Institutional Context
Summary
SOAS is a global university in the heart of London’s vibrant university quarter, with a more diverse staff/student base than virtually any other in the UK. Focusing on the arts, humanities and social sciences, our expertise is deeply and uniquely rooted in the political, social, economic, historical and cultural dynamics of Africa, Asia and the Middle East and their diasporas, accounting for over three-quarters of the world’s population. We think about the world differently. We make the connections that others often cannot, building bridges in a complex world and applying a global lens to the critical issues of our time. Our internationalism and commitment to justice, diversity, equality and the highest ethical standards infuse all that we do.
Institutional context
SOAS University of London is the UK’s only specialist higher education institution focused on the study of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and their diasporas. Spanning arts, humanities, languages and social sciences, academic expertise at SOAS is deeply and uniquely rooted in engagement with other parts of the world and makes a major contribution to the understanding of plurivocal British cultures.
We currently have 5,988 undergraduate and postgraduate students studying on campus and 3,126 students registered on distance and online programmes.
SOAS has a five-year Strategic Plan (2021-26) in place as the basis for the renewal and revitalisation of the School, and to position SOAS to play a leading role in reimagining higher education globally. The Plan commits SOAS to both student responsiveness and research intensity. The student journey is at the heart of the Strategic Plan, as our students and our thriving alumni community represent a vital part of SOAS’s contribution to and engagement with the global community. It articulates a vision for a new model of international partnerships including co-designed programmes and research which is responsive to the transnational character of our global challenges. It commits SOAS to ensuring a socially just institutional community in which everyone experiences belonging and is treated with respect.
Our regional expertise is showcased in inter-disciplinary centres and institutes focused on Africa, Central Asia, China, Middle East, Japan, Korea, Palestine, South Asia and Southeast Asia. Thematic centres include those focused on Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Zoroastrian Studies, as well as centres for International Studies and Diplomacy, Global Media and Communication Gender Studies, Environment and Development, Illicit Economies Violence and Development, Sustainable Finance, and Global Finance among others. These hubs facilitate research, knowledge exchange, academic hospitality and many hundreds of public-facing events each year.
The SOAS Brunei Gallery is a magnificent exhibition space, a locus for engagement with diverse publics, including from local schools. We host two award-winning creative enterprises established by alumni, Chouette Films and PositiveNegatives. The SOAS Festival of Ideas—one of the key new initiatives emerging from the School’s investment in its critical, interdisciplinary profile—showcases SOAS research expertise and national and transnational networks on a global scale. In 2020, in the year of the pandemic, the Festival was hosted online, and brought together cutting-edge scholars, artists and activists from around the world to reflect on the theme of ‘Decolonising Knowledge’. Now biennial, 2022’s Festival on the theme of ‘thinking through music’ was largely curated by creative industry professionals engaging with the musical traditions of the African diaspora.
SOAS hosts many large research consortia and innovative re-granting programmes, including the influential Anti-Corruption Evidence (ACE) consortium (£7.5m, 2016-2027), the Research and Evidence Facility on migration in the Horn of Africa (€6.6m, 2016-22) and the £1.8m Global Research Network for Parliaments and People (2019-2024), which has awarded over £800k to scholars, artists and activists’ creative work and research projects. SOAS also co-convenes the Engaged Research Fund of the Open Society University Network (OSUN).
For further information, please send queries to research@soas.ac.uk
Local Growth and Regeneration
Summary of approach
SOAS has a two-pronged approach to local growth and regeneration, including our cooperation with groups and institutions in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, alongside our partnerships with their diverse diaspora in the UK. Central to this approach is the alignment of London and international priorities. Over the last three years, our approach has developed through a deepening of SOAS’ decolonising strategy, through which we empower people to identify meet local and regional knowledge gaps, while enhancing our reach among policy makers, third and private sector actors. We ensure local research interlocutors are at the heart of innovation, and research developed in the heart of communities through expanding equitable partnerships.
