 Firstly, to introduce myself, as Laura said, my name is Dr. Samia Khattun. I am a historian of race relations across the British imperial world. I'm trained as a feminist historian and I joined the Centre for Gender Studies now two years ago and it's been a very, very, very exciting, exciting place to work. You can probably tell by my accent that I am Australian. If you have any problems with understanding, please slow down. Now, I want to welcome you to the Gender Studies space tonight. It's a very, very, very unique space in the university world. And it's very unique because it's one of the very, very, very few spaces that's actually created in response to a social justice movement. And of course, I'm talking about feminism. Now, there are very few places inside universities that are actually always in transition and in dynamic dialogue with social justice movements in the same way that Gender Studies space is. Some of you may or may not know, but Gender Studies spaces grew out of what were women's studies departments. And as I said, they were established firstly in the 60s and 70s and so on as feminist movements gained ground. Now, what is special, what is special about the SOAS Gender Studies space is, of course, the fact that we are at SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies. Now, what that means is that we have a geographical focus on Asia, Africa and the Middle East. When you come to a space such as the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS, you are immediately pulled beyond any kind of Eurocentrism. You are pulled beyond any kind of, I guess, boundness to Western feminisms, which have always shaped what feminist discourse looks like. So immediately at a space like the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS, what you are stepping into is a space that is going to be challenging your head on feminism. It's not only going to be challenging the world which is structured around binary gender, it is also going to be challenging your white feminisms, your elite feminisms. So this is what we at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS really pride ourselves in being at the absolute forefront of. We challenge the normative discourses around gender, around feminism, around the various different things that you're going to be hearing about today. Now, I'm going to at the end of my lecture and also in Q&A come back to the programmes and what it is that we actually run at the Centre for Gender Studies. But the TASA lecture that I wanted to give you today was actually about the relationship of gender and the project to decolonise the human. Now, from the very beginning of the theorisation of universal human being, so this idea that there is such a thing as a universal human being across the entire world. From the moment of the inception of that idea, the theorisation and sort of definition of who is the human being has always been tied intricately to processes of racial capitalism. And the definition of who counts as a human has always been an incredibly, incredibly political one. So today I want to go into some detail about what it might mean to decolonise conceptions of the human and precisely what gender might have to do with that. Now, we might say that it comes out of Enlightenment thought from late 18th century Enlightenment thought, this very idea of the universal human. And from the very moment that it is invented as a white person, there has been a pushback from colonised peoples from across the world. So we're looking at a good 200 plus years of pushback from various different movements that have demanded for the decolonisation of this concept of the human. The very earliest such movement you might even think of as the Haitian Revolution. So the Haitian Revolution happens in the 1790s and is one of the first uprisings of enslaved peoples in Haiti who are colonised by the French slave planters in a sugar plantation economy. And the Haitian Revolution is often cited as the very first moment where peoples sort of go, no, you're claiming all this stuff about universal human rights in France, but here in the French colonies you're enslaving people. There is a contradiction there. Now across many, many years, across centuries, across decades, there have been moments after moment after moment like that where there have been challenges. You might think of most recently the biggest challenge being the Black Lives Matter movement. So here in London, in the aftermath of the brutal murder that we all witnessed in Minnesota in the US, Black Lives Matter movements absolutely grew across the world but also in the streets of London and across Britain. And many of you would have seen the image of the statue of Edward Colston, a 16th century slave being pushed into the river in the city of Bristol in Britain. So for those of you who might not know the background to that story, Edward Colston was a 16th century slave who that statue has always been a very contentious issue. And in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement gaining ground, your Black Lives Matter protesters demanded that this, you know, this just cannot continue to be something we celebrate. So one of the ways to understand that particular toppling of the statue is of course to say protesters here are demanding recognition of racial capitalism being underpinned by the foundational institution of slavery. So it's a challenge to racial capitalism that needs to actually happen in order for the decolonization of the