SOAS Radio

Tune in to listen to your 4 co-presidents chat about what's been going on at SOAS this past month, and what's to come in 2018!

1:15 Whole school walkout & Restructuring

12:20 Saturday School

13:40 Students Not Suspects/ Preventing Prevent

22:55 Decolonising SOAS

25:55 Issues facing Research students

30:30 What's coming up; UGM, Participatory Budgeting & more!

Shout out to South African band 'The Soil' & their song 'Unspoken Word' as the beautiful intro/ outro music.

Our first LIVE show had Ruchi chatting with SOAS's very own Sugandha Parmar & Srishti Guru Krishnakumar - talking sex-cultures, cities, movies and female friendships.

Our conversations are sprinkled by anonymous real-life testimonies by young people who narrate deeply personal and relatable accounts of flimsy family sex-education, school secrets, drawing kissing tips from Hollywood and young women buying condoms from older male pharmacists. Enjoy kijiye! 

This podcast is drawn from the show aired on SOAS Radio between 16.00 - 17.00 on Wednesday, November 29th.

CISD Seminar Series

Abstract:

China and India’s contemporary rise to prominence will significantly impact upon geopolitics over the coming decades. Based upon the presenter's recent book - China and India: Asia's Emergent Great Powers (Polity, 2017) - this talk will provide a comparative analysis of their shared emergence as great powers within the international system, and evaluate the impact of Asia’s two largest powers upon the definition and nature of power politics in the 21st century. Focusing upon the factors integral to such a phenomenon (from both historical and theoretical perspectives), it will highlight these two countries’ past, contemporary and future global significance. India and China are often expected to rise in much the same way as the current and previous great powers, primarily via traditional material and military measures. Dr Ogden vitally contends however that domestic political / cultural values and historical identities are also central driving forces behind their mutual status ambitions and world views.

Short Bio:

Dr Chris Ogden is Senior Lecturer in Asian Security at the University of St Andrews, where he teaches on the international relations of China and India, and emergent great powers in Asia. His research interests concern the interplay between foreign and domestic policy influences in East Asia (primarily China) and South Asia (primarily India).

Intro music courtesy of http://www.purple-planet.com/

The World Health Organization has described antibiotic resistance as one of the biggest threats to global health and food security. It is estimated that at least 700,000 people die globally each year from ‘superbug’ infections that are resistant to antimicrobial medicines and this is predicted to rise to 10 million by 2050. This episode explores what exactly we mean by antibiotic resistance, the use of antibiotics in food production, the potentially devastating effects of not addressing antibiotic resistance and solutions to this frightening problem. The speakers are Dr Clare Chandler (Associate Professor in Medical Anthropology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) and Dr. Lucy Brunton (Lecturer in Molecular Epidemiology at the Royal Veterinary College).

The unusual attention given to that Caucasian exchange student in your class, to all-white celeb crushes and sports gods; your all-time (and all-white) favourite movies, to those ‘gorgeous’ Instagram personas after whom you model your appearance and ideal body-image; from your desired holiday destinations to the ‘hot guy’ or ‘hot gal’ of your ultimate dreams - India, we got a problem.

Ruchi chats with Srishti, Adit and Vedant in an episode that wittily turns the spotlight towards despair – that of white fetish and its hold over Indian bodies, fantasies and aspirations.

Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, is a leading astrophysicist as well as a senior figure in UK science. He has conducted influential theoretical work on subjects as diverse as black hole formation and extragalactic radio sources, and provided key evidence to contradict the Steady State theory of the evolution of the Universe. His talk -Peering into the Future:

The Bumpy Road Ahead was held at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS University of London on 6 November 2017. Co-Hosted by British Pugwash

H.E. Ambassador Abdul Samad Minty (retired), Permanent Representative of South Africa to the United Nations Office at Geneva, Deputy Director General South African Department of International Relations; Honorary Secretary – British Anti-Apartheid Movement, London: 1962 -1995, discusses recent political developments in South Africa at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, SOAS University fo London on 6 November 2017.

Current thinking would lead you to believe that Western delegates were responsible for getting women’s right into the UN in 1945– but they weren’t. On the contrary, it was the vocal feminist claims of particularly non-Western women delegates that were instrumental in establishing this first international agreement to declare women’s rights as a part of fundamental human rights. Nevertheless, the pivotal contributions of the global South in the founding of the UN has generally been ignored and neglected. The event "Women and the UN Origins - a Southern Critique", will introduce five scholars who with their diverse background will present and discuss the women who shaped the UN, from the League of Nations, in the UN Charter,the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and who continue to do so today. The research on women and the UN shed new light on topics that today remain highly political, such as the origins of human rights, feminism and international organisations.These researchers all represent the UN Gender Network of academics, UN staff, civil society and member states, that work to understand the cause and the implications of gender inequality in the UN today.

Prof Rosa Freedman joined the University of Reading as the inaugural Chair of Law, Conflict and Global Development and the Director of the Global Development Division. Freedman researches on the United Nations, human rights bodies, creation and implementation of international human rights law accountability for human rights abuses committed by UN actors, and the intersection between international law and international relations.

Fatima Sator Research Associate, CISD, SOAS. Born in Algeria, Fatima Sator has been focusing on Women’s role in the Arab world prior to her research on Women and the UN Charter. She is currently working as a communication officer at UN Women in Geneva. Fatima Sator has a Master’s in International Studies and Diplomacy from SOAS and a Master’s in Journalism from the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland.

Dr Rebecca Adami Senior Lecturer Stockholm University, Department of Education. Adami post doc project titled “Women of the Declaration: Exploring Counternarratives on Human Rights from 1946-48” centers on the UN female delegates who where part of drafting the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. Her research interest is on the broad study of human rights in the field of philosophy of education

Elise Luhr Dietrichson, Research Associate, CISD, SOAS. Elise holds a master in International Studies and Diplomacy from SOAS. She is currently working on a documentary with HBO Brazil together with Fatima Sator on the story of the Brazilian delegate Bertha Lutz who fought for women's rights in the UN Charter in 1945.

Prof Aoife O’Donoghue has been at Durham University since 2007. Aoife's research focuses on public international law with a particular interest in global governance and legal theory. Aoife queries the structures developed to enable international law to regulate political governance. Aoife's work examines constitutionalism, tyranny, feminism, legal theory and international legal history.

Is there a certain movie, food, pillow, song, or place with which you share an intimate connection? If your mind screamed "hell, YEAH!", then think about why we mostly associate intimacy with sex - and not with the connection made with an only friend at an awkward party, OR when you cosy up against a cool wall, OR use silly voices to talk to those that love you for it?

We bring to you deep and personal testimonies which delve into how contrarily people experience intimacy and how it ain't all about sex! Brace yourselves for some heartfelt and endearing accounts that pay tribute to the role of intimacy in our lives. Jai Intimacy Ho!

Dr Plesch reviews renewed concerns over nuclear war and emerging technologies against the context of intensifying regional conflicts, with hints for a 'soft landing'. He also talks about the Scrap Weapons project, for more information see: www.scrapweapons.com (10th Oct 2017)