Our Centre Chair Says
The CCLPS has been leading cutting-edge research on Asian, African and Middle Eastern cultures, literatures and languages through various projects that interest a large number of staff in the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics and other SOAS Departments. Such discussions have been facilitated through seminars, workshops and international conferences organised regularly at the CCLPS and through joint PhD supervision and joint funding applications.
These projects include for example among others, the question of non-European epistemology and knowledge production and consumption in Asia, Africa and the Middle East; the formation of literary history, genres and canonicity in contexts beyond the West; the roles of popular cultures and the CCLPS flagship project on World Literature, which has placed SOAS on the map of world-leading institutions with its innovative and non-Eurocentric focus on Asian, African and Middle Eastern literatures. The CCLPS has benefited from its members’ valuable expertise in the languages and cultures of Asia, Africa and the Middle East; an expertise that attracts high calibre PhD applicants, visiting fellows and researchers.
The CCLPS has one of the best training courses for first year MPhil/PhD students; the weekly course is highly acclaimed by all of our students as it offers them a solid grounding in various research skills and methodologies. Moreover, our CCLPS PhD students gain fantastic professional experience every year as they organise our CCLPS Postgraduate Annual conference which attracts large Postgraduate communities within and outside SOAS. They also benefit from attending and participating in our wide range of regular seminars, lectures and conferences.
Research Student Profile
"One of the most useful aspects of the programme is the weekly training seminar, which is open to all MPhil CCLPS students. These sessions are designed to consider ‘key’ methodological and theoretical texts, to incite debate and reflection upon your own research. The reflective nature of these seminars has been invaluable to my project, as they have allowed me a responsive space to broaden, question and develop my research"
Poonkulaly Gunaseelan
MPhil/PhD Programme CCLPS