Aspect 1: Strategy
At SOAS, our expertise is deeply and uniquely rooted in understanding the political, social, economic, historical, and cultural dynamics of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and their diasporas in London and the UK. Our two-pronged approach to local growth and regeneration bridges and blends initiatives across communities in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and their diasporas in London and the UK.
SOAS’ aims are not only to promote sustainable economies and societies, but also to promote their inclusiveness through equitable access to sustainable development, through the realisation of human rights, feasible governance reforms, and the application of social justice. This approach is underpinned by our Research and Knowledge Exchange strategy 2021-2026, which builds on our strength in fostering connections and building bridges, applying a global lens to the critical issues of our time while remaining grounded on an understanding of local specificity. This is done through creative innovative research infrastructure that supports collaborative problem solving, underpinned by equitable partnerships. .
Our decolonising strategy has enabled us to mainstream practices of reflective intellectual collaboration with institutions, researchers, and interlocutors among diaspora groups in London and the UK, and the Global South as co-producers of knowledge and innovation. The SOAS Decolonising Working Group (DWG) has built the capacity to co-produce, using principles of equitable partnerships to set the context and co-define problems, challenges, and needs. The DWG has disbursed funds to communities to support local problem solving, for example the Museum of British Colonialism, a UK/Kenyan initiative which is creatively communicating a more truthful account of British colonialism. DWG resources and tools have grown expertise across SOAS, including in Research and Knowledge Exchange, Widening Participation, Careers and Student Enterprise, the Brunei Gallery, the Library and in our Centres and Institutes. The approach has helped SOAS staff to circumvent some of the inherent asymmetries in collaborative needs analysis and co-design.
London and the UK
Working with and building on calls of grassroots organisations from within London’s migrant and multilingual communities, SOAS researchers and communities co-developed a research project that focuses on the cultural translation and interpreting of Covid-19 risks among London’s migrant communities. To unlock an equitable partnership approach to project design, SOAS staff were required to be fluent in Standard and North African Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Nepali, Punjabi, Somali, Swahili, Turkish, Urdu and/or Yoruba. Among the grassroots partner organisations was a social enterprise aimed at promoting innovations among diverse linguistic communities in terms of public health communication and translation.
Another collaborative research project involving SOAS and other partners examined the impact of COVID-19 on remittance flows during a period when reduced capacities among sending communities coincided with escalating need as the pandemic took hold in many receiving communities. Co-produced in discussion with key stakeholders in UK government (DFID’s Migration External Review Group and Financial Services Sector; Department of Communities and Local Government), migrant and other advocacy organisations (Migrant Rights Network, Casa do Brasil, Scottish and Welsh Refugee Councils, trade unions) and remittance providers (AUKPI), the project aimed to improve policy and industry interventions aimed at protecting remittances, and migrants throughout the UK, during the crisis.
Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and their diasporas in London and the UK
Since 2020, the need for SOAS to maintain and bolster our equitable partnership approach globally has become urgent. All our challenges – pandemics, climate change, inequality, political and social polarization – are transnational in character and cannot be resolved within the context of a single nation state. For example a Future Leader Fellowship (2020-2024) at SOAS is examining the ways that domestic violence is tackled and stamped out in faith communities in Ethiopia in order share lessons to improve UK policy and community approaches.
To drive its partnership approach overseas, and over the last 3 years, SOAS leveraged development-related research activity – funded by the European Union, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO), and ODA funding through the Global Challenges Research Fund (GRCF). Almost 90% of our research focuses on countries where the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) channels development assistance, and our research promotes sustainable growth, addressing the aims of the UN Sustainable Developmnent Goals.
Such research has enabled SOAS to develop a robust yet pragmatic approach to selecting and supporting partners in countries where donor-driven cultures have narrowed the range of needs that can be articulated, to enable research that is genuinely transformative.
