 Hello everyone and welcome, a very warm welcome to everyone joining us today and also if to those of you who might be watching this recording back. My name is John Whittaker, I'm the Academic Summer School Manager here at SOAS and I've got my colleague Ruha. And I'm Ruha, I also work on the Academic Summer School alongside John. And yeah, we are the summer school team at SOAS, so if you're applying for the summer school, if you're having any questions, then it's probably going to be Ruha who helps you with those, but it's me and Ruha, we're a two-man team and yeah, we will be the ones helping you and guiding you through your application process all the way up until you arrive and you start your courses and even afterwards as well. So it's really great to meet everyone and hopefully we can have a chance to meet you all properly this summer, but today we're introducing you to what we're doing on the summer school this year and giving you a bit more information on what to expect this summer. And so yeah, here we are on what we're going to be talking through today. So an introduction to SOAS for anyone who's not so familiar with SOAS as an institution, we'll give you a bit of a quick brief overview. We'll also look back at what we did last year and what the summer school experience was like last year. We were online last year, so we'll talk a bit about that. We'll then look at what we're doing this year and give you information on what to expect a bit of a day in the life and what additional things we're doing on the summer school and everything you can expect this summer. And then we'll talk through a bit about the application process, bit of the admin side, a bit of scholarships that we offer and discounts and then end on a Q&A if anyone's got any questions. But the chat is open, so if you have any questions along the way, then do just put it in the chat and we will see them and we'll address those as we go as well. We'll keep it very informal if we can. And we'll try not to take up too much time and we'll try and keep this as brief as we can really. So I suppose without further ado I'll hand over to Ruhata to give our introduction to Soas. Yeah I'm just going to talk you through kind of a bit of background about the university itself so you can kind of get to know Soas. So Soas was established in 1916 and I think anyone who has ever studied or even worked at Soas would probably agree in saying that it's quite a unique and very lively institution to be at. I think one of the things that is most special about us is definitely our kind of global reputation for our expertise in the study of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. And I think that that is quite a unique geographical focus. It's not something I think you'll typically find at other universities, not just in the UK but across the globe really. And it's reflected very much in the kind of courses and the programme that we offer as you'll go and see later in the summer school. I think another thing that makes Soas so special and so distinctive is our student body and you might be thinking kind of what makes our student body so special, what makes Soas students so special. And I think probably the best way to characterise Soas student would to be to say that they are incredibly diverse in their thought, their opinion and in their backgrounds. I think they're united in being quite politically active, very kind of socially and globally aware of the things that are going on around them. And there's very much a kind of approach of taking your studies beyond the classroom and applying them to the world around you. And even to Soas itself, I think Soas students are very involved with the university and what goes on and we have a very active student union as well. And that kind of links into and also explains the fourth point on here about the role that Soas really plays in leading in global government policy and the kind of the role it plays on the international stage. If you could have a look at any of our alumni you'll see they've had quite really exceptional careers on an international level. We have politicians, past presidents, members of the Royal Family. And I think that's just very impressive and also a testament to the kind of students we attract. And that's very much reflected in the students that are interested in our summer school too, although we spend probably a shorter amount of time with them. I think it's very clear that they have that same kind of ambition and drive in the things they're interested in. And also the things they go on to do after having studied with us. So I'll move on to the next slide. So this is just a quick look back 2020. I'm sure all of you know 2020 was a very strange, very challenging year for all of us and for summer schools particularly it was challenging because it meant we couldn't offer our usual on-campus program but we very quickly made the decision to move online. In fact we were the first UK university to do so. I think we did so very successfully. I think you can see from some of the quotes on the screen here that people were very satisfied with what we offered and we were able to attract a record-breaking number of over 280 students from over 70 countries which again links back to what I was saying earlier about our students being very diverse and very international. We did so very successfully. I think that you can see a quote here about kind of being able to gain a lot of different perspectives from our kind of very diverse cohort that we had. And it's really a nice opportunity to kind of grow your global network and get to know some really like quite fascinating