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The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)

The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) is a college of the University of London and the only Higher Education institution in the UK specialising in the study of Asia, Africa and the Near and Middle East.

The School was founded in 1916, and moved to its present site in 1941.

SOAS is one of the colleges of the University of London, a federation of 17 self-governing Colleges and Schools.

Its expanded library, designed by the architect Sir Denys Lasdun, was opened in 1973. This national resource houses some 1 million volumes in more than 4,000 languages and dialects.

The 1946 Scarborough Report recommended that the whole field of Asian and African studies should be developed in London, which resulted in rapid expansion of the School’s activities.

Following the Hayter Report in 1961 there was an increase in the development of Social Sciences at SOAS. It continues to consolidate its position as the major national centre for the study of subjects related to Asia, Africa and the Near and Middle East.

SOAS is a remarkable institution. Uniquely combining language scholarship, disciplinary expertise and regional focus, it has the largest concentration in Europe of academic staff concerned with Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

On the one hand, this means that SOAS remains a guardian of specialised knowledge in languages and periods and regions not available anywhere else in the UK. On the other hand, it means that SOAS scholars grapple with pressing issues - democracy, development, human rights, identity, legal systems, poverty, social change - confronting two-thirds of humankind.

This makes SOAS synonymous with intellectual excitement and achievement. It is a global academic base and a crucial resource for London. We live in a world of shrinking borders and of economic and technological simultaneity. Yet it is also a world in which difference and regionalism present themselves acutely. It is a world that SOAS is distinctively positioned to analyse, understand and explain... more info