Examples include the GCRF (Global Challenges Research Fund) Drugs and Disorder project (2017-2022) where local universities and research institutes with links to borderland communities and policy makers in Colombia, Afghanistan and Myanmar have co-developed a policy-oriented research agenda which aims to bring the voices of the borderland into development and peacebuilding policies at national level, among UN agencies and international donors. An action-research project (2019-2022) in the border communities in Mali, Senegal and Guinea has supported vulnerable community groups – and particularly women and descendants of formerly enslaved people to set a reflexive research agenda on resilience that supports local leadership of alternative sustainable development pathways.
Aspect 2: Activity
SOAS responds to the local growth and regeneration needs of communities in the UK, and internationally through equitable partnership approaches that connect us to policy makers, businesses, NGOs and local communities working in development, health systems, climate change and sustainable finance, arts, heritage, and culture. Before delivering its services SOAS undertakes a thorough needs analysis, which places the needs of the community/trainee/client at the centre of programme preparation, including an assessment of feasible pathways to real local change.
Learning, knowledge exchange, enterprise support and outreach across London and the UK
We contribute to local skills development and social inclusion through delivering initiatives which have a profound and enduring impact on the ability of minority groups to control their lives and transform agendas. Examples of this activity include:
The implementation of SOAS Widening Participation (WP) plan 2020 – 2025, links SOAS with partner schools and adult learning centres to engage people from marginalised or socio-economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods, providing opportunities to learn about the languages and cultures of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
The SOAS’ alumni who help fund our SOAS Sanctuary Scholarships for displaced students, and also champion local growth and regeneration. Inspired by footballer Marcus Rashford’s free school meals campaign, SOAS alumnus and England rugby star Maro Itoje campaigned to provide laptops and free broadband to pupils disadvantaged by the ‘digital divide’ during the third lockdown in 2021.
Partnering with foundations such as the Aziz Foundation, which supports British Muslims to attend university, and now supports student interns to join SOAS’ Influencing Corridors of Power (ICOP) initiative, linking UK parliamentarians with SOAS research
Providing bespoke briefings and consultancy projects for a range of UK government ministries, insurance firms and UK based organisations such as Great Ormond Street Hospital, UK offices of international aid organisations and NGOs, to develop leaders and leadership around multiculturalism and international relations
Offering courses and bespoke language training through our Language Centre, running over 300 courses in approximately 20 languages from our key regions, with over 3,000 students on average, for organisations and individuals who seek professional development or have a personal connection to these regions.
SOAS provides business development support through our Student Enterprise function, much of which is sponsored by Santander. In 2021-22, this included 13 students and alumni who launched ventures and 22 who took up micro-internships, most of which focus on some 15 different Sustainable Development Goals. Examples of ventures launched include new language learning platforms focusing on developing skills in Asian and African languages, programmes that support women who have previously been trafficked or incarcerated in developing life skills; and connecting new artists with art buyers.
SOAS values mutually beneficial relationships with local enterprises including Chouette Films and PositiveNegatives, both launched by SOAS alum
With its National Research Library status, SOAS’ extensive Library and Special Collections facility holds over 1.3mn books, circa 2,995m of archives and special collections and an expanding digital collection. 350,000 have access digital resources and visitor numbers are returning to pre-COVID levels of approximately 21,000 per year.
SOAS Studios manages radio and podcast production with a focus on Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Plans have been developed to launch a SOAS record label raising the profile of UK musicians in the African, Asian, and Middle Eastern diaspora – or those working in these musical traditions
SOAS’ meeting, conference and exhibition venues drive income for the institution and opens our campus and facilities to local and global communities.