people. One of the things that was amazing about going online so early as well is that we've had kind of a great deal of experience in learning how best to deliver online teaching and online learning and I think this year although last year went so well we've been able to really grow and develop and optimize our delivery for this year so we're hopefully going to offer an even better program. And then I think we're just on to a quick video that's going to give you an overview of 2021 but we'll also talk you through it shortly after. Yeah I mean just to jump in there Ruha if I can before we shot the video. It was yeah it was such a strange year wasn't it? So we were all set to be on campus in 2020 and then had to change our plans really really quickly before the summer and yeah it was a bit crazy but we managed to do so and had this kind of remarkable summer and an amazing year as as Ruha said kind of record breaking numbers as well the most students we've had for our summer school. So it was an amazing experience actually and it's given us then that experience of improving what we did last summer and improving that for this year. And so as you can see that the feedback was so great last year and that's testament to kind of the academics and what we did in terms of trying to move things online but being able to then work on that and improve that for this year gives us such I think an advantage over some other universities who are doing summer schools who might have you know not been as not being prepared for last year and decided not to run their programs last year and are now doing so for the first time online this year. It gives us a little bit of an advantage and a bit of a step ahead of the rest of the competition in terms of we've been there before and we now know kind of what worked and what didn't for a summer school online because it kind of is a bit of an online summer school that sounds a bit odd people come to do a summer school to experience a new place to travel to come to a new city and to experience not just the kind of learning experience but to explore a new city as well and a new place and that's half of what makes a summer school so appealing so doing that online is a completely different prospect but we've tried to give as much of the on-campus experience and in-person experience as we can online and make our online experience as close to what you would get on campus I think so there's been a lot of work that's been put into the way our programs run to make them as interactive and as engaging as possible it's not just an online experience where you go in and do a bit of reading and watch a video it's much more interactive and kind of hands-on than that so yeah we're trying to make it as close as to what the experiences that you'd get if you were coming to SOAS and you were doing these these courses in person and that's what we tried to bring online and so yeah should we move on to 2021? Sure you're a bit of a bit of a taster of what's to come this year by watching this short video and there was the SOAS campus there just right at the end it makes me miss being on campus seeing our old campus there we haven't been on campus for about a year so that's actually nice to see SOAS again okay so that gives you a bit of a quick taster of what to expect this year and mentions a few things that we'll talk about here in the next few slides but to give you an overview of what 2021 will look like this summer so we have nine courses usual kind of unique very very SOAS-y type courses it covers kind of the main areas that SOAS kind of focuses on which we'll come on to talk about in just a second but just to give you an overview of how the structure is so we have two sessions they're two week blocks with a week in between so all courses are two weeks duration they're full-time courses so you don't kind of choose a number of courses in one session you study one course in that session and study that course full-time you do have the option of studying two courses in both so back to back so one course in each session if you'd like to so you would then study over four weeks as opposed to just two and we do have discounts if you're looking to take two courses which we will come on to a little bit later and so as you can see we're focusing here on conflict, on international development, on gender, law, protests, development, social change, activism, sustainability, climate change, media and gender, international relations we have a new course for 2021 in the objects, museums, people in the 21st century that's brand new for this year but you see a real real focus here on what SOAS really specializes in is our kind of global outlook and the social kind of aspects that our students really get involved in and what our SOAS students are kind of studying in their degrees as well so it gives you a good taster of what SOAS offers. Our courses are credit-bearing so you can earn 15 credits per course these are UK credits you can transfer these credits back to your home schools if you're looking to do so and the fact that the SOAS awards credit can often make that a lot easier for home institutions for your schools back home to recognize the study that you do here at SOAS over the summer to recognize that credit and transfer it back home as well but that's not to say that everyone takes these courses for credit we get a range of students taking these courses from undergraduates to postgraduate students to graduates and professionals then working in the field so one thing that makes our summer school program so unique and quite special is the range of people who you will come into contact with