Dear colleagues,

I love the sense of anticipation and excitement at the start of the new academic year as students arrive in Manchester eager to embark on their degree or to start the new year with lots of good intentions. For all those who work in education, the summer vacation marks a hiatus in the calendar year where we can pause and reflect. For the past two summers, there has been less time to pause and perhaps our reflection has been one of nervous trepidation of what the new year will bring rather than an opportunity for new year resolutions. This summer has been no different. Since March, we have known that A-level examinations would not be happening and that instead results would be awarded on the basis of teacher assessed grades. As a result there was an inevitable over recruitment because UCAS application deadlines are in December and offer-making was largely complete before the announcement. International numbers have held up too and those students who may have postponed further study last year have recognised that we are likely to be living with this pandemic for some time and have taken up their places this year.

Similarly, we knew that while we were likely to see the return of most of our students in September, there would be some who could not make it to Manchester and for whom we would be dual delivering teaching to cohorts on campus and online. The Humanities eLearning team trained over 1,000 colleagues in the use of the new equipment over the summer in preparation for the start of the new academic year. Much of that teaching has gone well despite some teething problems but it was impacted by the recent issues with WiFI across the campus. We really appreciate all those who took the time to provide feedback on the dual delivery. We have read every comment, investigated the issues raised and have developed an action plan to ensure that staff and students’ experience of dual delivery is enhanced as we go forward into the remainder of the first semester. We have identified specific rooms in which there were issues with sound quality and have taken steps to address this. We have recruited a cohort of 35 graduate interns and 250 student facilitators to support the delivery of dual teaching and developed a new online booking system to ensure that interns and facilitators are matched to requests for support.

While I can explain the over-recruitment and the technological glitches that impacted dual delivery and describe what we did to what we did try to mitigate these issues, Professional Services and academic colleagues are at the front line, teaching and dealing with the additional numbers. Inevitably, the difficult start to the new year has meant that many colleagues are spending more time with students and less time on other activities. As this new technology beds in, I am hopeful that we will be able to use it support not just our teaching but also to facilitate research activities and to make us more efficient in meetings. Right now, I am enjoying attending at least some meetings on campus and being able to have those more informal conversations that are important for building and cementing relationships. Over the past few weeks, I have physically met people that I have been working with for over a year and that really does make a difference.

As I write, my children are preparing to go to different competitions this weekend. One in north Manchester and one in south – conveniently at exactly the same time. As parents and carers who are juggling work with our lives outside, we all do our best to manage the sometimes unmanageable. My job this evening may be to celebrate a great performance or to recognise that things haven’t gone to plan but either way, we’ll all get up on Monday morning and have to get ready for school or work. I suppose that every new week provides that same sense of both excitement and trepidation that I began with.

I hope that the rest of the semester goes well for you all.

Best wishes
Fiona

Dear colleagues,

Welcome back to the new academic year. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that the summer seems to have passed by at lightning speed this year!

I have two school-aged children and the start of a new academic year feels significant both personally and professionally. Our eldest child is entering Year 6 this year and is very excited to be amongst the eldest in her school and to get to sit on the special Year 6 benches in assembly. Over the last few weeks we have been thinking about secondary schools for her and have had the opportunity to visit a couple of schools. Her priorities are what they serve for lunch and if there is a girls’ football team. As parents we of course share those priorities, but also worry about the pastoral support available, the quality of teaching and culture of the school.

Our experiences have got me thinking about the many students who have made the decision to pick The University of Manchester for their studies and the trust they place in us, just as we will in the school we hope she will attend, to give them the best possible learning experience both academically and in terms of their wider student experience. Every day I see the commitment to students across academic and Professional Services (PS) teams in the Faculty and I am confident they are placing that trust in safe hands. Delivering the kind of student experience we want for our students remains challenging with the ongoing impacts of COVID-19, and for this semester dual teaching, but I am confident we will work together to do our very best even in challenging circumstances. Keith and Fiona shared a helpful update with academic staff about the arrangements for teaching and learning earlier this week which, if you haven’t seen, you can find here.