Global development
Engagement with UK policy makers to promote sustainable development
Delivering briefings, and further advice and support to UK Parliamentarians through SOAS ICOP in issues related to equitable recovery across the UK post-COVID, as well as policy issues relating to human rights and development financing in SOAS regions
Working with UK Government, such the Stabilisation Unit, delivering commissioned research to inform UK and international policy and practice on reducing levels of armed conflict and building sustainable post-war transitions
Delivering expertise to the UK’s FCDO. This includes briefings on country or cultures for diplomats and civil servants, masterclasses for different cadres, as well as commissioned research into the challenges and limits to UK and international anti-corruption and transparency policies and measures
Work undertaken to meet the needs of stakeholders in our regional communities
Providing research-driven guidance on democratic and transparent governance, to ministries and government departments in Bangladesh (among others) and international NGOs such as Transparency International because of the FCDO-commissioned research project Anti-Corruption Evidence Consortium (ACE). The work of delivering anti-corruption policy research and advice has since expanded to Nepal and several other regions with the extension of the ACE programme;
Facilitating citizens of countries including Myanmar and Ethiopia in democratic engagement, including with the UK parliamentary system, via the Global Research Network on Parliaments and People. In Ethiopia researchers supported Olisarali Olibui, a Mursi (known locally as Mun) innovator and filmmaker to experiment with filming and writing to ensure political representation of ethnic and other minorities. His play, co-written with Tesfahun Hailu, and supported by South Omo Theatre Company, was performed at the National Theatre in London on 31 July 2022
Funded by the EU Trust Fund, SOAS supports local research-driven policy making on the drivers of internal and international migration in the Horn of Africa. The Research and Evidence Facility (REF) has engaged EU country delegations, the UN, NGOs and governments; underpinned a national policy in Somalia on Refugees, Returnees and Displaced Persons, and supported the Somali city of Baidoa to extend land tenure programmes to support displaced and migrant communities. Recommendations based on REF evidence submitted to the International Development Committee of the UK House of Commons are being implemented by the FCDO.
Aspect 3: Results
Outcomes and impact of SOAS activities
SOAS undertakes a thorough needs analysis with partners to ensure that the objectives and outcomes of the activities and the broader impacts are co-identified, implemented in collaboration, and mutually recognised as being achieved. Partners are supported to share their views and experiences openly so that projects and programmes can be continuously improved.
The development and submission of 30 REF impact case studies which highlights the outcome and impact-orientation of SOAS departments and directorates has mainstreamed such approaches across the School. Highlights include SOAS researchers’ success in influencing water governance in India and factoring in the needs of the rural poor when designing public policy and programmes. Other successes include the impact of SOAS research on the successful inclusion of poorer, climate vulnerable economies in the design of international financial instruments governing risk and credit, or the research on the epic of Gilgamesh, which has positively impacted on the knowledge and outputs of the UK’s creative sector. As a result of the quality of SOAS’ REF impact submission SOAS climbed places up the rankings as an institution, - the third highest leap by any university this REF - with a sizeable proportion (over 50%) of impact case studies considered world-leading or 4-star.
In all cases this involves a level of co-designing of impact outcomes. SOAS-ACE is a multiyear, multi-country research project looking at how far traditional anti-corruption strategies have impacted on sustainable development in Africa and Asia. SOAS ACE aims at generating evidence towards feasible implementation of sector-specific governance reforms. Progress has been made in Bangladesh precisely because of co-designing, co-implementing its theory of change with national policy makers and civil society groups.
Feedback is also gathered from corporations, organisations, groups, and individuals engaging with SOAS bespoke trainings, with the SOAS language centre, library and archives and events run by our Centres and Institutes. Feedback is sought and responded to in multiple ways: via in-class monitoring, mid-term review, end-of-programme evaluation forms, and debriefs with clients. We evaluate success by noting repeat bookings, positive feedback from delegates, and our ability to win competitive bids to deliver training programmes.
In the Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings 2022, SOAS once again ranked in the Top 50 universities in the world for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):, specifically 26th for SDG16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, 39th for SDG 1: NO Poverty; and 45th for SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities SOAS also ranked in the top 100 for SDG 5: Gender Equality (82nd) and SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities (100th) and in the top 200 for SDG 13: Climate Action and top 300 for SDG 17: Partnership for the Goals.
