SOAS University of London
The School of Oriental and African Studies is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the federal University of London. Established in 1916, the school specialises in the study of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
SOAS is one of the world's leading institutions for the study of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Its library is one of the five national research libraries in England. SOAS also houses the SOAS Gallery, which hosts a programme of changing contemporary and historical exhibitions from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East with the aim of presenting and promoting cultures from these regions. The annual income of the institution for 2024–25 was £116.1 million of which £10.7 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £111.5 million.
SOAS is divided into three colleges: the College of Humanities; the College of Social Sciences; and the College of Law. The university offers around 350 bachelor's degree combinations, more than 100 one-year master's degrees, and PhD programmes in nearly every department. The university has educated several heads of state, government ministers, diplomats, central bankers, Supreme Court judges, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, and many other notable leaders around the world. SOAS is a member of the Association of Commonwealth Universities.
History
Origins
The School of Oriental Studies was founded in 1916 at 2 Finsbury Circus, London, the then premises of the London Institution. The school received its royal charter on 5 June 1916 and admitted its first students on 18 January 1917. The school was formally inaugurated a month later on 23 February 1917 by George V. Among those in attendance were Earl Curzon of Kedleston, formerly Viceroy of India, and other cabinet officials.File:London Institution at the Finsbury Circus.jpg|thumb|left|The former premises of the London Institution in Finsbury Circus which originally housed SOAS and was demolished soon after being sold in 1936
The School of Oriental Studies was founded by the British state as an instrument to strengthen Britain's political, commercial, and military presence in Asia and Africa. It would do so by providing instruction to colonial administrators, commercial managers, and military officers, as well as to missionaries, doctors, and teachers, in the language of the part of Asia or Africa to which each was being posted, together with an authoritative introduction to the customs, religions, laws, and history of the people whom they were to govern or among whom they would be working.
The school's founding mission was to advance British scholarship, science, and commerce in Africa and Asia, and to provide London University with a rival to the Oriental schools of Berlin, Petrograd, and Paris. The school immediately became integral to training British administrators, colonial officials, and spies for overseas postings across the British Empire. Africa was added to the school's name in 1938.
Second World War
For a period in the mid-1930s, prior to moving to its current location at Thornhaugh Street, Bloomsbury, the school was located at Vandon House, Vandon Street, London SW1, with the library located at Clarence House. Its move to new premises in Bloomsbury was held up by delays in construction and the half-completed building took a hit during the Blitz in September 1940. With the onset of the Second World War, many University of London colleges were evacuated from London in 1939 and billeted on universities in the rest of the country. The School was, on the Government's advice, transferred to Christ's College, Cambridge.In 1940, when it became apparent that a return to London was possible, the school returned to the city and was housed for some months in eleven rooms at Broadway Court, 8 Broadway, London SW1. In 1942, the War Office joined with the school to create a scheme for State Scholarships to be offered to select grammar and public-school boys with linguistic ability to train as military translators and interpreters in Chinese, Japanese, Persian, and Turkish. Lodged at Dulwich College in south London, the students became affectionately known as the Dulwich boys. One of these students was Charles Dunn, who became a prominent Japanologist on the faculty of the SOAS and a recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun. Others included Sir Peter Parker and Ronald Dore. Subsequently, the School ran a series of courses in Japanese, both for translators and for interpreters.
1945–present
In recognition of SOAS's role during the war, the 1946 Scarborough Commission report recommended a major expansion in provision for the study of Asia and the school benefited greatly from the subsequent largesse. The SOAS School of Law was established in 1947 with Seymour Gonne Vesey-FitzGerald as its first head. Growth however was curtailed by following years of economic austerity, and upon Sir Cyril Philips assuming the directorship in 1956, the school was in a vulnerable state. Over his 20-year stewardship, Phillips transformed the school, raising funds and broadening the school's remit.A college of the University of London, the School's fields include Law, Social Sciences, Humanities, and Languages with special reference to Asia and Africa. The SOAS Library, located in the Philips Building, is the UK's national resource for materials relating to Asia and Africa and is the largest of its kind in the world. The school has grown considerably over the past 30 years, from fewer than 1,000 students in the 1970s to more than 6,000 students today, nearly half of them postgraduates. SOAS is partnered with the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in Paris which is often considered the French equivalent of SOAS.
In 2011, the Privy Council approved changes to the school's charter allowing it to award degrees in its own name, following the trend set by fellow colleges the London School of Economics, University College London and King's College London. All new students registered from September 2013 will qualify for a SOAS, University of London, award.