human. Another way you might interpret the throwing of the statue into Bristol Harbour is these are people who are demanding that this historical narrative that really sort of I guess celebrates the narrative of slavery having been something that's ultimately done some good or empire being a narrative that's ultimately done good. They're challenging that historical narrative. And the third thing you might understand it as doing is actually challenging the very conception of the human that today structures our world, a conception of the human that has at its very pinnacle this white male subject that is understood to be the most advanced form of human being and human dignity. Now, what I want to talk about is this deeper sort of invitation that this moment actually calls for this deeper invitation to actually look at how the human subject is constituted, how we even think about universal human being, what would it look like to actually have different forms of human subjectivity that don't have at their very pinnacle the white man. I'm going to come back to what gender has to do with all of this and how gender is absolutely central to this particular story about what a universal human should look like. Now, what I want to suggest to you is that there is a very particular fiction, a very particular and very powerful fiction that underpins that particular statue that was thrown into Bristol Harbour. Now, I'm going to show my screen so that you get to see this particular fiction. Let me just do it here. Okay, so there you go. This is a powerful fiction which says that civilisation. This is what you might describe as civilisation discourse. This is a story that says that civilisation is something like a torch. It is a torch that begins in the lands of African and Indigenous peoples. It moves from the lands of African Indigenous peoples to the lands of Asian peoples, then to the land of Middle Eastern peoples, then to the lands of white peoples. Now, this torch of civilisation notion comes from the late 18th century and is very 18th century and soon disappears because eventually the torch idea disappears. But what remains is this notion that this story here, the motion of this torch of civilisation actually shows us how civilisations are evolving and changing. So there is this idea that peoples in Africa, peoples in Aboriginal Australia, peoples in native Canada, they are peoples who are somehow behind Asian peoples, who are themselves then behind Middle Eastern peoples, who are then themselves behind white peoples. So this very, very, very powerful fiction, if you are all here with me and I could actually ask you what is this called, what is the name of this story, I wonder what you would say. What a really good descriptor for this tale is the word progress and the word development. You would all be very, very, very familiar with the idea of progress, with the idea of a society that is progressing somewhere, a society that is getting better and better and better with time. So what I want you to have a think about is, is this idea of progress and development actually something that we can actually rest away from this racial logic that I've outlined here. So I would argue no, if you were here as a class I would say, tell me, is it possible to have a story of progress that isn't actually about the human race moving from race to race to race to race to race. Now what I want to also say before I get to how gender is related to this story is, you might, when you first look at this tale, you might go, okay, this is actually a geographical tale. This is about Africa, Asia, Middle East, Europe. Okay, it looks like it's kind of that space, but a deeper look at it will also tell you that this is a story that is profoundly about time. This idea that somehow peoples can be behind other peoples in time. So this notion that, so I don't think I mentioned it, but I'm Bangladeshi by birth. This idea that if Bangladesh as a country, if Bangladesh is as people develop enough, eventually they will be civilised like white civilisations or white peoples. This notion is deeply, deeply a temporal one. When you start realising that this story of progress is both a temporal one, you start to see how binary gender is absolutely central to the operation of this story. Now, one of the ways that you might say binary gender is central to it is that we saw that the statue that is being toppled by decolonised the university movements or Black Lives Matter movements, it's a statue of the white masculinist subject, right? So in a sense at the pinnacle of this story is this idea that white man stands at the top of it. That's one way in which gender is operating in this story. Another very key way that gender is operating here is gender rights operates here to mark how civilised a society is. So whether or not a society or a people treat women or treat their women well is the marker for where they are supposed to be placed on this scale of civilisational progress. So this plays out both in progress narratives and some of you might be more familiar with development stories, right? So maternal mortality figures or girl education statistics, right? So the more girls a country is educating, the closer it is to civilisation, that idea. So this story that I'm showing you here is actually absolutely central to many, many, many feminist NGOs, many, many, many social justice organisations that are working towards a better world and which have a very explicit feminist project. So what I want