 Welcome everybody to your graduate history taster evening. My name is Andrea Yanko and I'm the subject head of history within the School of History, Religions and Philosophies and I'm also teaching modules on Chinese and gender history within the MA History Program. So the purpose of this evening is to give you a taste, right, a taster evening of what the MA History Program at Sawas is like and we made a rather last-minute decision so apologies for this if you expected a lecture on plague in Manchuria but we made a last-minute decision to change this to introduce a couple of our modules that we thought would be a better way to give you an impression of what the history program would be like than just one lecture on one particular topic. So I hope this is not a huge disappointment for everybody who's here today. So present with me this this evening is Sean Lo, who is one of our student ambassadors. We'll be happy to answer any questions you might have about the department or maybe Sawas more generally would like to be a student at Sawas and then I have a couple of colleagues and another colleague from the recruitment team and maybe I just ask everybody to briefly introduce yourselves if that's okay. I don't know, Elena would you like to start? I'm Elena Newbegin and I'm a historian of modern South Asia and more recently of education also which is what I'm teaching on in the MA. Should I pass over to Wayne? My name is Wayne Dooling and I'm an historian of Southern Africa and I teach a number of courses on Southern Africa and African history more broadly in the department. Yes, hello, my name is Lars Laman and I would have been the plague doctor tonight but I'm happy to answer questions relating to Manchuria or to the plague at any time. My special field is China especially the development of the Qing empire and the ethnicities within it, religion especially subversive popular religions and also the connections between Eastern Asia and Central Asia. My name is Jaydakura Mursail. I'm a historian of modern Middle Eastern history, a modern Middle East with a focus on the Ottoman Empire and I am also the convener of the MA history program as well. Okay, so I think Sean is not here so maybe we just move on then. So maybe just to very briefly say what we're going to do. Each of us, not each of us, not Jaydak unfortunately, but four of us will give you a very brief kind of insight into one of our MA modules. And then Jaydakura will briefly introduce what the structure of the MA history program looks like. And right, I guess during the whole kind of series of short talks I would just like to invite you to add your questions and comments that you might have in the Q&A section of this page. Sorry I'm kind of used to ask you to do this via the chat but that's not what we're doing today. So you have to use the Q&A button and please do that whenever you have a question so that we can see what concerns and issues come up as we speak. And maybe it's fine also to interrupt if that's appropriate. Did I say that? So at the end Jaydakura will then introduce the program and maybe you have more specific questions about that too. So I just basically like to start. I hope this kind of arrangement is okay with everybody and would like to start with Eleanor who's going to talk about a very new and in a way provocative module because it kind of provides a very critical approach to so as an institution itself is called colonial curricula and I hand over to you Eleanor please. Thanks Andrea. Yes so I teach an optional course on the MA history program called colonial curricula empire and education at so as and beyond and this is a course that I've developed over the last few years really from the experience of teaching at so as and I've run it now for a couple of years and it's been developed in conversation with students studying it so it's quite an interactive course and the idea behind it is to explore the historical relationship between empire and education generally but in particular through the institution you'd be studying at through so as itself. So some of you may know but some of you may not know that so as was set up in 1916 specifically to train civil servants for service in the British empire but also to work with businessmen who had links across the empire and also with missionaries and it also hosted a lot of students well some students from within the empire in London too so there's a lot of questions in so as itself what is this imperial institution doing at the heart of the colonial metropole and what does that mean today for so as and and our idea of global London also so the course looks both at the history of the institution and at the legacies of that of that history for for all of us today as we work in so as so the course is trans regional in one sense it takes so as at its heart it takes London and the institution at its heart and uses that to look out on a series of geographical sites but also to ask theoretical questions so we ask how Africa Asia and the Middle East are situated as objects of study at so as and how where and why we can engage with them differently as frameworks through which to study the world what does it mean to do that how how can we look at the regions that so as is based in and and take what we might want to call a more decolonial approach so as well as this study of history the course engages with contemporary discussions around decolonizing methodologies and the way that they're used within academia but also political debates and as Andrea said there's a provocative element to the course we ask what decolonization means how it works and and keep revisiting that term through the the duration of the course the way that the course is organized is that there are some there's an introductory