Soas University of London isn’t like any other university. The institution stands as an embodiment of a global mindset and fresh perspectives. It’s a voice for the global south in the heart of the global north – and is home to hundreds of scholars who have dedicated their lives to exploring the world through a wider lens.
But what does the Soas ethos mean to them? We asked four scholars from across the university to choose a cultural work to highlight the joy of learning in such an enlightening community – and to help us gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of embracing a global mindset.
Dr Ilana Webster-Kogen: Zuruni Kulli Sana Marra, sung by Zaki Murad
“This is a song that I play for my students quite a lot,” says Dr Ilana Webster-Kogen, head Soas’s school of languages, cultures and linguistics.
Zuruni Kulli Sana Marra means “visit me every year”, and it was popularised in the 70s and 80s by the celebrated Lebanese singer Fairuz. But Webster-Kogen’s choice is the earliest known recording, performed by Zaki Murad – a Jewish Egyptian – in the 1920s. The piece was written by Sayed Darwish, who composed the Egyptian national anthem.
“There were a lot of cultural connections across the Mediterranean basin of the Arab world in the 20th century,” says Webster-Kogen. “Sayed Darwish, who is known as one of the cultural fathers of nationalism in the Arab world, wrote this song. It was performed for the first time by a Jewish musician who was trained as a cantor.
“So what the song portrays is a different kind of world.”
And given the conflicts and tensions of today, the shared history of the song casts a new perspective on the history of the region.
“In my case, as a scholar of Jewish music from the Arab world, it represents a world where Jewish musicians were very well embedded in the Arab world, where nationalism had different kinds of cultural connotations and solidarities that went with it,” says Webster-Kogen.
It also reveals the power of the arts in fostering that global mindset – something Webster-Kogen can see happen when she plays the track to her students. “It embodies everything that we try to do at Soas, in conveying to students how much other stuff they learn by studying culture.”
Dr Charlotte Horlyck: Procession of Korean Ambassadors, a 17th century painting
“I think many people don’t know that we have a collection of art objects,” says Dr Charlotte Horlyck, head of the school of arts and reader in the history of Korean art. She describes Soas’s values as “celebrating diversity; tolerance; promoting cultural understanding; excellence; and community” – and these are reflected in her choice of object, which comes from the university’s collection: a 17th century handscroll painting more than 12 metres long, depicting a travelling party of Korean ambassadors to Japan.
“This was during the Edo period when Japan was ruled by shoguns,” says Horlyck. “During this 200-year period, Korea sent these diplomatic missions to Japan 12 times.”
And a mission was much more than just a horse and carriage. “Each one was huge, 500 people. It would include the ambassadors and their retinues, and even musicians,” she says. “They would travel all the way from Seoul through the peninsula down to Busan, take a boat to Tsushima, from Tsushima to Osaka, and then from Osaka they would be escorted by samurais all the way up to Edo for an audience with the shogun. As they travelled it was an enormous spectacle.”
In her work studying Korean art more broadly, Horlyck is embodying the global mindset that is found at Soas. And, today, the scroll continues to represent that mindset in a very literal sense. “Reproductions are now presented by Adam Habib, our vice-chancellor, to foreign dignitaries as gifts,” says Horlyck. “So though that wasn’t necessarily the purpose of the scroll, the broader context of it was about diplomatic missions and cultural exchanges between different nations. Visualising the journey of these ambassadors is a very beautiful way of reaching an audience – and that continues to today.”
Dr Paul Giladi: The Wretched of the Earth, written by Frantz Fanon
Dr Paul Giladi is a relatively new recruit to Soas, having joined the university as an academic philosopher in September 2023.
“What has always been the draw for me about Soas is the institutional commitment to radical social transformation through a decolonial mindset, which is trying to systematically address and confront and overcome rather than just diagnosing structural injustices,” says Giladi.
And it is this perspective that has driven him to choose a classic academic text as a reflection of this ethos.
“The one book that I think really kind of encapsulates the vision of that decolonial horizon is Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth,” says Giladi, “particularly the conclusion, where Fanon develops a ‘critical humanism’, one which is trying to reconfigure the concept of the human being and institutional realities in a way that moves away from valorising western European ways of conceptualising humanity, nature, society, politics and the economy.”
The book offers a searing critique of colonialism and imperialism and makes an argument that violence is necessary for the colonised to reclaim their sense of identity.
“The conclusion to Fanon’s book is slightly inchoate and prophetic; it’s a vision which effectively argues, in my view, that the global south, more so than the global north, is going to set the tone for thinking about the fundamental questions of human existence.”
And it was Fanon who also directly inspired Giladi to launch the UK’s first decolonising philosophy toolkit, aimed at secondary school students, to introduce them to some of these ideas.
“What we wanted to do was produce an artefact that encapsulated the thinking behind the Soas BA world philosophies programme, but also practical guidance for how all of these high-vaunted ideas about genuine inclusion, genuine diversity, and genuine equity can be embedded in teaching and learning projects in accordance with the transformative vision of Fanon.”
Dr Richard Alexander: Malaika, sung by Miriam Makeba
“The Soas ethos is complicated,” says Dr Richard Alexander, senior lecturer in financial law at the Soas school of finance and management. “I once said that when Yerushalayim Shel Zahav and Tahlileh Jaliliyyeh are both on your playlist, you will understand the complexity of Soas.” However, it is neither the classic Hebrew song, nor the traditional Palestinian lullaby that he has chosen as his cultural work. Instead, he points to the Swahili song Malaika, of which Boney M’s 1981 version is the best known – but he prefers the 1965 version by the legendary South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba.
“The vision of Soas is to see the issues of the world through the lens of the global south and, as part of that, to decolonise. It means looking beyond the protest songs of the west, important though those are in the context of a progressive university,” says Alexander. “Malaika speaks of poverty – a man who loves his girlfriend but cannot marry her as he is poor.”
Alexander sees a thematic connection with his own legal scholarship on corruption and climate change. “There are issues that contribute to poverty – corruption, but also climate change as crops fail, as well as the economic and social inequality that plagues so much of the world.”
And that is why Makeba’s version speaks so much to him. “She conveys the pain in the song, and it is a song of pain.”
Alexander adds: “Soas’s ethos combines being a progressive university and standing up for social injustice, with the specific vision of moving beyond western perspectives to look through the lens of the global south. A song from Tanzania, in Swahili, that talks about the impact of poverty on people’s lives seems to express well what we should stand for.”
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