to suggest to you is the project to decolonise the idea of the human is actually about separating the idea of the human from this story. But the challenge for us is if you are to separate the formation of the human from this story, how do you imagine better futures? How do you imagine a time over the horizon that is better? Because that is ultimately what progress as a story allows you to do. Now, one of the things that we at the Centre for Gender Studies are forced into reckoning with is this very complex contradiction where as a gender studies space, we invite and attract peoples who are involved in queer organising, who are involved in feminist organising, who are involved in the most exciting types of movements going on around the world. How do we decolonise our feminism so that we are not bound to this racialised logic that I am pointing to here? Now, one of the things that is absolutely important to look at a place like SOAS is, of course, playing a very big part in actually institutionalising this story about the world because SOAS as an institution was set up to train Imperial officers and to train British Imperial officers working in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. So it will come as no surprise to you that in the SOAS library, one of the most well-read books is Edward Said's Orientalism. And I'm sure many in this audience would have read Edward Said's Orientalism, would have come across Edward Said's Orientalism. So one of the reasons that this is such a, as you can see from the SOAS Library Twitter feed, very, very, very important text for this institution. One of the reasons that it's very important for this institution is many of the scholars, many of the writers, many of the knowledge producers about the other that Said was critiquing when he wrote this book in 1978, many of them are SOAS scholars. So SOAS as an institution is very much caught up in the very production of the sort of colonial concept of the human being. What that means for us today as teachers, as students, as new generations in this space is, if this was a space from which a narrative like this was implemented, instituted, disseminated, then this can also be a place from which we must tackle this problem of dismantling colonial notions of the human. Now at the Centre for Gender Studies, what you will find is that we will be not only looking at how do you critique and understand how gender in the world works. You will also be looking at how do you critique and understand how racial logics work in feminist discourse. You will also be looking at are there other stories, apart from this one, in relation to which human beings can be defined. Okay, if you are in a class with me, I would ask you, tell me, do you think it is possible to get away from this story? And if we were to try and get away from this story, where would we go? Okay, I'll leave it there for today. And just turn over for the next bit, which is the questions. Thanks, Samia, that was a really engaging talk and thank you for that presentation. If anyone does have any questions for Samia, or about the talk, or also about the program at SOAS, or if you have any questions about the student experience, or more general questions about SOAS, do you feel free to put those in the Q&A box? I think we may have lost Samia there for a moment, but if you do have any questions for her, do put them in the box, hopefully she'll be back with us in a moment. There we go. Sorry about that, internet connection failed. So we've got a few questions, I think, coming through for you, Samia, at the moment. So where will they, is it in the Q&A chat? Yeah, it's in the Q&A section, that's right. So we've got Sana is joining from Lahore. Hello, Sana. We've got Raphael asking, what are the most popular modules taken on the course? Okay, so we have two modules, which are core modules. So gender theory and the study of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. So everyone does that. Everyone does that, you have to do that. And then there's also the dissertation methods, which is preparation to write a dissertation and everyone takes that. So in addition to that, we have a number of different modules, and I'm just going to put them up here because I prepared for you. There we go. So I've got a list of all the modules and programs just here, okay? So this year, we started a new module called transnationalizing queer trends and disability studies, and that's off to a really huge start. One of the most popular modules we have is queering migrations and diaspora. That one is always just gets the best student feedback and is just always full to the brim. Queer politics is also another one that's a really big favorite for our students. Now, in addition to what you're seeing here, we also have a range of different subjects that are, you know, attend to the theme of gender or attend to gender, but actually located in different departments. So there's going to be different gender courses in the development studies unit. There's going to be some in history. There's going to be some in law. And so it is a very, very, very wide range of courses. And we've also got, I think, one of them is actually missing here. Oh no, gender in the Middle East. That one also gets a lot of student, very excited about it. There's the mid, we have a very strong Middle East strand here, because we've actually got a couple of our MA programs, which have Middle East pathways. So I hope that's answered your question. And to the next