so you'll hear perspectives and views from people across the world but also from those working in particular areas perhaps as well that are just kind of totally fascinating so a lot of what makes these courses so great is hearing from the other students as well as our academics as well who are equally engaged in their specialisms and in these topics that we're covering here so we have a two-week block and then we have a week in between that's a kind of a week for students who are studying in session one to complete their assignments then we go into session two and students on session two will have a week after that to complete their assignments as well we'll go on to talk about what's kind of covered and as I said kind of what a day would look like typically on these courses I'm just wondering if I've covered everything here yeah so I think that's about it so you know as I said you can study for credit but if you're a professional or you're working or you've graduated and perhaps not looking to use that credit that's totally fine you can come on the course and either take the assessments and just have the credit as a bonus or you don't have to participate in the assessed elements of these courses and then therefore you would not receive credit then for the course but if you're looking to get to earn credit then just make sure you're completing the assessed parts of this of the courses and you will earn 15 UK credits there. Okay moving on to the next slide so all of our courses this year are delivered online so we're online again for 2021 things are opening up in the UK a little bit more now but it's kind of a slow gradual open up and we're only kind of just getting started now things things are getting better but we didn't really want to have any uncertainty for you as our students to in terms of what you are actually coming and signing up for so we took a decision early on to be online again this year no matter what really because it went so well last year hopefully next year we'll be back on campus but for this year we're delivering all of our courses totally online and I'm sure people watching this if you're if you're studying at the moment then you're very used to how online study can be by now we've all been doing it the last year we like to think that our model that we use is tried and tested on our distance learning and our the online programs that so has been running the online degree programs that we run this we use the model that we're using on those courses we've brought that onto onto the summer school so it's a tried and tested model that works and that has gone down very well so we use a mixture of pre-recorded lectures and live live sessions live tutorial sessions alongside those and in between those we'll have activity sessions that are giving you a taste of various different things that we do at SOAS and these could be live these could be recorded as well so I'll go through here so you might have so a typical day and this is a kind of very busy full-on day they won't always they won't all be looking like this where you'll have a every hour is filled with something but this gives you an idea of the different things you might do at a particular day so in the morning you might have an introductory or you probably will always have an introductory lecture and this will be pre-recorded could be half an hour it may be an hour then you'll have some reading to do associated with that lecture and the topic of that lecture and then you'll bring that all together into a live tutorial session with your course convener and with your fellow students to discuss the readings to discuss the lecture just to discuss your understanding of the topic there and for you to ask any questions so we still have that face-to-face element there that students you know value so much as part of these courses you'll then have a have a short lunch break and then in the afternoon you may have one of our activity sessions that are arranged by by Ruhar and I centrally so we we will arrange various different fun and interactive sessions such as you might have a session on from one of our music teachers who who who will teach instruments from all over the world whether it's Middle Eastern instruments African instruments but we may have various music kind of sessions and we've got a little clip coming up for you later what those can look like it could be a yoga session we've run yoga sessions in the past online which again is something that has probably been done quite a lot over this last year but is is something that we can all get involved with and we'll also have media workshop sessions which we'll talk about later so you may have something like that or you may have a group exercise to do with your course you may have some activity to do you may have an assessment a short a kind of mini assessment to do as part of the course which could be something like review an article or write a very short piece on on a reading you've you've done a kind of reflection on on one of the readings you've done and then at the end of the day you'll have a summary lecture of the day or this could sometimes be used as a as an introduction to the following day but you will generally have two pre-recorded lectures through the day to to watch in your own time and a live tutorial session each day so those are those are kind of things that are static but you'll have pretty much every day is the tutorial and the tutorial live tutorial and the recorded lectures but you'll also have various different activities interspersed with those throughout the two weeks of your course whether it be a centrally organized activity session