The working conditions for SOAS Research Students has been extremely poor in recent years, and frustration from these students has been rightly building up over the years, culminating in the creation of the Research Students Forum, an interest group with the vested interest of SOAS Research Students.
Research students held a protest on Wednesday, 25th June, on the landing to R101, the main computer room for research students. The protest – held under the motto ‘SOAS Research Students Demand Dignity’ - was essentially triggered by the ventilation problems in R101 – the issue has been raised ever since the research block was built but never addressed in spite of the many promises that it would be – and the coincidental discovery of moving plans, but was also meant to convey research students’ general frustrations and demands.
The protest was well attended by research students, Nizam Uddin, the SU Co-President Welfare and Education, and SOAS staff, who kindly expressed their support. Prof. Webley, the School’s director and principal, Prof. Robb, the current pro-director in charge of research and Prof. Furniss, his successor (due to take office in August), came to meet the research students and engaged in a very rich discussion. Many research students spoke up to express the obstacles they have come across in their doctoral research at SOAS and underlined that material conditions were often superior in other UK colleges and universities. The general feeling was that the status of research students remained unclear at SOAS – and very far from the ‘junior researcher’ status often given to research students in the UK – and that SOAS, often preoccupied with its relations with the funding bodies and its financial and space constraints, failed to adequately stand by and support its research students.
The meeting ended with two immediate commitments – a rapid solution to the ventilation problems in R101 and precise information on moving plans as soon as these are available – as well as the promise to prolong the discussion and discuss concrete ways of giving SOAS research students a status more in line with the new requirement to complete PhDs within four years and with their contribution to SOAS’s academic activities.
Four A/C units were delivered on Friday, 27th June, which will considerably improve research students’ working conditions over the summer. And it is hoped that the dialogue resumed on Wednesday will be prolonged, based on the report prepared by the research student reps forum (available here) and the results of the postgraduate research experience survey 2008.
Many warm thanks to all who have shown their support so far.