Acting on results
SOAS commits to being a learning institution. Where it has generated significant local growth and regeneration, including negative and as well as positive outcomes, staff are encouraged to share and facilitate understanding of how and why, to ensure ongoing and future growth and regeneration work is more effective.
SOAS podcast and blogs
Staff receive radio production training and often host or present podcasts and other radio content to share outcomes, best practices, and lessons. Among these are researchers such as the team involved in SOAS-ACE, and other research projects such as deepening parliamentary democracies; and SOAS student entrepreneurs. Blogs that detail emerging research and impact on sustainable growth issues, such as how to measure the growing inequalities as a result of pandemics such as COVID-19 , or how to make climate action inclusive of those with disabilities are hosted on the SOAS website. Podcasters and bloggers among SOAS staff and students reflect on their practice in light of implementation of their growth and regeneration work and feedback to support learning within SOAS and among its partners and audiences.
Training and Mentoring
SOAS invests in staff mentoring and student peer support programmes which enables skills, knowledge, and experience to be shared, as such as peer-to-peer mentoring, and an early career researchers’ Network, and SOAS Connect, which links alumni and current students. This includes programmes with a dedicated focus on minority groups of SOAS staff and students such as the Ebony Initiative and support them to develop leadership in research and sustainable growth in the UK and abroad.
SOAS has also developed partnerships with institutions in Bloomsbury, such as the Bloomsbury SET, which allow staff and students to benefit from mutual learning and skills development in a range of regeneration contexts, including health and wellbeing.
Public & Community Engagement
Summary of approach
SOAS’ Research and Knowledge Exchange strategy (2021-2026) has committed us to reframing the way that Africa, Asia and the Middle East, regions in which the majority of the world’s citizens live, are understood and represented. We are using our knowledge and our skills to inform action to challenge inequalities, injustice, prejudice and discrimination, and to change mindsets and discourses with grounded research and evidence informing policies and practices. We do this by decolonising our modes of knowledge acquisition, communication, exchange and debate, from research methods and partnerships to writing, publishing and advocacy, becoming a beacon for equitable partnerships and public and community engagement.
Aspect 1: Strategy
In 2021, SOAS launched three strategies, the intersection of which shapes SOAS strategic approach to public and community engagement. SOAS’ Decolonising Strategy highlights our practices of reflective collaboration with organisations and researchers from the Global South as co-producers of knowledge. It also builds on our base of public engagement within London, the UK and the world which support ongoing conversations about the past, present and future significance of imperialism and colonialism, that position SOAS and key stakeholders on an equal footing in terms of defining and refining solutions through a research and knowledge exchange process.
Our Research and Knowledge Exchange Strategy (2021-26) deepens our public and community engagement approach, which include the co-design, collaboration and co-production of research with diverse stakeholders, partners and organisations, as well as in planning and generating impact within policy and practice fields and within mainstream discourses. Our Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) Accountability statement (2021-25) outlines how we deliver this deepening agenda of public and community engagement through dedicated knowledge exchange staff resources, platforms, infrastructure, including our Library and Galleries, SOAS Radio, Global Engagement, Regional Centres and Institutes, Events, and Communications functions, and projects led by SOAS researchers that text and mainstream innovative engagement approaches. SOAS is signatory to the NCCPE Manifesto and is a member of the Universities Policy Engagement Network and the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
The responsibility for implementing, monitoring and improving the public and community engagement approach that lies at the intersection of the three strategies lies with the Pro-Director for Research and Knowledge Exchange and the Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee. The Committee work with its subcommittees and other SOAS committees to ensure that implementation is in line with the highest ethical principles and with SOAS equality, diversity and inclusion strategy (2021-2025) and that progress is measured through key performance indicators where the strategies intersect – specifically in research and knowledge exchange.