question. Hi, not really a question. Is the class are the classes very participatory and discussion based. They absolutely are Tanya, the, we're obviously all of higher education is now straight jacket set into this zoom box thing, but I mean, I wish I could have interacted with you even in zoom. It's been the most incredible. It's been the most incredible six months of very, very, very wonderful dialogue with our students, even despite the platform. So it's very, very, very participatory in its teaching style. So for instance, gender theory, which everyone is doing is a two hour seminar and a one hour tutorial. Okay, so the two hour seminar has everyone in it. So this year we had 56 people. Now, what ends up happening is you've got 56 participants and you've got a lecturer like me. And usually I would do like a very much question and answer kind of, you know, I would have asked you if this was a, if this was actually a classroom setting, I would have asked you, what do you think gender has to do with this story of progress. And then people start talking and it becomes this incredible mode of thinking that as a lecturer, I can tell you is truly, truly thrilling. It's just this completely other mode of thinking when you're thinking in dialogue with this range of people that come from completely different places in the world and are embedded in movements in all sorts of other places in the world. So it is that dialogue in which we do the thinking and that is precisely why the size classroom is so exciting. So definitely very, very, very participatory. And as I said, because that seminar is has so many people and it's got 56 this year. So we have the smaller tutorials so that you have a smaller group of people for those people who are shy for those people who need to be able to go deeper into the theoretical texts that we're reading. With the assistance of a tutor. So at all the different formats we have absolutely foreground that participatory nature offered this year because of zoom, we've had to make sure that everything is recorded and is available online. But our focus always always is that participatory dialogue mode because ultimately we want to think with you not tell you how to think yeah. So, see why I was asked can you tell us more about the gender studies center in so as a case so I guess I went through a little bit of this at the beginning of the lecture I guess we were started in 2007 and we've been going for quite some time. And at what we're known for what our reputation is is being at the forefront of that kind of intersectional feminism that is able to look at race that is able to look at sexuality that is able to look at trans politics and go. How does this challenge normative feminism. Okay, so the Center for Gender Studies at so as operates through this series of postgraduate programs so the MA programs as well as PhD programs. And we also have a regular seminar series, which brings in guests from across the world, and it sort of forms the backbone of the intellectual community at the Center for Gender Studies. So I hope that's answered your questions here. Thank you again Sana hello again, and Hyath is joining from Beirut hello. So Shriyoshi is asked from Delhi and is asking is joining the comparative literature department with an interest in South Asian queer literatures I loved your talk in description of the space was wondering whether there will be opportunities for inter departmental work offered because I would love to avail them. Okay, so our core courses which are the gender theory at and the dissertation methods. Those are closed to only gender studies students, but all the other modules I showed are actually open to anybody. So we have a number of modules where people can come in and from any department any MA student from any department can come in and take them because we want to bring people in from various other places right. If you're in the Department of comparative literature or if you're doing a comparative literature. Degree what you have is knowledges of other literatures other knowledges, apart from the anglois fee one. So we want you in the classroom because you're the person who is going to be able to tell us. If there are other stories apart from that fiction of progress that can structure gender. And to find them is in the knowledge traditions of colonised peoples. It is in complete departments it is in literature departments history departments, it is in Arabic studies departments, where you actually have access to those knowledges. Okay, so we're very very very open to that kind of interdisciplinary work and that's one of the most exciting things about the gender studies space. So Emily has, oh no I skipped one Laura hi wondering what research methods are discussed in the dissertation methods course. So I taught the dissertation methods course this year and we began the year by looking or we began the term it's a term long course. So we began the term by looking at Linda to hear why Smith's decolonising methodologies so that was a text that the first couple of lessons were structured around. But as the course went on I got a sense of who is working on what kind of thesis, and so I tailored it according to what it is that they were interested in what the students were interested in. So we ran a writing workshop, because lots of people are interested in writing well and lots of people are interested in writing histories that incorporate family narratives and oral narratives. Lots and lots and