 Hi welcome everyone my name is Dr Gina Heathcote. I'm going to talk on the MA in gender and sexuality in this webinar so welcome thanks for joining us. So I am a staff member at the Center for Gender Studies where we run four different programs MA in Gender Studies, MA in Gender Studies and the studies in the Middle East, MA in Gender Sexuality and MA in Gender Studies and Law. If you want to know more about any of the programs or particularly the MA in Gender and Sexuality which is what I'm talking about today you can drop me an email or if you want to ask me a question as we go feel free to type a question into the box. I'm only going to talk about gender studies and sexuality today although I'll give you a wider sense of the center and how it works at the same time. So the Center for Gender Studies has four permanent staff members and Professor Nadia Ali who's our center chair, myself. I am the program convener for the MA in Gender Studies and Law or the happy program convener for all the different programs and familiar with them and in fact it was me that proposed and set up both gender studies and law and the gender and sexuality programs and very familiar with them. Dr Winoa Ketch is the program convener for the MA in Gender Studies and she's also the convener of the core course that you'll take while you're here in Gender Theory which I'm going to talk to in a moment. Dr Ali Oshuja will be your program convener on the MA in Gender and Sexuality and they are also the convener of the Famicom Queer to Asper course which is one of the core courses that you take on the Gender and Sexuality program. Right so in addition to the four of us we're really enhanced by the number of colleagues that work at SOAS working on issues of gender and sexuality in fact across the departments of SOAS we're really proud to say that we have colleagues working in every department so across the 10 11 units at SOAS we have colleagues who are center members and they support both the teaching and dissertation supervision as well as events that we run here at the center so you're likely to encounter them many of them are working particularly on the study of sexuality in the SOAS regions and they provide fantastic support particularly for this program on the MA in Gender and Sexuality. Okay our administrative support is provided by our department officer Vianne Higley as a former student of ours and who can be contacted at genderstudiesatsoas.ac.uk. She can help you with anything from course enrolments to getting access to different kinds of support across the SOAS the whole of SOAS really so do get in touch with herself or myself if you have any questions at the end of this. Okay so what's the Center for Gender Studies? Well we're an interdisciplinary center studies gender in an intersectional way and sort of more practically we have both a taught graduate program and a research program so the research postgraduate program is our doctoral program you will be taking your core core student theory alongside our first year research students or doctoral students once you arrive at SOAS and we promote an active research community mostly through our events but also through our teaching you'll have the opportunity to work with colleagues and encounter the research of colleagues across different parts of SOAS and how within that do we approach gender we think we're unique in the way that we come at gender and think about gender and I would say in your degree also sexuality first and foremost we're interdisciplinary now I said before that as an interdisciplinary center we we have colleagues working across the different disciplines at SOAS but in fact I think it's more than that I think we think about what it means to undertake gender as an interdisciplinary study when when we encounter the knowledge that you that is put together through the different parts of the degree at the same time we think about gender as intersectional so this means that rather than encountering gender as a description of certain bodies you look at how gender forms a power relation that works in intersection with other power relations be they race class sexuality religion and so on so we encourage students to think through gender as a power relation and as an analytical tool to understand the perpetuation of certain kinds of discrimination not just gender discrimination on the gender studies and sexuality degree obviously you will put sexuality at the center about and think through the relationship between gender and sexuality but also in the intersection with race class able-bodiness for example so as an institution has a huge project about around decolonizing the curriculum and the Center for Gender Studies is very much committed to that and this is about thinking about how we encounter and make assumptions about what knowledge we value how we challenge that how we not only incorporate different kinds of voices but that we are attentive to what we privilege and and our own privilege in sometimes blinkering the way that we encounter knowledge at the same time we're very proud of the different queer trends perspectives that we've incorporated as a solid part both of your core modules general core modules such as gender theory but also as the discrete studies in sexuality that are part of your degree if you're on this program it should go without saying that we approach gender and sexuality through the lens of non-western approaches in that we regard particularly the study feminist histories but also history of sexuality in the so as regions not as something to be discovered or to add it on added on to existing western approaches but as foundational knowledge projects in and of themself I think this enriches the degree in a really powerful way and asks you to really think about the way that you think about things not only through gender but in terms of positionality for example okay so as I said we program structures across the MA in gender studies the MA in gender studies pathway on the Middle East and the MA in gender and sexuality in the MA in gender and more slightly different so I'm going to go up through and focus particularly on the MA in gender and sexuality which is the focus of this webinar like all programs first graduate tour programs at service you are required to take 180 credits across your degree whether you're part-time or full-time 60 of those credits will be earned through the completion of your dissertation which I'm going to talk about separately in a moment and 120 credits will be from your taught credits so the courses that you take on campus and this incorporates both core and optional modules for the students on the MA in gender and sexuality they are required to take