Aspect 2: Support
Academic expertise
To ensure implementation of SOAS’ strategic approach to public and community engagement, there is a support network of key academics in colleges and departments. This includes departmental Research and Knowledge Exchange convenors, Professors of Practice, Knowledge Exchange Fellows and Community Fellows, each with their own sector or geographic expertise. At the tail end of this reporting period, SOAS appointed three Research and Knowledge Exchange (RKE) Convenors (0.5 FTE each). Reporting to the Pro-Director for Research and Knowledge Exchange, the RKE Convenors uplift practices, build capacities and drive more public and community engagement in each of SOAS three colleges; the College of Humanities; the College of Development, Economics and Finance; and the College of Law, Anthropology and Politics. Their collective contribution to public and community engagement is reviewed by the RKE Committee and its Knowledge Exchange Subcommittee.
Creating a strategic place for public and community engagement in research
Specialist staff in Research and Knowledge Exchange work with SOAS academics on bids that support the generation of impact through public and community engagement and offer training on planning and evaluating as well co-writing workshops to support the development of outputs with non-academic partners, including practitioner-focused courses on SOAS’ Futurelearn platform. SOAS Futurelearn course Teaching Migration through Data and Storytelling has been critically reviewed and shaped by groups of UK school teachers and policy-oriented researchers. SOAS academics are also supported through peer-to-peer learning and mentoring on public engagement and to deliver engagement projects such as festivals and event series.
Communications, events, exhibitions, performances, public talks and podcasts
In addition to academic post holders, SOAS has several professional services departments that promote public and community engagement. Our Communications office works with researchers to proactively engage specific audiences, using press release distribution and media monitoring software for planning and monitoring. A partnership with The Conversation means dedicated support for academics to publish on this website, reaching wider audiences.
Our events team delivers memorable experiences and increase audience engagement with SOAS research and expertise and offers resources and support for SOAS academics to run successful public and community engagement events. Staff in SOAS Special Collections, and Digital Archives, SOAS Centres and Institutes and in the Brunei Gallery and auditorium organised book launches, panel discussions, concert series, roundtables, film screening, private views, workshops, an annual SOAS Concert series and world music summer schools, and conferences, where SOAS academics and practitioners facilitated the engagement of the public in ongoing research, attracting more than 40,000 people in 2021-22, up from 20,000 in 2020-21. Approximately 35 music and radio talk shows are hosted on SOAS radio, including those created during the 2020 UK and global COVID lockdowns such as Sound and colour which connects SOAS students, academics and others by sharing sounds of hometowns and localities. Five new shows were launched in 2022, including Understanding Yoga Studies and Radio Research Forum, both collaborative productions by SOAS academics and practitioners.
Internal Funding Mechanisms
We provide competitive funding for impact and PCE activities through a range of internal schemes; seed corn funding to pilot collaborative research, or jointly develop funding proposals with key stakeholders; research culture funding to facilitate greater public engagement with SOAS research outputs, including in their production and dissemination; and Impact and Knowledge Exchange, which supports research users to engage with and use SOAS research from policy makers, NGOs, thinktanks, and community groups, among others.
Recognition and Reward
The value of impact in academic careers is recognised via our Academic Performance Framework, where a key criterion is leadership of research that “has had an outstanding and demonstrable impact on the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia”. In our Academic Promotion Procedure, “Evidence of outstanding research impact” and “Knowledge Transfer and Enterprise activity…defined as a contribution to society and the economy through the application of knowledge to the benefit of the broader community” are explicit criteria.
Equality, diversity and inclusion
A small and specialist team works in close partnership with directorates and head of colleges and departments to deliver commitments as set out in SOAS’ EDI strategy, including ensuring that forms of support and the reward and recognition criteria outlined above; are reviewed to address manifestations of structural racism; are supported by an intersectional approach; broaden the representation of under-represented groups at SOAS; foster accountability towards EDI outcomes; and foster decolonial and anti-racist approaches.
Aspect 3: Activity
Our PCE is generated through our connections to Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and diasporas in the UK. Engagement is collaborative, two-way and harnesses positive change.