lots of people were interested in auto ethnography and ethnography as strategies for doing research so we ran a workshop that was on auto ethnography. So in this way, we kind of for dissertation methods, we tend to test okay where are the students at what are they going to need but you know what there's always going to be a class on interviewing on ethnography on auto ethnography there's always going to be a class on writing. There's always going to be a class on the politics of knowledge production, there's always going to be a class that is about the technical of how you actually go about doing research. So that's the kind of things that a dissertation methods class actually looks at. And the whole purpose of the dissertation methods class is at the end of the term, you are asked to produce a dissertation proposal, a proposal that's just going to lay out in very, you know, sort of sketchy terms, the sort of the very first pencil sketch if you like of what your dissertation is going to look like. So the dissertation is the big piece of work that you're going to do during your masters and it's a 12,000 word piece in the gender studies program. And because many people haven't done a dissertation before the entire dissertation methods course is about gearing people up to take on a big piece of research like that. So Colter from Algeria has applied for gender studies at SOAS next September and would like to know if you only tackle gender theory, or if you link it with development policies and what's the difference between MA gender studies and MA gender studies with Middle East Pathway. Okay, so there is a gender and development module that you can take. We don't run that. Okay, so the Center for Gender Studies runs a particular mode of doing an investigating gender. But some people find it incredible to do both gender theory, as well as gender and development. But they're quite, I guess they're quite different approaches to how you would actually go about investigating gender. Now, we have a lot of students that do both. We have some students who do ours and say, actually, the development world is what I'm most used to conversely and more often, we get students saying actually, the development world is very, very, very problematic. We want to be doing the Center for Gender Studies courses. So it's one of these situations where you can make that productive tension between gender and development discourse versus gender theory actually work for you, then you can get the best of both worlds through a degree via us. Okay. Tanya. Thanks. Good to know that I've been able to answer your question. Okay, so we've got a question from someone who is a lawyer in Puerto Rico and applied for an LLM. You're interested in studying the law from a critical approach focused on detaching traces of colonialism and sexism would love to hear your thoughts on the possibility of an interdisciplinary approach to law and gender so as, or in your overall research experience. Absolutely. The, there are a number of we at the Center for Gender Studies are actually housed inside the School of Law. So it is a very comfortable and good home for us because we have very close relationships to many colleagues who are running gender and law courses and also just law courses in general. So we would warmly welcome LLM students to be taking our courses to be participating in our seminar series. We would likewise warmly encourage all our students to be dipping their toes into various different law subjects, because we just have very good working relationships with the various different faculty members in the School of Law. Now, the, if you if it is legal systems that you are specifically interested in. It is going to be that one of those things that we at the Center for Gender Studies are forever having to pay attention to and having to centre as sites of power. In the entire edifice of thinking that has come after Michelle Foucault says that it is the juridical system that actually constitutes the subject. And one of the people one of the thinkers who take that and build the most incredible edifice of thinking on it is of course Judith Butler. In challenging the very category of woman and the role of the juridical system in producing that, any kind of big challenge that we are making to the fundamental categories which we understand gender need to at some time or other pay attention to juridical structures. So we are never very far from engaging with understanding critiquing and in dialogue with juridical systems and legal epistemologies. Okay, so I would say that this would be a very exciting course for you if you or program for you if you took the Gender Studies program or if you're doing the LLM be very, very interesting for you to see it from a gender studies perspective and take some of our courses. Okay, so Iqshapu has said thank you. I enjoyed giving it. The picture I paint about department and class formats you enjoyed. Okay, I've often thought about gender in the context of performance both in the day to day and on the stage. I wonder if there are opportunities either in the gender department or others for analyzing this. Absolutely. Okay, absolutely performance and perform, performativity are central core concepts in our gender theory course, as well as throughout our various different modules. And I think I had, there was this incredible I said that we had a seminar, we have a seminar, a regular seminar series we had this wonderful wonderful we've actually had performances