the following core courses so first of all the course that all our students take whether you're a first year research student or on any of our different gender studies programs all our students take the gender theory and the study of Asia Africa and the Middle East as I mentioned before this course is run by Dr. Owino O'Ketch it runs for the full years so across two terms of teaching and in addition to lectures you will have tutorials where you get the opportunity to work in small groups and really kind of take a slow kind of considered approach to the different knowledge that you're encountering and thinking about you know academic skills in terms of writing from an interdisciplinary intersectional gender perspective as a student on the gender and sexuality course you're required to take two modules which would normally be optional modules queer and feminist diaspora studies and I think that course is feminist and queer diaspora studies and the module queer politics in Asia Africa and the Middle East these look at different sets of knowledge thinking around sexuality in the application of sexuality in the SOAS regions and the diasporas both hugely popular modules and hugely enriching modules as well in addition to that all of our students take a dissertation in dissertation methods in gender studies so if you're part time this will be in the last year of your degree if your full time this will be in term one this is of course run by Owino O'Ketch and it gives you the opportunity to think through the practical requirements of your dissertation and to advance the intellectual approach to your dissertation you'll be given the opportunity to give a presentation and to also kind of ask any questions you have about dissertation at the end of the course which runs for term one only in the middle of term two you're required to have another proposal a dissertation proposal that will be assessed by colleagues if given feedback and guidance from colleagues your remaining optional modules should come from what we call list one so if you look on the gender studies website pages the set of gender studies website pages we have two different lists of modules and your modules should really come from 45 credits so that's the equivalent of one full module so or and one half modules but it could of course be three half modules and this should be courses that have gender and sexuality as part of their focus and if you've got any questions about particular modules please do get in touch or if there's something that you think you'd like to study but it's not on that list we can talk to the program convener about maybe thinking about how that might be accommodated on top of all that you work on a dissertation across the year and then certainly over the summer as well so I'm just going to move to the slide that focuses on dissertations dissertation projects are 10 000 words for centre for gender studies students after you finish the dissertation proposal or dissertation methods unit and your proposal by the way of assessment for that you will be allocated a supervisor either one of the members of cgs staff who i listed before or because of the nature of your dissertation we will choose you find your specialist in your research area from the broader centre for gender studies members list it is required for this degree that not only should your studies your dissertation relate to your studies it serves in the sense of engaging the so-as regions and their diaspora communities but that it should be on sexuality for you to qualify for the degree and obviously I hope that that's self-evident but if you have questions about that again you can talk to your program convener drop me an email we've got plenty of time to design that and think about how that works after you've designed your topic and put it through for assessment on the dissertation in gender studies module once you know who your supervisor is we encourage you to meet with your supervisor during term two and term three in term time usually about three students the first three meetings should be sufficient and this is allows you to really kind of focus on the design get it of the project get it right in the sense of most people kind of come up with something slightly too broad so narrow the project appropriately think about the kind of use of interdisciplinary skills and how you reflect the work that you've done in your core modules perhaps or some of your optional modules as well at the end of the talk terms over the summer that's when most people write the bulk of their dissertations and it will then be due in September of your academic well you know at the end of the academic year great so the last thing that I want to go through is to just really emphasise that coming to the centre for gender studies at CERS is more than just coming to your talk courses in particular we expect our gender studies students to attend a fortnightly seminar series and this is an opportunity for you to hear cutting-edge research across the different disciplines across the different regions of service through the seminar series is very popular public event but is also something that we expect our master students to attend in fact it's a great year for studying gender and sexuality your program convener aliyoshituta along with our colleague dr Rahul Rao who is a colleague in the politics department but also a centre for gender studies member we're running a conference titled gender x that looks at understandings of gender identity and sexual identity in the CERS regions fantastic decolonising project that's going ahead in march 2019 but if you can't wait to learn what to suggest you do is you get on the website and or on facebook and look up queer asia this is an annual conference run every year in june was set up by some of our students former students form ma student from this program actually he started the ma in gender and sexuality despite having returned to india which is his home he still puts together the queer asia conference every year with a colleague one of our research students here at soas and it's huge it's fantastic it's fabulous the first event will be five p.m tuesday the 26th of june so if you're in london and you're able to come along to queer asia i absolutely recommend that you come and get involved and see some of the debates that kind of you would be immersed in when you take on this program and the great kind of research events that stem from that great so um that's about all i've got to say thank you um so much for your time if you've got a question feel free to type it in and i'll do my best to answer it if you think of a question later drop me an email and i'll come back to you thank you very much