Brexit
The Story So Far * 23 January 2013 – Former Prime Minister David Cameron expresses his support for an in/out referendum regarding the UK’s EU membership. * 7 May 2015 – Cameron wins the general election with a manifesto promise to hold a referendum. * 23 June 2016 – Referendum day. 51.9% vote
Featured Articles
By Ali Mitib, BA Law and Politics Members of the Union of Colleges and Universities (UCU) at 61 institutions across the UK have taken strike action against proposals by Universities UK (UUK) that would see a reduction in the pension income of up to 60%. The strike, which is operating
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By Alice McMahon, MA Near and Middle Eastern Studies Evidence has emerged that ‘hundreds’ of students may have missed out on up to £7,500 of bursaries, according to officers in the Student Union. In its Access Agreement for 2016-17, SOAS boasts of offering 152 Excellence Bursaries of £2,500
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By Sumayyah Daisy Lane, BA History On Monday, February 19, Prime Minister Theresa May set out the details of the Tory government’s delayed long-year review of the UK’s higher education fees. During the speech, May admitted to the UK being home to “one of the most expensive systems
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By Hannah Sommerville, MA Arabic Literature Results for the Student Union elections were announced on the 3rd March. Sixteen of the 17 contested posts have now been filled after a week of intense campaigning and strident efforts on the part of the SU to encourage students to use their vote.
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By Ines Rodier, BA Politics and Development Studies SOAS has announced that fossil fuels are no longer being used the institutuion. This achievement is the result of a commitment made three years ago by the administration to divest totally from fossil fuels. Between 2008 and 2015, SOAS had already halved
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By Arooj Sultan, BA Economics & Politics After a hard-fought campaign taking place over a period of 11 years, in August 2017 SOAS management announced that it meet the demands of the Justice for Workers (J4W) campaign and bring all outsourced staff in-house by September 2018. Following this historic announcement,
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By Arooj Sultan, BA Economics & Politics SOAS is among the higher education institutions that is set to re-enter the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) – a system in which teaching excellence is rewarded financially according to ranking – over the course of this year. Last year, SOAS received a bronze ranking under
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By Emma Ruiters, MSc Development Economics On February 15 this year, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) resigned, igniting the greatest political crisis to rock the country since the end of communist rule in 1991. Desalegn had risen to power in
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By Amina Tasnim, BA History The Trump-Russia inquiry has seen a significant development with the release of the long-awaited Democratic memo by The House Intelligence Committee on February 24thth. Alex van der Zwaan, 33, pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his relations with Rick Gates, who was a
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By a SOAS Spirit Contributor Opposition leaders in Egypt have called for a boycott as the country grinds towards an ‘election’ that can be described with little to no stretch of the imagination as a farce. The current schedule will see Egyptians inside the country go to the polls from
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By Emma Ruiters, MSc Development Economics After his election as president of the African National Congress (ANC) on December 18, 2017, Cyril Ramaphosa was sworn in as president of the Republic of South Africa on February 15 this year. Ramaphosa succeeds Jacob Zuma after the latter’s nine years in