In 2012, a new visual identity for SOAS was launched to be used in print, digital media and around the campus. The SOAS tree symbol, first implemented in 1989, was redrawn and recoloured in gold, with the new symbol incorporating the leaves of ten trees, including the English Oak representing England; the Bodhi, Coral Bark Maple, Teak representing Asia; the Mountain Acacia, African Pear, Lasiodiscus representing Africa; and the Date Palm, Pomegranate and Ghaf representing the Middle East.
Student politics
Israel and Palestine
SOAS has a student body of which many are committed anti-Zionists. The SOAS Students' Union was the first students' union to carry out a referendum, in 2005, to support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement for goods stocked in the Students' Union, and in 2015, the SOAS Students' Union held a referendum in which its members voted to adopt the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions directions more generally in the university. In 2022, students occupied the management section of the university for nine days, citing the university's investments in Israel amongst other reasons, which led to the university spending £200,000 in their eviction. After Israel's war in Gaza. university management suspended seven students protesting the university's investments in Israel and partnership with Haifa university, a university in Israel with three military colleges and a military base on campus. These students stated that the suspensions were arbitrary and a "targeted act of political repression", whereas the university replied that the students were a "threat to the SOAS community". In the same period, a lecturer reported that security had removed a poster with the Palestinian flag from her door. SOAS responded that the display of the Palestinian flag violated "safeguarding".SOAS has an active Jewish Society which is explicitly anti-Zionist. In 2024, and in the context of university protest camps established around the world relating to Israel's war in Gaza, SOAS director Adam Habib hosted a high-level meeting about antisemitism on campus, extending an invite to various Jewish academics on campus, but excluding any representation from the Jewish Society. On April 19, 2024, SOAS posted a job advert for a new Jewish Chaplain whose key responsibilities include supporting "the implementation of a Jewish Society within the Student Union," therefore implicating that the existing Jewish Society would be replaced by a society organised from the top down.
In December 2020 The Guardian reported that SOAS refunded a student £15,000 in fees after he chose to abandon his studies as a result of the "toxic antisemitic environment" he felt had been allowed to develop on campus. Examples of matters he considered anti-Semitic are, according to the Guardian report previously cited, that being pro-Israel was described as "Zionist", the student body's public support of the BDS movement, and that his proposal to write a thesis on perceived anti-Israel bias at the UN led to a response that, in his words, "he was covering up Israeli war crimes and was a white supremacist Nazi". He additionally stated that he had seen "anti-Semitic graffiti" on campus, but did not specify what this was, leaving it unclear as to whether or not he considered statements for example in support of the BDS movement as anti-Semitic. Leading Jewish figures at the university have disagreed with his assessment, with stating that they felt "much more comfortable being outwardly Jewish, visibly Jewish, or having people know that I'm Jewish around SOAS students than I am in pretty much any other context in this country."
Campus
The campus is located in the Bloomsbury area of central London, close to Russell Square. It includes College Buildings, Brunei Gallery building, 53 Gordon Square and, since 2016, the Paul Webley Wing. The SOAS library designed by Sir Denys Lasdun in 1973 is located in the Philips Building. The nearest Underground station is Russell Square.The school houses the Brunei Gallery, built from an endowment from the Sultan of Brunei Darussalam, the leader of a country whose human rights abuses are ongoing, and inaugurated by the Princess Royal, as Chancellor of the University of London, on 22 November 1995. Its facilities include exhibition space on three floors, a book shop, a lecture theatre, and conference and teaching facilities. The Brunei Gallery hosts a programme of changing contemporary and historical exhibitions from Asia, Africa and the Middle East with the aim to present and promote cultures from these regions.
The Japanese-style roof garden on top of the Brunei Gallery was built during the Japan 2001 celebrations and was opened by the sponsor, Haruhisa Handa, an Honorary Fellow of the School, on 13 November 2001.
The school hosted the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, one of the foremost collections of Chinese ceramics in Europe. The collection has been loaned to the British Museum, where it is now on permanent display in Room 95.
The SOAS Centenary Masterplan conceived the development of two new buildings and a substantial remodelling of existing space to realign and develop the entrance and two areas within the Old Building. The cost estimates for the Centenary Masterplan settle at around £73m for the total project. The full implementation of the School's Centenary Masterplan would deliver approximately 30% additional space, approximately 1,000 sq metres.