session there's a session specifically on methodologies on the different kind of approaches that we can use for thinking about decolonizing but also about education itself how education works as a political tool and how each year the cohort wants to run the classroom we make collective decisions about how that space works and how we work together but then the course is organized around disciplinary basis and so we look start looking at languages we think about the the evolution of the history of discipline the evolution of the discipline of history of history of art and ideas and museums anthropology development studies and each week we look at how that discipline has evolved in relationship to empire how it works and so as specifically but we also ask what we could do to change that discipline to to contest its relationship with empire and make that discipline do something else so we ask this it's not just about reflecting on how empire makes academia a contested a racialized a racist space it's also thinking about what we can do to to contest that also um we taught that the course is taught through discussions each week it's very definitely seminar led student led in terms of the way in which the discussions work there's ideas about reflective practice that are built into each session and into the assignments too and the final piece of work that you will do in the course is um creating an output that takes what you've learned from the course to a non-academic audience so it really through several stages it's thinking about what the place of the university is and how it can engage with society more widely um to break down some of the the barriers that that are being contested with are being discussed and talked about in terms of the decolonizing debates thank you thank you oh sorry no andrea i'll pass to you sorry no it's okay thank you elena oh that was very concise and to the point i i think i had last next in my list that's okay it's last there if not maybe wane or okay i'm here yes this is um um well my course the course that i would like to introduce is called um nationhood and its alternatives and and it deals with china it's um probably asking too much to try to define everything in such a brief period of time but we'll be looking at um at the not at the gestation of china but at the gestation at the creation of the idea of china as a nation and this is something that goes beyond nationalism will also look at nationalism both in its more conservative and in its more socialist appearance but importantly we'll be looking at the um at the um the very the very stimulating intellectual environment that the late 19th century and the first especially the first half of the 20th century created in china and this is something but this is an environment where we need a a lot of materials which i've i'm not sure whether it's completely legal but i i managed to integrate them into the course and these with these materials we work both in the classroom or in the virtual classroom this year and then also in terms of projects with the individuals with individual students so with you if you want to join this course and then many of our students also continue to use similar themes that we discussed in the course for their dissertation so this is something that is worth remembering and it's structured chronologically like most history classes so we begin actually with the um imperial legacy and especially what it means for the Qing empire which is a multi-ethnic poly-ethnic empire and then we progress towards the the crisis point that the um transition to the republican era so in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and we'll look at the the different representatives of social and political power that could be at the local level that could be well representatives of peasant society at the more advanced level this could be that could be government ministers but it could also be those who interacted with them so for example western missionaries or intellectuals who had arrived from korea and from japan or from vietnam and who interacted in a number of ways and then it follows the sometimes turbulent trajectory of the republic of china with different periods of warfare but then also the intellectual intellectual debates which took place at various stages for example during the may fourth period or during the period of the anti-imperialist anti-foreign demonstrations of the 1920s then we enter the period of the war with japan and also the civil war between the um the nationalist forces and the communists and finally and this is a an aspect which i've strengthened over the past a couple of years the early peoples republic which is a perhaps surprisingly an experimental ground of different approaches towards nationalism and this is something when received with them often clashes with reality and we'll also look at the relationship between the so-called hanshanese majority and the ethnic minorities which is of course right now in the media great thank you last i mean as i said if you have questions just just write them into the q and a section and we'll be able to pick them up either now or later um wane could i invite you to to speak to your module please thank you so i teach a module called race segregation and apartheid in 20th century South Africa so it's a it's a 10 week module like all of our ma modules half a term half a year in other words um so you know it's quite quite a lot that we have to squeeze into a single term um so the course is uh quite obviously about the second half of the 20th century and it's about um you know if anybody knows anything about South Africa we'll know that of course it's you know in the kind of global in the global scheme of things it's the country that experiences the