SIAS: the Oxford Model of Area Studies

SIAS is recently established in 2004 within the University’s Social Science Division (made up of thirteen departments total). It encompasses ‘historic’ centres like the LAC, Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, Russian and Eastern European Studies (REES); relatively new centres like the African Studies Centre, Contemporary Chinese Studies (BICC China Centre, U Oxford China Institute – a cross-divisional body - and CCSP); and new programmes such as Contemporary South Asian Studies. In addition, the department encourages academic cooperation with and provides support to Middle East Studies and Italian Studies (which are based in the Humanities Division). The Rothermere American Institute and the European Studies Consortium are formally affiliated with the School.

The University of Oxford has a comprehensive system of devolved budget-holding to its Divisions and departments (in this instance the SSD); and within this overall system SIAS itself has a highly devolved structure. As a department SIAS is a single cost-centre and maintains unitary budgets, but each of its units (and programmes) are subsidiary and semi-autonomous cost centres – all subject to monitoring by the FSG (Finance Steering Group) and the SIAS Management Committee and all subject to the discipline of the departmental ‘bottom-line’. The great strengths of this devolved structure are flexibility and strategic capacity, and, in particular, the capacity to ‘cross-subsidize’ units and programme until they attain the critical mass required to attract good incomes flows from student recruitment and research and to project an effective research presence. These characteristics allow SIAS to study and develop new programmes of teaching and research. Those currently under consideration include South-East Asian Studies, European Studies (in cooperation with the DPIR), and North American Studies.

SIAS stands for School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies – which may be thought a solecism. If it’s areas studies it better be interdisciplinary. On the one hand, this has to do with combining disciplinary perspectives to generate in-depth knowledge of particular societies. On the other with disciplining the disciplines, that is deploying disciplinary skills in a way that applies to concrete realities. (Tendencies within certain disciplines, eg economics and political science, to operate at such a high level of abstraction that it becomes increasingly difficult to ground them in specific social and cultural contexts). So SIAS research is about the engagement between universalist explanation and hermeneutic inquiry – contextual inquiry -  into regional and local specificities. For the most part the focus is on contemporary themes and issues which often present distinctive problems of interpretation and analysis that require adaptation to the ‘mainstream’ analysis of the disciplines. Different SIAS units combine some selection of expertise from history, linguistics, anthropology, IR, political science, political economy, economics, sociology and environmental science. The School encourages cross-unit and cross-departmental and interdivisional cooperation in both research and teaching.

Many institutions and departments talk a good talk about cross-departmental cooperation and interdisciplinary research. Walking the interdisciplinary walk requires something more. This something more may include a proper structure of professional incentives to academic staff to teach and research in this fashion, as well as an appropriate institutional and normative context that itself educates and socializes academic and administrative staff. SIAS is a department within the SSD, but this does not tell half the story for it is has a uniquely intimate insertion into the structure of the SSD. Most importantly, perhaps, its academic staff (with the exceptions to be counted on the fingers of one hand) hold joint appointments, usually 50:50 with disciplinary departments, and this has a powerful influence on both teaching and research. It also – an aside here on my own role – hugely complicates the academic administration of the department because all academic business, and especially the calculation and sharing of earned income from teaching and research, has to be managed in liaison and consultation with partner departments and units. But this complication is the point. Real intellectual cooperation is more likely to emerge and endure because it is embedded in the institutional context and practical business of running research projects and teaching programmes.

Matters managed in this way include most appointments, sabbatical and other leave, RAE matters, retirement issues, mid-probation and tenure reviews, research grant applications, JRAM calculations, stint and other duty issues, and, critically, finances. As suggested above, managing this complexity of external relationships is a significant part of the roles of the Head of SIAS and her/his administrative and support staff. Units which figure largely in the networks within which the School is involved include: the DPIR, International Development, Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, Economics, the School of Geography and the Environment, Anthropology, Archaeology, the Said Business School, the Faculties of History, Oriental Studies and Linguistics, and the Language Centre. Furthermore, some of the research grants held in SIAS (eg the BICC grant and the CEELBAS grant) are not only cross-departmental but also inter-university, so adding yet further complexity to issues like workload, intellectual property claims, and risk-bearing responsibility.

SIAS seeks to develop externally funded, competitively priced research projects. (Aside on ‘low tax environment’ of department – Chatham House rules). Currently China Studies continue to grow impressively as a consequence of the £2.5M grant from the Leverhulme Trust and the £1.1M grant from HEFCE/ESRC/AHRC. REES’ CEELBAS project is worth almost £500k and an ASC grant from the AHRC £450k. £736k new research income and £340 research overhead income was received by the School in the 07/08 financial year (and this figure will greatly increase for the current year). The School is currently managing active grants worth nearly £7.5M. The greatest logistical constraint we face – as always – is the space required to house new research projects.

SIAS currently offers ten graduate degrees. There were 62 students on SIAS Masters courses in 2005/06, a number that has increased to 136 in the current year 2008/09. In 2007/08 we offered an MPhil and MSc in LA Studies, an MSc in Public Policy in LA, an MPhil and MSc in REES, an MPhil and MSc in Japanese Studies, and an MSc in African Studies, to which this year 2009/09 have been added an MSc in Modern Chinese Studies and an MSc in Contemporary India.

On the evidence to date the Oxford Model of Area Studies is a success – or, at least, can be seen to work quite effectively. In the few years of its existence it has grown rapidly as measured by the number of students enrolled on its courses, the total number of staff paid through the main SIAS payroll, and by its overall turnover. The total number of staff (including research, administrative and support staff) has increased from under seventy to almost one hundred and forty; while income (excluding research income) has grown from less than £2M to almost £4M. SIAS also succeeds in maintaining a surplus on its operating account.

So SIAS has a wide gamut of activities, operates across a diversity of institutional ‘frontiers’, encompasses several units and programmes with diverse historical provenance and academic profiles – but does it have a settled identity? Here a small tranche of Oxford’s complex institutional history has proved helpful. For SIAS has considerable overlap in both its academic staff and students with St. Antony’s College (where a large contingent of its core academic staff are GB Fellows), and, to some degree, St. Hugh’s and St. Cross colleges; and maintains close relations with St. Antony’s own centres (eg MEC, ESC, RC and LAC both college and University). St. Antony’s are St. Hugh’s are contiguous within the same few blocks of North Oxford, and SIAS itself is consolidating its presence in a number of large, adjacent Victorian buildings in Bevington Road, just next to St. Antony’s. St. Hugh’s is committed to raising the funds for and building a new China Centre. This process of consolidation (slow, halting, complex, negotiated, bargained) is helping to build and buttress the SIAS identity, and will continue to do so. The more its staff spend time together, the more they will feel they belong together. Refer SIAS Research Away-day February 11th, and the ‘buzz’, the clear sense of a SIAS family with its affections, its aspirations and, yes – naturally – its tensions and occasional troubles. For all that I wish to defend and promote it, I don’t recall saying that it’s perfect…