School of Oriental and African Studies
The School of Oriental and African Studies (often abbreviated to SOAS) was founded in 1916 primarily as an institution to train British administrators for colonial postings, and has grown into one of the world's foremost institutions for the study of Asia and Africa. A college of the University of London, SOAS fields include Law, Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages with special reference to Asia and Africa. SOAS today is a source of some of the most influential and innovative thinking in many fields of the social sciences and humanities, principally, but not exclusively in relation to Asia and Africa. The SOAS Library, housed in a building designed at the beginning of the 1970s by Sir Denys Lasdun, is the UK's national resource for materials relating to Asia and Africa and is the largest of its kind in Europe.
The school has grown considerably over the past thirty years, from under 1,000 students in the 1970s to over 3,000 students today, approximately half of them postgraduates.
The school also houses two galleries: the Percival David Foundation of Chinese Art, one of the foremost collections of Chinese ceramics in Europe, and the Brunei Gallery, completed in 1995.
The main campus was moved to a new, purpose-built home, just off Russell Square in Bloomsbury in 1938, and has much expanded since then. The present library building was added in 1977, the Brunei Gallery in 1995, and an extension to the library building opened in 2004. A new campus at Vernon Square in Islington was opened in 2001.
SOAS is consistently rated as one of the United Kingdom's top ten higher education institutions in national League tables. The most recent Guardian League Table (2004) placed it in fourth position.
SOAS graduates can be found throughout the world in positions of influence in (amongst others) academia, diplomacy, journalism, government, the law, international institutions, non-governmental organisations, banking and finance, the arts, the media and education.
Notable alumni include diverse figures, such as:
Notable members of staff include:
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