most extreme form of a legislated racial segregation anyway in the world in all of the 20th century let you know other countries of course have forms of racial discrimination too but in South Africa it's legislated and which is why South Africa becomes such you know international cause in the second half of the 20th century and there's you know there are very many different ways in which one could approach a subject like this um so one approach would be you know a strongly get an intellectual history approach which is to look at you know what what are these about race that um or racial ideology I should say what is about racial ideology that is specific or unique to South Africa that's not what this course will be doing and the course is um and the other the other way which one could approach the course of course is to look at um overwhelming to overwhelming to look at um uh the kind of nationalist struggles that emerge in opposition to apartheid and the course has some of that but in fact most of the course is about the way in which ordinary people experienced um this particular social and economic so um in fact I was struck the other day when I got to week eight of the course and I discovered this the very first time that I mentioned the African national congress which is of course the main uh the main nationalist party that emerges and I was quite proud of that fact um it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't a little conscious but that's uh that's how it ended up um as being so so what is the course about so it's about like I said it's about the way in which ordinary people uh experience daily life in apartheid South Africa so a lot of it is about the consequences of urbanization for example about the kinds of lives that people experience in an urban context and the extreme form of racial discrimination so one uh issues that my team mundane but actually fundamental to the to people's daily existence so something like housing for example forms a big and important part of the course or I should say the lack of housing and people's responses to it but issues of crime and criminal violence um one particularly interesting theme is the that of popular culture um and to look at the ways in which um people could people could express themselves in uh in the arts or in different you know artistic ways um under these conditions of extreme uh poverty and discrimination there's one course there's one week for example where we have a kind of micro study of one particular jazz track and the interesting thing about this particular jazz track is it's it's sometimes described as the song that fought apartheid and the interesting thing about it there's I think that the actual track is about uh 12 minutes long something like that but there's a one line of lyrics in it so so how does how does how does it how does the jazz track with a single line of lyrics become a song that fights apartheid so those are the sorts of things that um that interest me and I and I and I brought to try to bring to the center of the course but then also of course we do study formal politics um student resistance students upon uh student engagement with the apartheid state the nature of the police state that the apartheid state becomes uh the big uprisings of the 1970s and 1980s um and then of course South Africa in the region and the the demise of apartheid which is very much tied to decolonization elsewhere in the region and the course ends um the course ends in the 1990s. Thank you Andrea. Hey thank you Wayne um fascinating I like the one line 10 minute song sorry Kurt you have to show it to me at some point. Okay so um what you've seen so far I mean is um Eleanor's quite overarching um module that um addresses many of the issues that are in a way at the core of the institution and then some of the regional modules that we have on our program and and the final one that we would like to introduce to you is is um a module that we're running for the first time this year which is called historical perspectives on gender in Asia Africa and the Middle East so from the title you will see that it tries to bring together all the regions that we study at SOAS um and the way we're doing it and that's something we want to do more in the future um is is to bring um I mean to to co-teach this course basically to to have um in in this case four colleagues who are experts in different regions working together to explore in this case the the kind of theme of I mean the broad theme that almost includes everything really of gender in in in one module um so obviously if you're interested in the history of particular regions that's something that I think SOAS is a very good place um to come to study if you want to do that and and maybe just to highlight one thing there is also a two-year MA program with intensive language um that I kind of would like to promote a bit more we have a couple of languages that are particularly popular within that but obviously if you're interested in in if you have a strong interest in a particular region it makes sense to also think about studying the language that gives you better access to it um so what what this particular module about um gender history is about is is tend to move beyond the silos of our own specialisms in a way can can become something like that and to connect different sets of knowledges um in a way that enables multiple perspectives and a genuine alternative to to those dominant narratives and approaches that that's how I mean the western the anglo-european anglo-american kind of view in a kind of alternative that desenters and rebalances these familiar accounts and offers new insights so it's this idea of kind of SOAS as being an institution that allows you to to look at the world from a