London-based specialist university in Asian, African, and Middle Eastern studies — from ancient manuscripts to contemporary migration and governance research.
SOAS University of London is a world-leading specialist institution for the study of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Their research spans humanities and social sciences — from ancient manuscript traditions and literary theory to contemporary migration, governance, and political anthropology across these regions. They bring deep area-studies expertise in languages, cultures, and political systems that most European universities cannot match, making them an essential partner for any research requiring non-Western regional knowledge. Their work combines philological and textual scholarship with ethnographic fieldwork and policy-relevant social science.
MUYA and MUYA-IIIF digitized Zoroastrian Avestan manuscripts using IIIF frameworks; GlobalLIT explored literary theory across Caucasus, Islam, and Middle East; TAXT studied Sasanian sealing practices.
MAGYC addressed migration governance and asylum crises; AGRUMIG studied labour migration impacts on rural sending communities; NEWAVE examined water governance and policy change.
AFRISCREENWORLDS is a major ERC project (EUR 1.8M) focused on decolonising film and screen studies with emphasis on African and Black cinema.
EoPPP conducted global comparative ethnography of parliaments and politicians; ASA studied African statehood through architecture — both large-scale ERC grants.
Intimacy examined modern Chinese family life through multi-sited ethnography; HYP mapped Indian and transnational traditions of physical yoga through philology.
RRSPCGBP (2021) investigates sentencing and punishment in China through a gender-based perspective, signaling new interest in comparative criminal justice.
SOAS's early H2020 work (2015–2018) concentrated on philological and textual scholarship — ancient languages, manuscript digitization, literary theory, and religious traditions like Zoroastrianism and Islam across the Middle East and Caucasus. From 2019 onward, the focus shifted markedly toward contemporary political and social questions: migration governance, refugee policy, parliamentary ethnography, African statehood, decolonisation of screen studies, and criminal justice in authoritarian contexts. This evolution reflects a broader institutional move from historical-textual expertise toward engaged, policy-relevant social science addressing governance, inequality, and post-colonial structures.
SOAS is moving toward politically engaged, policy-relevant research on governance, migration, and decolonial perspectives — expect future projects at the intersection of area studies and contemporary social challenges.
SOAS overwhelmingly leads its own research: 14 of 19 projects are coordinator-led, mostly individual ERC grants and Marie Curie fellowships reflecting principal-investigator-driven scholarship. When they do join consortia as participants (5 projects), these tend to be larger multi-partner research initiatives like MAGYC and NEWAVE. With 45 unique partners across 25 countries, they maintain a wide but loosely connected network typical of a humanities institution where each PI brings their own regional collaborators rather than returning to the same institutional partners.
SOAS has collaborated with 45 unique partners across 25 countries, reflecting genuinely global reach that extends well beyond Europe into Asia, Africa, and the Middle East — mirroring their area-studies mandate.
SOAS is one of the very few European institutions with deep, research-active expertise across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East simultaneously — covering languages, political systems, cultural heritage, and contemporary social issues. For any EU consortium needing genuine regional expertise on non-Western societies (not surface-level "international perspectives"), SOAS brings unmatched depth. Their combination of classical philological skills with modern ethnographic and policy research means they can contribute to projects spanning from digital cultural heritage to contemporary migration governance.