Initiatives and activities
The Influencing Corridors of Power (ICOP) initiative managed by SOAS Professor Alison Scott-Baumann and a team of researchers, media and advocacy professionals work with academics and practitioner communities to deliver timely briefings to UK parliamentarians and improve policy debates and processes with robust analysis and evidence on key issues. Launched in 2019, ICOP’s 9 month review demonstrated the effectiveness of engaging specific communities in policy work; the Muslim Doctors’ Association, the Bollo Brook Youth Club to co-author briefings, the latter reaching appreciative stakeholders on the UK’s Education Select Committee. Over the 2020-2022 period, ICOP has expanded to facilitate panel discussions with practitioner communities and policy makers and launched an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Communities of enquiry across the generations to facilitate debates on difficult topics between parliamentarians, universities and younger UK citizens.
SOAS Festival of Ideas is a biennial public and community engagement platform to invite diaspora communities, practitioners from arts, heritage and culture and policy makers to engage with SOAS researchers through various mediums. In 2020, because of COVID-19, the festival on the theme of Decolonising Knowledge took place virtually, through a series of online talks, panel discussions and podcasts. The 2022 SOAS Festival of Ideas – on the theme of ‘Thinking through music’ and delayed to October 2022 – embedded this decolonised approach, working with people engaged with African diasporic musical traditions, and facilitating musical curators, such as Adem Holness, organisations such as Sound Advice, and practitioners such as Steam Down to take a leadership role in the festival, through industry-led panels, ‘takeovers’ of festival events and university spaces and improvised music sessions.
Worldmaking Beyond SOAS is an collaborative initiative harnessing transnational and UK Black, Indigenous, racial, feminist, labour academics, students, and social justice organisations to blur boundaries between universities and social movements when generating new knowledge and strategies that respond to and challenge infrastructures of exclusion. Under this initiative, practitioners such as Amelia Donkor, the Nest Collective, Applied Stories, and Just Associates co-lead projects including an auto-ethnography of a black mixed heritage female performing artist, improvised performances and conversations, participatory script writing and recording that reveal the truths of those commemorated by city statues, and an interactive game that explores various liberations through acts of playing.
Internal Impact and knowledge Exchange (IKE) funding in 2021-22 enabled SOAS academics to support Mathare Youth Sports Association (in Kenya), Sport for Christ Action South Africa and Nasrul Lahi-II-Fatih of Nigeria to lead south-north knowledge exchange, guiding sport agencies, government sport ministries and sporting institutions to explore the sport-religion axis to better deliver Sustainable Development Goals. Internal funding also supported SOAS to research collaboratively with the association TTEACH, led by a Gloria Daniels, who is a living descendent of an enslaved person, to allow the UK’s built environment to contend with its legacy of slavery.
Such PCE work facilitates discussion on complex and controversial issues, demonstrating our commitment to collaborative research, mutual understanding, platforming academic freedom and nuanced perspectives.
Aspect 4: Enhancing practice
With PCE delivery spread across the institution and guided by both strategic imperatives and individual passions, it is not practicable to approach all evaluation uniformly. However, we ensure that there are avenues for feedback in all instances, and we document learning and success;
Engaging with UK policy makers
Evaluation of ICOP’s public and community engagement involves practitioners with whom briefings are co-authored, and who share panels with policy makers at ICOP events. Qualitative feedback is sought from practitioners and policy makers, which is then triangulated by citations in policy debates in UK parliament as recorded in Hansard, as well as number and follow ups sent to the iCOP team and co-authors by MPs who require further information. An evaluation report that explores lessons from this approach is expected in 2023.
Research impact and knowledge exchange
The Research and Knowledge Exchange Directorate helps SOAS researchers to map potential stakeholders who might directly benefit or who can draw on our research to influence change, and how best to engage with them. Many key public and community stakeholders who are fundamental to research projects, including policy makers and practitioners, often sit on research project expert and advisory boards, helping to plan impact. monitoring the project’s progress towards outcomes and facilitating impact work. The Directorate gathers and interpret impact-related intelligence, support the collection of evidence (and its enhancement), and coordinate our Impact Case Studies.