different perspective to to think in in terms that I mean basically to try to maybe change and make this place a better word or something so I'm getting too romantic about all these things um so one of the concerns of this particular module um is to to highlight gendered histories in non-western spaces before colonialism so I'm not going to tell you all the different things we cover in this course um all the four people involved in in it bring different things to it but I just wanted to give you one example and I feel a bit reluctant I have prepared a couple of slides but there's nobody else's used slides should I use a bit unsure about it but maybe I just do this and I'll share um a couple of slides I hope it will work um can you see this does it make sense so I need to go back to it doesn't work I should have practiced this before okay anyway um so many of you will be familiar with colonial accounts of widow emulation in India for example but far less with the politics of gendered space under Mughal rule so that's that's one of the things um that um one of my colleagues wants to bring into this course so if we then move to the Chinese example that I'm more familiar with um we have the custom of footbinding that has been described in many ways by foreign mostly missionary observers in the late 19th century with the effect of creating an image of China as the exotic cruel and backward other and it's only very recently that a new historiography is highlighted in highly different aspect um that sees footbinding as a form of bodily and cultural refinement alongside accomplishments in the arts and high levels of literacy and all these things were key aspects of the courtesan culture that flourished in the late 16th and early 17th century it's then interesting to see that the subsequent historical trajectory brought a form of moral orthodoxy and sexual and in many many other constraints for women in particular that does not look too different from what is often described as Victorian morality um so you you find I mean you could write the history of China in that respect as a word that was kind of discovered and then civilized by kind of western imperialism who found all these um cruel practices that um people through the unequal treaties systems of extraterritoriality wanted to protect westerners in China from but on the other hand if you take an internal perspectives and see how things were perceived by the people who were living this in their own culture you come to quite different accounts of very similar customs and um to to show you this kind of trajectory that's that's why I just wanted to um basically go through these slides so this is um talking about fluidity cultural social gender uh probably one of the most famous um courtesans of this period Liu Shi um and this shows her famously um in male attire a kind of male Taoist um rope that she used to court um the man that she married not much later who was a very famous scholar at that time um so it's kind of kind of reversing um all the the established kind of gender categories um and I'm basically trying to as I I'm realized I'm not having um I'm not going to have enough time to to tell you the entire story there's lots of really interesting aspects to it but if we move on through the history in so in this earlier period um this these courtesans I mean they're basically um elite prostitutes if you want uh but they ended up being moral icons models to be emulated by the wives and daughters of the elite in the late middle early Qing period when we move into the Qing this whole thing disappears and we get a very kind of tight moral orthodoxy uh that just tries to put women into their place and consolidate patriarchal structures uh that are then perceived to be almost the kind of basis uh social moral basis of the empire that the Qing built and this is physically manifest in in structures such as these arches that commemorate and celebrate female virtue um so it's just one example of of the things we we are talking about in in this module and I'll stop here so realize that I've taken most of the time um and hand over to to Tseida um so let me quickly share my screen so you'll have what I have is the the program structure so you can have the details on the screen um so um not uh take up much time so we'll have at least um a few minutes to discuss things um so I mean I'll just say a few things in addition um to to what my colleagues said um and these will be more like program related points um the four modules that that Eleanor large Wayne and Andrea just introduced are of course part of a much larger group of courses that are offered by the history department and also other departments as well I mean you can see on the on the screen a fuller list of course this is not really the final list um there might be still a few changes for next year but um this is a much fuller list that you can see on the on the screen and some of the most of these courses are offered by the history department but there are other courses offered by other departments like um East Asian studies near Middle East studies um that uh those courses that are historical in in uh in content and character that are added to this list and um in addition um to to those might be uh related to um one of the questions uh Cindy's questions question um earlier in the in the Q&A section and that there are also um what we call open options um that are um offered by other departments that are not necessarily historical but that might inform might be related to your um research interest or you know your um your dissertation study or generally um that that might inform your um your interest in in in general so um this is um this is just really a small sample of courses that are offered by different departments