that that all students would attend from all all all the separate courses where we'll all come together so it's a bit of networking as well or it could be a group exercise within your course that you do in the afternoon as well and with our live sessions you've tried to hit the the various time zones that that we know you you guys are going to be coming from so early in the afternoon UK time usually kind of works for for the various time zones that that you're probably sitting in so a lot of the time you'll be able to attend those live sessions in person but if for any reason you can't they they will all be recorded for for viewing later on so you you won't miss anything everything will be recorded for you if you're unable to attend but hopefully we've hit times that allow you to to join in person as well just going to see whether we have got any questions you haven't got any questions yet and okay should we move on I think that's that's all for a day in life so we're going to talk now a little bit about some additional features that that we offer as part of these these summer school courses so it's not just it's not just the courses and the core lectures and tutorials we're offering a wide program of additional things that we think will add add value to to your program as well that are free of charge we would not be don't charge anymore they're they're included within your tuition fee and so we're going to talk a little bit more about about these and one of the main things is is something that's quite unique to our program and that's our media skills and lectures and workshops series which we started last year and these are focused on career enhancing skills and employability prospects we think they add you know it as well as your course is preparing you for for the careers that you're looking to go into there's often skills that that are essential to to putting yourself out there and making an impact in whatever kind of area you're looking to go into so so these these workshops that we're offering will it a design to equip students with the necessary skills to kind of go out into the big wide world and and be able to impress maybe prospective employers or know how to to handle different situations different challenging situations that you might come up against so we're going to show a short video here which was a video from that we did for last year we've got some updates that that we'll be doing for this year which I'll talk about but this video should give you a good sense of of how these these media skills workshops will will will run and the benefits they'll they'll give you. Hi I'm Simon Crutchley and I teach practical workshops on the MA courses at the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy here at SARS. A couple of miles north of here in Highgate Cemetery is the grave of Karl Marx and written on his tombstone is my favorite quote. Philosophers have only interpreted the world the point is to change it so the idea behind our summer guest lecture workshop series is that you should walk away with a goodie bag of skills you can use straight away. Past graduates have gone on to write speeches for the UN Secretary General, head multi-million dollar startups and run big projects for NGOs in the Middle East and Africa amongst many other things. The workshops are arranged in four broad areas speech writing presentations and pitching power relations and interview skills writing with specific reference to CVs and we also look at voice and body work and how to overcome nerves each will be of immediate practical relevance and provide a skill base you can carry forward in your career it's going to be a tough couple of years ahead and we want to give you a head start you're with SARS because you care about the world and how it could be thinking globally and acting globally the skills we teach in summer school series are the tools you will need to do just that. Looking forward to seeing you this summer. That's Simon. Simon runs our media skills workshop sessions. Simon is a former editor at the BBC is very involved in the media landscape within the London and the UK and he brings in a lot of his friends and guests because they're often acting news reporters and journalists and really fascinating people that he brings in to deliver guest talks and to do our workshops and he himself is a very dynamic person and you'll get to know him well but he's not afraid to put students through their paces and throw them straight into the deep end in some of these these workshops but it's all really fun and light hearted so it's a great additional kind of thing that we're offering here on in the SOAS summer schools and we think it adds a lot of benefit to your alongside your studies it's something that we do at SOAS on our degree programs it's something that we offer our SOAS students so these these workshops are taken straight from our degree programs as well and it's something that SOAS is training our students to be so it's training students to be able to go in front of a camera perhaps and do a piece to camera if they have to or speak about a certain world issue on the news or something like that. So we're looking this year we have a bit of a theme for the workshops that's around the theme of storytelling and all of our workshops are kind of around that theme of storytelling so you could be writing a speech one of the workshops is how to write a speech like Obama in under an hour and so Simon will take you through how Obama would structure his speeches and how you can use that tactic as well how you can how to present and skills for public speaking also job interviews and CV writing