in those spaces to more robustly think about what academic knowledge. What these limits are as opposed to performance as a mode of thinking so there's all sorts of ways that either studying performance or studying. Not just studying performance but also performing is something that can be brought into the gender studies space and I guess again there the you know we've got the various different incredibly vibrant communities. We are very well connected to arts worlds who are feeding into the gender studies community and gender studies space at SOAS via which that that dynamism actually comes into the classroom. Yeah. So is the gender studies and law program equally as theoretical as it is practical. Okay, so the gender studies and law program is not. It's not like the LLM where you are going to get some kind of accreditation or it's not so it, it's, it's very much one of these programs that has a balance between the practical and the theoretical. So that's a program in which you are doing the gender theory, you are doing all those other modules that are looking very much not at legal aspects, however, at the same time, you've also got a number of law modules that will look very much into the specificities of legal systems that our gender is operating now I would strongly recommend going on to our website and checking out what the courses are and just seeing whether you like the sound of them you'll get a sense through looking at the modules that are gender and law. Okay. Now. Oh, yeah, you've asked again about the gender studies with Middle East Pathways. Sorry, I forgot to answer that question. So the gender studies Middle East pathway is in essence, your MA gender studies basic plus you've all you've got to do both queer politics as well as the gender in the Middle East course. Now both of those have regional folk, regional, their regional focus is on the Middle East. So in essence what you get is this very streamlined course that allows you to go through with a cohort who are also very interested in the Middle East. So in addition to your, you know, your gender studies, normal gender studies cohort, you also get to be in two classrooms, first in term one and then in term two, with people who are specifically interested in the Middle East. Now, you'll notice that one of them is called gender in the Middle East and the other ones, the other core of that pathway is queer politics. What is important here is one is using an area studies model which is gender in the Middle East, you know, it's saying the Middle East as an area is what we're going to look. You know, we're going to frame as a topic of study. The other one is taking a thematic approach to the Middle East it's saying queer politics is the frame is the thematic frame through which we're going to approach this particular region. And it's quite, I guess, a varied experience of what studying gender in the Middle East actually looks like because the area studies model is just one model via which you can do gender in the Middle East. So I hope that has answered your question. Okay, Likita is joining from Hyderabad in India and is planning to join the post colonial studies course. I wanted to work on South Asian post colonial women's literature but there isn't a South Asian module in the gender studies modules is there any other way to work with the gender studies department. Okay, so you would have noticed Likita that I am South Asian. I'm a historian of the British Empire and I focus on South Asia and South Asian diaspora. Right. So what ends up happening is the courses that I run and the courses, the lectures that I do use South Asian material and I actually focused on South Asia. So I will be when I tell you about how development works or when I tell you about how progress narratives work or when I tell you about how race and religion and gender or work. The examples I will be using will be from Bangladesh Sri Lanka Pakistan India Burma. Okay, this is always going to happen in a space like the Center for Gender Studies any space in so as everybody comes with a kind of regional specialization. One of the, one of the results of that is I teach many of the core courses and I teach on many of the core courses. So on paper, you don't see that there is a South Asia focus, but there is because of who the faculty are. So when taking a look at the Center for Gender Studies courses, take a look at who the faculty is what their regional speciality is because then you'll get to see the special the particular regional focus that we will actually bring to the course. So, having said that, there's also possibilities for, you know, if you're doing the post colonial studies MA, you can sit in on some of our we can audit some of our courses or you can take some of our courses as, as options. Okay, so there's plenty of opportunity to be able to work with the Gender Studies program, but it's it's I guess it's sort of ultimately about, you know, where is which which core course do you want to do. Okay, so if you find yourself saying I want to do the MA post colonial studies core course. Over the gender theory course then go for MA post colonial studies, if you want to do the MA the gender theory course over every other core course there is come with us okay, but we very much encourage this kind of taking modules from other places and so we're very open to post colonial studies students coming and working with us. Okay, so we've got someone asking what's the workload like on the two year part time masters