that um just to give you an idea um for the full list you can type in you can go to the SOAS web page and type in PGT open course options and you'll get the full list that each department has a set of courses that you can um you can um you can take as part of your um part of your study here at SOAS um so just to give um a bit of an idea about how you mix and match these things so you there's um the program um or programs actually there are two programs that are currently based in in the history department one is MA history and the other one is MA history with um uh with um intensive language study that uh that um that Andrea mentioned earlier um the the first of these MA history is uh it requires 180 credits in total and 60 um of that will be the dissertation the dissertation is a 10 000 word essay just relatively short it's it's an article length um study which is expectedly uh based on um primary sources it's um it's a year-long um effort really um that that produces in the end an article length um work original work um and um the um the other um a bit that's part of the um the the 180 credits is the core module that um I think Pratik um asked about um that the core module debating past crafting uh histories is a year-long course it really works as the hub for the entire cohort that it didn't work as such this year because everything was was delivered online uh but it really um serves to that purpose as well it brings the entire cohort together it meets um two or three hours per week and um it's it's a forum for discussion and um and um sharing experiences and uh to to answer Pratik's question it the the core I mean it's a 20 week seminar and it touches upon um on all main um areas of inquiry either methodologically or thematically and just to give you an idea um the seminar I mean that each week has titles like national imperial histories um Marxism and history from below post-modernism and the cultural turn world history gender sexuality in the body urban history oceanic histories the study of the archive oral history memory um and um archaeology material culture so that gives you a very expensive comprehensive idea of how you approach your topic and your your research interest um in general and apart from uh from these um you have 120 credits um sorry um 90 credits uh that that you will have to um take up as as courses and um let me just quickly go to this um to this um um sorry um that gives you a better idea that um 90 credits that you will fill up with um the the list A courses that I showed you that the courses that are offered by the history department or um others historical content and also 30 credits of um of um open um option courses and to add to that of course um there are a wide variety of taught language courses that so as which you can take um make part of your um your study coursework um in the program and um speaking of languages let me say just very a few things on the MA history intensive language program which is really the MA history program with an edit language intensive language component um and um that's um is um credit wise it's uh 350 credits and the the the dissertation and the debating pass a core module debating pass will be the same um added to it is a 45 credits intensive language study um at an overseas location which um I think is currently running only for Arabic maybe for Persian but please check back with me over the next weeks next month or so um to um to see um what languages we will be able to um run in terms of summer school um or summer abroad study um it's um practically a very similar structure as I said um I mean this is a two-year program as opposed to one-year program MA history um if if you take it as a as a full-time um study but um you can see here that the full that the total credits are divided into um two years and then um supplied with or added with that the um language intensive language study um it is part of the program um so just a quick note on the dissertation that I just mentioned um and for both of these programs it's at the core of the the study and it's kind of your um basically that they um the beacon of what you will be doing within the program um it it takes a lot of work and dedication but it's also the most rewarding part of the of the um of the study of the of the program as well where you write your own history uh you conduct research and you make often a genuine contribution um to the field of history um so I mean I guess that's all I have to say a bit rushed um but um we can just open up to questions um I guess um and um yep okay thank you Tcheta um yeah right so open up to questions I I mean I've seen there's a couple of questions that Ellen was kind enough to answer already in the chat maybe this one question about language I don't know if everybody has seen that obviously you don't have to do the two-year program in order to study a language so you'll always be able to um to pick one language module put um also in the one-year program and and you can do these at different levels so you would probably have to contact the languages and cultures department to um to get an assessment as to which of the modules that they offer would be appropriate for whatever the level of your language is and I I believe there are also many that you can start from scratch really and actually if I could just add to this um in particular if you're looking at continuing with a PhD then it might make a immense sense to start with your language training well before that date because you will need to have if you do a literary sorry if you do a PhD in history then you will need to um use sources which are likely to be very well literary rather colloquial and then secondly also quite a bit older than the language that is spoken today the language is