how to how to improve those and make those as best as you can and it's a real deep dive into how the media spins stories and tells stories and you know how the different forms of media we consume can influence us in many different ways so and a lot of the things Simon teaches will feed into the things that you're doing on your various courses it plays into the various topics that we teach here so it's really something that adds great value and benefit to all of our courses so that's a bit of an overview for the media skills workshops and and these will run not just there might be a few sessions as your courses are running but we will they'll also run in the week after courses finish as well so you'll have plenty of time to kind of focus on your your course studies and then and then go on to the media workshops as well we'll be releasing more information about these workshops and and if you you've applied or you've inquired and you're on our mailing list we'll be sending you more updates over the next few weeks about those so you'll be kept informed on what to expect but if you've got any questions then do let us know and I'm going to stop talking there and hand over to Ruha to talk about some of the other bits that we're off you're on mute okay got it um so I'm going to talk a little bit about some of our other extra features that we've included this year alongside the media skills lectures and workshops that as John mentioned are really kind of designed to just make sure that you have a very I think well-rounded experience of SOAS and I think even if you spoke to some of our SOAS students they'd probably tell you they're involved in a number of different things and I think the things that we offer on the summer school really kind of give you a flavor of all different areas of things you can get involved with at SOAS so of course as John mentioned we have our media skills lectures and workshops which are very much kind of designed around pushing your kind of political communication and employability skills and we also have some slightly different sessions so we have a yoga session that we we're going to run this year which is led by Amosu she is the president of our yoga meditation society and she's been teaching yoga for over 20 years across the world and most recently in Cambodia and we actually ran a session with her earlier this year and I think it was just amazing I think all of our students were just so pleased with how it made them feel especially when you're kind of sat in front of laptop doing online learning and a yoga session is a really nice kind of interactive way to kind of break that barrier a little bit and have a chance to relax and you don't have to worry about your experience levels I have absolutely no experience in yoga whatsoever and it's definitely made to be accessible to all students you can get as involved as you like so no need to worry about that. We also are introducing for the first time a world music session with live demonstrations so the musician in question we're going to have Syed Silbeck who is a Palestinian musician who's going to introduce you to some music and instruments from the Arab speaking world as well as kind of demonstrate a few different instruments for you we're going to play a video shortly as well so you can get a bit of a feel for what he does and what he offers but it should be really interesting hopefully that instruments that you've not ever kind of come across before with a bit of background and context to kind of explain the music from that region of the world and one of the benefits of joining the summer school is also that you will be able to become part of our global alumni network so as I mentioned we have a pretty kind of fascinating cohort of alumni at SOAS from former presidents to politicians to filmmakers and you will essentially be able to join them in kind of gaining access to exclusive SOAS events news and updates which is really exciting and then finally you'll have the opportunity to meet some SOAS students I think this is really really important especially if you want to get a feel for maybe SOAS if you're considering joining us for postgraduate study or maybe you just want to take another online course meeting SOAS students I think is a brilliant way to kind of get a feel for what it's like to study at SOAS to study in London and just kind of UK universities in general so hopefully that should be a really fruitful session. I'm now going to play you a quick video just to give you a bit of a flavour of what the world music session will include so I'm just going to play that now. It's actually really nice to see the lyrics and see what they actually mean. I really like that off the slide. Technical issues. Cool, we're back. It's really nice to actually see the lyrics of the songs and hear what they're actually saying. Yeah and you can see in the back of the video he's got clearly absolutely tons of instruments so hopefully he'll have something interesting for you I'm sure. One of those things that you just see at SOAS is just people maybe playing instruments like that and being able to just listen sit and listen to people and have these experiences that you don't really get elsewhere and it's just because of the kind of collection of students that we have at SOAS and the world's kind of global expertise that that we have at SOAS and the the regions we focus on you just get you have shared experiences that you just don't get anywhere else and it's just one of those things that make it special so we're trying to bring that into our online program and share those those experiences with you guys as well so hopefully