okay. That's quite a technical question because the two year part time masters would mean that you would be so that's a question that you might have to actually make time with someone to talk about will go. What I suggest is you go to the Gender Studies page and actually click on structure of courses and have a look at how many courses you would actually have to take each year okay across the entire. degree I believe it is 120 courses 120 credit points you have to do, but I can't off the top of my head tell you what the specific workload is going to be Laura is that something that you can assist with. So, with the part time program taken two years part time would be roughly roughly half the workload split over the two years of the program. So as opposed to sort of 10 to 12 hours of contact time a week it's more likely to be about five or five or six contact hours a week. And so with that, you know that it will depend on when the modules take place during that particularly to that particular year as to when your class time would be. And so it will be worth kind of looking at your timetable at the beginning of the year just to kind of work out exactly when you're when your class time will be with your tutorials your seminar sessions. And there's often the option perhaps to choose between one or two sort of tutorial times, which fits in a little bit better with your part time program. And so I'd suggest probably sitting down at the beginning of the year and just kind of planning out your timetable a little bit just to make sure that you can make all of the contact hours for the modules that you're hoping to attend. Thank you Laura. So I'm just making sure that I haven't missed any questions. Okay, oh we've got Ari. Thanks for the talk I was wondering what sorts of things people do after they do an MA in gender studies or so great question. So there's going to be a lot of people who come in and who want to actually go on to do a PhD so the MA can be a really great primer for a PhD program if you are that way inclined. One of the things to do is to actually see how you go with writing a thesis see how you go with writing a 12,000 month thesis do enjoy it do you hate it. Do you just want to be out in the sun while you're writing it. And that is a pretty good taster for whether or not that's a life suited for you. Many, many, many people go on to work in the community sector, many people work in the NGO sector, I had students go on to teaching jobs, and I'm talking primary school and high school level teaching. Now, one of the other important things and I don't know what this is like in the, you know, wherever you are Ari but somewhere like Bangladesh or somewhere like India. You need an MA degree in order to be able to teach at the universities. So for someone who was applying to the MA gender studies at so as at the end of the year, they are fully qualified to work in an undergraduate classroom in a university in Bangladesh or India. Okay, now you need to depending on where you are, you need to work out what the MA degree, what it makes you sort of able to what it qualifies you for. So I've just highlighted some of the, I guess spaces where people work. There's also people who go on to do lots of research assistance work I had someone joining one of my students joined a particular UN women program. I've had students go on to work in. I guess as as research officers in larger projects so I had a great student do this wonderful, wonderful thesis on the medical construction of gender, and they went on to actually get a brilliant like two year full time research assistance position in a larger project about medical knowledge. So there's very many different pathways you can take but I guess the community sector, the NGO sector, the education sector, these are some of the key places that I've seen some of my students go on to. Okay. We've got I'm a TV has said we need to decolonize the human mind from the primordial thought of one gender and the other needs to be subjugated for the progress of society which is strongly based on the presumption of the division of labor. Do make the apple societies in Asia have answers to decolonize humans as far as gender roles of concern. And that sounds like something you are myth would have to actually investigate in the form of a master's thesis. I cannot answer that you've asked a great question but please come and do a master's thesis with us and answer it. Okay. Any more questions. Yeah, I was asked are there were internship opportunities facilitated by the gender studies department. Currently, we don't do internship placements or programs like that. What ends up happening is that through your lectures, through your tutors, sometimes you get access to networks where people are offering opportunities. So for instance, one of my students, and you know this is very very this is the kind of thing that's a very context specific as it's not the kind of thing we can promise. But this is what happened. This is part of what doing a master's degree at a place like so as actually means. So I guess I've got lots and lots and lots and lots of networks in Bangladesh. So I had a colleague at Brack University in Bangladesh say I've got this research project to do with governance and development. Do you have any students who would be suitable here? I was able to say yes, I have XYZ student who speak Bangla and these ones who don't speak Bangla but are also absolutely great. Would you be interested and so a conversation