that that are spoken today so um it makes a great sense to start during your MA studies already apologies I'm going to have to sign off just for another appointment but it's it's great to meet you all in this space and I hope just to say as well as getting in touch with Chayda do feel free to get in touch with us too if you've got any questions about courses thanks a lot okay great thank you Eleanor great um okay we have one question here maybe we can just um answer it live if that's okay so the question is can we have advisors across departments for our thesis um and I'd say in principle yes so it depends a bit on your topic but um if it's a topic that we feel or you feel we don't have enough expertise in the department um to to provide you with adequate supervision then we definitely can look into to other departments to to find um dissertation supervisors for you Chayda is that correct sorry I kind of left this to you I just realized we do have joint supervision with other departments like anthropology for instance um if if a student thinks and is to just repeat what Andrea said really um if a student thinks that she or he would benefit uh from from joint supervision um then um absolutely that's that's doable of course I mean given that um provided that the other department the other supervisor will be willing to supervise the dissertation that's absolutely doable don't know do we have more questions I mean it's also true the other way around I mean that we have close relations in a sense with colleagues in the area studies departments in particular um as as we have many students studying I mean for example Chinese studies or Middle Eastern studies South Asian studies who come to take history courses um so it's it's quite common that that we have colleagues from history supervising area studies dissertations and the other way around and some of our colleagues in area studies they are actually historians so they are already supervising topics which are closely related and if you have inter regional topics then you end up supervising them together with the other um well with the other historical supervisor yes um there is a question from Harry um if our general thesis idea doesn't have a module which links to it directly would you imagine that would have an effect on our project before dissertation supervision you don't really link to a module um you link to the supervisor and um supervisors have usually a kind of like a wider area of expertise than what they teach um so roughly um like if you know about the geographic area in a time period um then um you don't really have to have a module specifically related to it you can ask for supervision um from from from that department member and um Pritik has has a question earlier students on the MA had to choose specific regional pathways but I think um that has been discontinued now right as would we be able to combine courses from whichever regional focus um we want absolutely that's basically um abolished discontinued mainly to make things more flexible um I would I would say um I don't know if Andrea Wayne or Larsh would have thoughts on this I mean um maybe just to continue this um this bit reluctant because my husband is cooking and it's it feels like it's very noisy um but um I think it depends on your interest so we always have students who have a particular interest in a particular region so I think in that case maybe you won't find um for example enough history modules to make up an entire program in Chinese history um so in that case you you might want to to pick another module in an area status department but um this is not necessarily what we want as a history program I think that's that's what I hope to get across with kind of emphasizing this this this last module that is interregional and tries to bring all these different perspectives together but it doesn't exclude this um or kind of you still can focus on a particular region but you probably given the structure of the program and the number of history modules that you'll have to take will have to look across one particular region in order to complete the program and in my mind that's actually a good thing so so you can do both but ideally we want to have a slightly broader approach for this program. To add to what Andrea said I mean it's really helpful to look into other regions mainly because I mean the the literature from those different regions kind of feed from different historiographical traditions and that might be really helpful um for you to look at your own region um in the end I mean I guess as historians we have to focus on and we have to have a regional and time period expertise um unless you're a global historian I guess I mean still you need to have a time period um focus because just really you can't deal with the the messiveness of the um of the um sources and languages etc um so um so that that you will need anyway but um looking at different as I said different regions would really help um you um looking at your own material, own region differently. So practically short answer is um yes. So to give a concrete example if you are interested in the development of Southeast Asia um then you have to look at the role of Islam and Islam is not from Southeast Asia and the the vectors the people who bring the the teachings old and new they they come from well typically from India so you have to look at least at this and then if you look at China then you have the western regions you have Xinjiang you have other parts which are actually very closely related with western Asia and with the European peninsula. So it's um if you study if you study history at so as then the world is your oyster and you should actually enjoy it as much as possible. But actually should ask if there were