In 2015, two Southeast Asian students were awarded Alphawood Scholarships, one for PhD and the other for MA study, both for the study of modern/contemporary arts. The two students elected to defer their coming to SOAS due to work commitments. In February 2016, Prof. Anna Contadini called the PhD-level student to formally request that s/he to change her/his proposed doctoral research topic because the Alphawood Foundation had recently decided to restrict funding only to art “in antiquity” and to no longer fund study of later periods. Prof. Contadini is not the student’s prospective supervisor; she is the Chair of the Scholarships Committee and Head of the School of the Arts. The MA student was also telephoned by a member of the Scholarships Committee formally requesting s/he to change to her/his study plans.
At the time these requests were made, the restriction of the Alphawood programme to art of “antiquity” had not been announced publically, and no change had been made to any of the programme’s webpages, literature or social media. Thus, SOAS was retroactively applying a new, unannounced restriction to the programme against the two students, who had earlier been awarded scholarships at least in part based on their stated research interests. On Facebook, the students reported their anxiety that their scholarships would be revoked.
On 18 February, I wrote a letter to Valerie Amos, the Director of SOAS, to express concern about the treatment of the students, as well as to question the secret change of the programme remit to the vague and undefined art “in antiquity.” The next day, Amos sent a letter stating that the two students would be offered replacement scholarships equal to the amount they would have received from the Alphawood programme. It was wonderful that she acted quickly to settle this matter. However, she expressed no regret for the plainly unfair treatment of the Southeast Asian students. Amos’ letter was also very concerning in other ways, as I describe in the next blogpost, “Donors Have Rights. But What About Students?”
SOAS Spirit wrote an article about this situation on 26 February 2016.