that's yeah that's something we're looking forward to. Cool okay so I'm going to talk you through our application process just to give you a bit of a feel for what you have to get involved with if you want to join us so it's pretty straightforward pretty simple if you want to join us this summer all you need to do is apply using our online application form we'll email out links and have the basically whatever our website on our social media so it shouldn't be too hard to come across and it's not a very lengthy application form all we need is some basic kind of contact details personal details and then we ask for a short personal statement just to kind of get a feel for you know what you're interested in your motivations for joining the course and maybe kind of what you would like to use the course for so after that if you are successful you'll receive a conditional off letter and you confirm your place essentially by paying your tuition fees and then you'll receive an unconditional off letter if at any point you need to kind of you need extra time please just let us know drop us an email and we'll definitely be able to help out with extending anything that you need and working around that and then finally all you have to really do then is just kind of wait we'll get in touch and shortly before the course with a welcome pack including kind of instructions for our online library and accessing the online learning environment reading lists anything that you'll need we'll definitely provide for you so no need to worry about anything and then that's pretty much it's very straightforward and then you can enjoy your summer course we're going to talk a little bit about fees and discounts and scholarships now which also kind of ties in with the process so the tuition fee is £1,600 per course and the deadline is 31st of May but we do have as you can see a range of different discounts and a scholarship available as well should that be of interest to you so our ambassador scholarship deadline is actually coming up soon so if you are interested please do think about getting an application in soon we offer three scholarships which are full tradition fee waiver scholarships and all you have to do is send in a short video just explaining kind of the difference that you want to make in the world and a little bit about yourself and we'll get in contact with you and let you know if you're successful and you also will kind of get involved in a bit of ambassador work so maybe writing a blog post for us maybe doing a bit of social media work which is really quite exciting to be featured on the blog and then we also have a range of discounts you can see on the screen there so we have an early bird discount that will be ending at the end of May so again if you are interested in that please do get your application in soon and we also have a discount for students who wish to study two courses so if you want to study a course in session one as well as one in session two you would be eligible for that and then for our students who joined us last year we'd love to see some of you back we'd love to welcome you back to the summer school again so you will be eligible for a 50% discount on your tuition fees and finally if you study at any of our partner universities you will also be eligible for a discount and please just make sure you have a look at our website and we have a full list there or again drop us an email and we can check for you and make sure that's all sorted anything I missed John? I think so I think that covers it. Cool okay that's pretty much everything but we'd be happy to take any questions if you have any or if not please do you get in touch with us on our email social media or give us a ring and we'll be able to help you out but are there any questions at the moment? So we've got any questions that come in? I suppose one thing I forgot to mention in terms of talking about how the various sessions that we have through a day is that all the learning resources are accessed through our online learning environment that's kind of internal to SOAS so it's all in one place for you you'll access your live sessions and your readings are all there for you you also have access to the SOAS library that has thousands and thousands of unique collections so that's a vast resource that our students are very lucky to have access to it's a national research library so it's got some things that you don't find anywhere else so that's one of the benefits also as Ruha mentioned another benefit is becoming by taking a summer school course you become SOAS alumni so with all the benefits that our SOAS alumni get you will receive as a summer school student so that's another bonus. I'm not seeing any questions coming in so perhaps we've covered everything so well that we don't have any questions to answer but as Ruha said just do get in touch with us on by our email or any of the options here we are very happy to answer any questions you have and assist you with anything if there's any issues you're having with your application or with anything at all related to coming and joining us this summer then let us know we're very happy to help and we're extremely excited about this summer and really looking forward to welcoming you all properly to SOAS be it all be it online but you're still coming to SOAS and you'll still be a SOAS student and you'll really get a feel for what it's like to study at SOAS and and hear from the very special people that make SOAS so unique so do come and join us do let us know any questions and we look forward to meeting you all this summer. With that I think we'll sign off and say goodbye.