any questions about the independent research you're saying? Should I say something? No I just wondered if because we're just talking about the the talk courses you know I just wondered if and we'll have questions. Yeah I mean it's not compulsory or core anymore so it's can just um it's just an optional course that it is kind of like a rehearsal with the dissertation it's it's a relatively long or like mid-length essay that you connect this time not to the supervisor but to a module and you you work on it as if you're working on the dissertations I said it can be in preparation for your dissertation but it can be taken up in any other topic as well to you know if you're interested in a particular issue and you want to explore it want to write your dissertation on a completely different topic that can be a good way to do it. Maybe just to add to it it's kind of an outgrowth of another program that we ran a couple of years ago and that we had to withdraw for several reasons which was a research MA so for example if you have an if you're thinking of continuing doing research historical research after the MA maybe want to proceed to a PhD project the independent research project also can give you an opportunity to work more and more focused on a particular kind of question or area of research and and you will have more space to pursue your individual interests rather than to have to fill up your program with taught courses I think that that was the original intention of introducing this particular module just to add to the explanation okay do we have more questions all right how early should we reach out to a supervisor for our thesis good question does anybody want to answer um I guess I mean if you have a very clear idea about what you want to maybe you can just reach out to the supervisor immediately as you arrive there's really no harm in that and we actually be happy to to discuss with you that you know that gives you extra time to to think about your course your modules and your your options outside the department and how you make your your dissertation research as I mean as strong as as strong as possible I guess so I mean there is no time you it's not no time would be too early to reach out to your supervisor and that includes the time before the term starts the university year starts I have students who write to me in May so before the summer so that they can start reading for themselves and they and others you know it really depends on your your life pattern and your plans for you know the the entire year the 18 month year and so before after you know what you're going to do in the summer after you finish your course and while you're writing your dissertation maybe you're busy so you would want to prepare for that dissertation the year before before the teaching actually starts I've had students like that so it's it's it's it can be arranged in a very individual way. Last just a spoke of the 18 month year but can I say that in general the MA is really a nine month year for the vast majority of people I mean it runs from September up to we're through to May June and there's the dissertation which is normally due in September but in terms of you know the core of the MA which is which is to say that it's a very demanding program I mean we actually you have to do an enormous amount in a very short space of time so to come back to the question about the dissertation um this to emphasize change this point the sooner the better really um there's there's no you know really it's something that should be started right at the start of the year at start of academic year I mean I've always say to students that you know the dissertation um counts for one module so in theory you should spend as much time on the dissertation as you would on any other module so you know every hour that a taught module receives should have a matching hour for the dissertation. Sorry I went to add to that I mean the dissertation is as I said it's a 10 thousand word as it's not really um that challenging overall um but you know like to to to be able to write something that you yourself will be proud of it you know and then you know happy with the research and the quality of the final um final um output it takes a lot of time and historical research um archival research research and primary sources takes a lot of time you know to find something that's good enough um that you can write your you know base your work on it you know it takes a lot of try and error and you know that the um earlier that you start uh the better and for for that reason I think contacting your supervisors as early as possible would help you with that just start with your even just the keyword searches and things like that looking around for for possible possible material so yeah the year is really quite short I mean you'll get for um for that. Okay so thank you I currently I can't see any further questions and and we're being reminded that it's um seven o'clock um so maybe we can um we can we can draw this to an end now and I'd just like to emphasise if you do have further questions um um please do um not don't hesitate to contact us you can contact uh Shaila as program convener or me as a subject or any other colleague really maybe um somebody who is working closer to the area of your particular interest um so I'm not quite sure how we can um circulate our contact details but you'll find them all on the website should be quite easy to find so please do get in touch um and maybe it just um remains to thank you all for for joining this session spreading the news and and thank you all for for joining um and right so thanks and have a nice rest of the evening I guess and hopefully see you in September and hopefully see you in September okay thank you all take care bye