began. Right. So it's kind of about building those relationships with faculty members so that faculty members will think of you as someone who is interested in working in a region that they know something about. But it is very much informal at this stage we don't have programs via which we offer internships. Okay. I think there's no more. There was a will there be a student ambassador speaking about their experience on this webinar. So we have we have a friend with us who is a student, but not on the gender studies program she's master's student at SOA. So if you have any questions specifically for a friend about her experiences of studying as a master's student at SOA, please do write them in the in the Q&A section, and I'm sure it will be happy to answer those. Hi everyone. There's any questions that you know, but I might add something in the meantime about the students that asked about part time so I'm a part time master's student. And although the advice is that you can choose half and half the module, split the modules evenly between the two years part time. I didn't do that. I did a bit more modules on one of the years and a bit less on the other just because it fits my timetable. So that's something you can do. But in the end, you do the same amount of credits as the normal one year masters. As people are thinking of questions for a crumb. Iqshaku has asked, does the MA Gender Studies and Law provide the chance to work part time during the program itself, parts in a women's or queer legal clinic or similar research role. Now, generally, people find the full time load of the MA heavy. So we wouldn't recommend trying to do part time work while you are doing the full time MA. However, you can of course do the part you can do the gender and law part time and then also do part time work for the most part people for it when they begin the course are like, whoa, this is a lot of reading. So it is a dense, intellectually very challenging time, the MA program, the one year MA program. So that's what I would say to that Iqshaku. I can see we have a few more coming through but I'm a little bit conscious of time. So maybe if there are maybe one or two more questions and then we'll have to close for the evening but you can always contact us. You can contact us for general questions on the study at SOS email address which is just study at SOS.ac.uk. And I'm sure you can contact Samia as well and her email address we have any further questions. Yeah. So I think I can see one more question here that I could quickly answer Laura has asked a practical question. Can I find some information about how the program is structured a timetable or something. So well I've just pulled up I don't know that this will be super helpful but I'm hoping that it's going to be. I'm going to show you say the timetable for the course queering migration and diaspora so you get a sense of what it might look like. Okay, so if I just go to my zoom and share screen and share there with you. Okay so this is the course queering migrations and diaspora so you'll notice here that it is a course that has a one hour lecture on a Friday and then there are these four tutorials. Now you would only go to one of those tutorials so it's two contact hours per person okay per week. So if you go to this Friday 10 to 11 and you would also go to say a 12 to one o'clock tutorial. So this is kind of quite standard for a 15 credit point course which is your one term long course. So just imagine having how many of these you're going to have so if you've got two hours for each two contact hours for each of your courses. So that's a pretty good idea of what what kind of timetabling you're going to be looking at so I hope that's answered that question. So I think that's probably all like so Raphael I'll quickly answer this question as well. There's a good sense of community between different departments that saw us. So of course it's the classroom is your entry point into many different communities as well as in, you know, the, the cultures and languages crew have a very different feel to the gender studies crew have a very different feel to the history crew, a very different feel to the law crew that, apart from that kind of disciplinary community. There's all sorts of other cross so as communities of course like the student union, there's various different movements you can get involved with. So it literally is about hitting the ground and working out what your interests are what they're crossing. But there's definitely lots and lots of when we're on campus. It's an incredibly incredibly vibrant student community it's been very challenging this year for entire in all of higher education, but on campus, yeah I can confirm that there's just a lot of different modes of connecting to students across different departments. I think that's probably all I can answer now. Thank you so much for such an engaging presentation and for answering all those questions as well. And I've certainly really enjoyed it so thank you so much and thank you to it as well for being here and thank you to everybody who's joined the session this evening. It's been very useful, and hopefully see you at so asked at some point soon. If you do have any further questions do feel free to contact us either on the study at so as to AC dot UK email or contact some of you if you do have any more questions for her as well. But thank you so much all for joining us. Okay, thank you everybody have a good night and hope to see some of you next year.