For key research projects, the Directorate’s research impact team conduct in-depth evaluations studies using a mixed-method approach to evaluate the quality of stakeholder engagement and if and how it is has generated impact, both anticipated and unexpected.
SOAS Library
Through monitoring data, including Google analytics, SOAS Library reviews and implements new strategies to increase its role in supporting growth and development in the UK and elsewhere. Between 2019 and 2022, there have been over 1.05m sessions across our online library catalogue, and 350,000 users. Visitors come from over 230 countries with most located in the UK (48%), US (10%), Philippines (6%), India (4%) and Nigeria (3%). Across our digital archives that comprise 1.4m digitised pages, there have been over 230,000 sessions, with the countries with most visits currently UK and US (17%), India (8%), Philippines (6%), Malaysia (4%) and South Africa and Indonesia (3%). Our Digital Filipiniana Collection, and specifically readings on Philippines History, which is routinely used by schools and colleges in the Philippines. There have been over 30,000 visitors reading in Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, Italian, German, Turkish and Russian, demonstrating the extent to which our Library’s material has successfully reached communities beyond the UK, and beyond the English language.
Events, performances, exhibitions, and public talks
SOAS gathers feedback through a range of measures, including feedback forms, online surveys and social media analysis to evaluate and learn from public engagement.
Aspect 5: Building on success
Governance and accountability mechanisms
PCE work has been a key pillar in the pathway to research impact of SOAS REF impact case studies. As such The REF Strategy Group, the internal stakeholders responsible for the quality of the REF submission had oversight over the quality of this engagement. After the REF was submitted in 2021, oversight for public and community engagement has passed to the Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee and its Knowledge Exchange subcommittee. Since the launch of the SOAS Research and Knowledge Exchange Strategy (2021-2026), related key performance indicators have been developed including on knowledge exchange. The knowledge exchange KPI measures how many SOAS academics are engaged in knowledge exchange with key publics and communities, and this has necessitated the development of strategies in colleges and departments to mainstream good practice, and the monitoring of progress through staff development reviews. The committee and subcommittee will continue to monitor quality and levels of knowledge exchange and make recommendations to direct resources needed to deepen PCE, including from sources such as the SOAS Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) allocation.
The oversight and steering of public and community stakeholders in key research
We always aim to improve how the communities involved with our projects can feed back on the delivery of our promises, encouraging our Principal Investigators (PIs) to invite key stakeholders onto project advisory boards, to co-sign off on objectives with them, check-in with them via interim progress reports, and involve them in the evaluation of the project’s research impact
Using evaluation findings for continuous improvement
While SOAS does not employ a standard approach to evaluation, we abide by straightforward principles of organisational learning and take a two-tier approach. Data, information and analysis of feedback or progress must drive learning in the immediate context – this means that mid-term evaluations in longer-term and multi-year projects must be robust enough to support decision making by the PI and their advisory board as to next steps. This also applies to feedback related to other kinds of SOAS PCE activity including events, performances etc where feedback is used to improve public engagement immediately and for the next event in the series.
PIs and others engaged in PCE work are asked to review, reflect and share lessons beyond their project or their immediate area of work. SOAS has established platforms for this review, reflection and sharing including lunch and learns, and during COVID-19 and the pivot to online, the SOAS Radio Research Forum. Project meetings, departmental meetings, college-level committees and peer-to-peer and early career mentoring on an individual basis also provide opportunities for the sharing of experience and good practice.
Internal and external reporting
Reporting via KPIs and sharing of PCE practice via platforms, meetings and mentoring supports internal accountability and learning. Staff are encouraged to pursue such activities to prepare for external reporting to funders via Researchfish portal or submitting technical reports to the European Commission (among others).
Note You are currently viewing the latest version of this narrative statement. View the previous version as published in previous iterations of the KEF (KEF1 and KEF2)