as well. But unfortunately, we can allow you to write a short story or a novel. But I wish we could. Maybe we could think about it. Yes, so there's something for everyone. There's some forms there too. Dominic has asked about the average size of the world philosophies cohort. Andrew, if you can answer that. I mean, I don't know if people might also want to just give a bit more information about sort of how modules are taught a bit about sort of the size of cohort that students can expect to be part of. Big group, smaller group teaching as well. But Andrew, over to you with that one. Yeah, so I'll just say two quick things. One is we're a growing program. So when I first started, we had about 30 35 students. Now I have about 70. So, but I wouldn't. I would also bear in mind that while we have these big lectures that are like 70 people or more. You also get what are seminars that are much smaller. So, for example, the big 70 person classes, your seminar is no more than 20 to 30 people. And so we do work with you one on one and smaller groups. I think that also deals with the point in relation to teaching methods we all learn in different ways. I, for example, when they're divergent adults and I'm really passionate about using inclusive teaching methods and one of the things that so as offers is support for SPLD, which is specific learning differences, whether you be ADHD dyslexic, whatever that might be. There is support and the teachers are made aware of that and they work with partnering with you and all the lectures are very aware of how to use their PowerPoint and structure their lectures to be as inclusive as possible in the classroom. And also there's that option, like I said, to get that specialist support and extra time or support if you need it for essays and exams. So that's also one thing to bear in mind. But yeah, I think there, I think it would apply for the other degree programs as well that even if it's a big cohort size that there's smaller, more intimate things where you can get into discussion and get to know people quite well and like, you know, 20 person size groups as opposed to 7 to 200. Thanks. That's great. Yeah, Ben. I also just wanted to throw into the mix here too, as well as your module convener and your program convener. You'll have an academic advisor who can also be someone who sits outside your classes and can give you advice on how to access services in the school. For example, support around specific learning differences, but Ben. So about sort of how much time you'd be in the classroom or whatever. And I think it's fairly general for most modules for most programs. Generally, you do four courses at one time for courses in the first term for courses in the second term. Most of them are going to be two hours a week. So sometimes you have an hour lecture you have an hour tutorial sometimes they might be sort of a bit more of a sort of a two hour session, which is a bit more interactive throughout. If you're doing a language, the smaller languages, it's probably going to be four hours a week. So most of our first year students, for example, will be spending 10 hours a week in the classroom, and then they'll be, you know, the rest of the time they'll be doing other activities. In terms of class size on the BA language and cultures, I think our largest classes have about 40 or 50 students in the first year, but I'm teaching a second year class on the city in film this year and I've got 15 students on that class. So, so some of the second year classes might have 30 students on some might have 15. And if you're doing a second year language class depends which language. I've got six I think Swahili probably slightly larger than that, and then Arabic a bit a bit bigger than that but you know. Yeah. Yeah. Let me just say something about Arabic we have two tracks in Arabic one is the BA Arabic language and that's 10 hours per week. And the class can be big right, but as you move from the elementary through the intermediate to the advanced once you get to the advanced, the class size gets smaller. And we have another track which is five hours per week right and that's your one is big. But again, as you move up right towards more advanced does the number of students, the class size gets smaller. Yeah, but I mean these are very specific questions so maybe when there is an Arabic meeting I can explain these more. Absolutely we are we're coming up to our time and I've been told it's not a kind of hard cut off we're not selling in a disappear from being online but I do realize that lives, you know it's a Saturday and people have other places to be to. There are audience if there are any more questions please do put them into the chat. Did you want to come in a bit on languages I saw you raise a hand so no okay great. But but I think when Chin's point that if you have any questions about the program please get in touch we are very keen to hear from you. And we would love to kind of hear your about your interests and what you're interested in doing it so as we you know drop us a line we'd always be keen to respond. But yes, are there any more questions there too, or shall we shall we close up a bit. Maybe we should. I hope that this has been really helpful for you. Thank you to all my colleagues events like this just make me remind me very, very clearly why it's so great to work at so as and that you know even though one is based in one department. Actually you're very much part of a bigger institution and a set of conversations and interesting connections and differences here too. Yeah, I mean I think that you're getting a real flavor of so as in this discussion here too. We've just got a question coming in just the last moment machine stuff asks, is it possible to continue studying French, as well as pick up a new language in the global liberal arts. Andrea, I might throw that your way. I mean that's a quick answer. Unfortunately, so as doesn't offer French courses so that you can always pick up. Am I wrong, sorry. Okay, somebody else comes in if that's wrong. You're right. You're right, Andrea, but what we have French and Arabic students so but these, these students come from UCL. So what you could do is really go to UCL and ask them to join degree with us. And then we'll have UCL so as degree, and you can combine European languages with our languages and our subjects. Language is definitely possible. It's that that combined degrees is solely it's French with an African or Asian language. So it can't you can't do like French with French at UCL with history at Soas, but you can do French at UCL with Arabic or Indonesian or whatever at Soas. Yeah, and there's a is mainly Arabic combination. But in addition to that, there's another segue into our so as modules right as UCL students you can take so as modules as intercollegiate students all University of London students can do that. Thank you. I hope that helps brilliant. Thank you. That's that's great there. Yes, do I mean I think there's also there'll be information from the so as recruitment team to about follow up. Check out the website to but but our information is there. Thank you all so much for joining us today and hopefully see you at Soas next year that would be really exciting but do do get in touch in the meantime. Thank you. Thanks everybody.