Working on campus

For many of us the new academic year has brought a change in the way we have been working since the start of the pandemic. For those who have been on campus throughout most of the last 18 months there is a wonderful buzz on campus and an opportunity to meet face-to-face with wider groups of colleagues rather than on Zoom or Teams. For others, this month is the first time they are returning to work on campus after 18 months of remote working. Whatever your circumstances, I encourage you to take some time to understand the current safety arrangements on campus. Maintaining the safety of our staff and students is our highest priority and there has been a huge investment of time and effort in making the University as safe as possible. We will be employing a number of measures to manage risk including:

• encouraging and facilitating all staff and students to have COVID-19 (and other) vaccinations. Pop up vaccination centres will be on campus for the start of term;
• asking all staff and students who have a positive PCR test to self-report this to the University which will help us to make informed decisions on the safety of our community;
• ensuring we all undertake regular self-testing for COVID-19 (tests are available freely on the campus at catering outlets);
• using face coverings indoors when moving around or in spaces where a risk assessment suggests the need for additional measures. Face coverings and hand sanitiser are available across our campus buildings;
• opening windows where possible, remembering to close them at the end of the day;
• using our new SafeZone app - an extra helpline to report issues on campus and access support, which can also be used to report COVID-19 issues. SafeZone check-ins can also help to design safe flows of movement across campus.

We know that colleagues will have concerns about working and teaching on campus, and many colleagues are keen to understand the safety measures in place and our new ways of working. If you have concerns, please do talk to your line manager, HR Partner or you can find more information on our ‘working on campus’ StaffNet pages and specific teaching pages. We are updating these on a regular basis so do keep checking for the latest information.

PS hybrid working

For PS colleagues across the Schools and Faculty Office this month we have launched our hybrid working pilot. This initiative comes from feedback from colleagues about the benefits they have found from elements of remote working over the past 18 months, in particular, that it is beneficial for individual work-life balance and also good for the University in terms of attracting and keeping talent, enhancing diversity and inclusion and using resources more sustainably.

Over the past few months, we have been developing our approach to hybrid working, refining a set of principles, and developing a detailed support guide for managers.

As the pilot progresses, we are keen to hear from PS and academic colleagues about what is working well and what might need to evolve as we learn from the pilot. Jayne Hindle (Head of School Operations in SALC), who is leading the Faculty Hybrid working group, and I will be in touch with colleagues across the Faculty later this month to share details of engagement sessions where you can share your thoughts with us.

Wellbeing

As we settle into our new routines, alongside continuing to work at great pace, please do look out for yourself and others. I know this is something that all senior leaders emphasise in their messages and you will have heard this many times before but I really want to highlight how important wellbeing is. We have a wealth of support available and, even if you don’t feel that you need it yourself, I encourage you to take a look. You could make a real difference to a colleague’s wellbeing.

Across the Faculty we have 15 Wellbeing Champions, PS and academic colleagues who play an active role in signposting staff to the University wellbeing services, national health and wellbeing days, University wellbeing events and who arrange locally based wellbeing events to engage and support staff. Many of them work closely with our Faculty-wide social and wellbeing activities group to help ensure that together we can provide support, advice and information to all colleagues who need it. Please note that men are under-represented in our Faculty Champion team and we’d love to make the team more inclusive.

You can find out more about becoming a Wellbeing Champion on StaffNet. Training for new Champions will be taking place later this year.

Staying with the theme of wellbeing, I was delighted to read last week’s message from Director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Banji Adewumi and Director of People and Organisational Development Adèle MacKinlay, in which they reminded us of the programmes and facilities we already have in place. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to read their message.

I am acutely aware that wellbeing is fundamentally linked to workload and that currently many colleagues across the Faculty are experiencing significant workload pressures from additional student numbers, COVID-19 impacts, change processes around SEP and dealing with COVID-19 impacts on research for academic staff. We are working hard to put in to place additional resources to deal with additional student numbers and to work with leaders across the Faculty to try and support with managing individual workloads. This will remain a key priority as we progress through this year.

In his recent Viewpoint blog Patrick Hackett, Registrar and COO, also talks about workload and shares some of his thoughts about the simple things that should be at the front of our minds, simple behaviours that we can change and make how we all work better. He shares…”How we work together, what we work on, even challenging why we do some of the things we do – are all areas for us to consider. I’m starting to give serious thought to three things that I aim to effect: reducing our documentation; reducing the number of meetings; and considering what we stop doing.” Please do read his full blog if you haven’t already. I’d like to join him in asking that we take these discussions into our teams – shape them, drive them, make them real and for us to share with him our successes, thoughts and ideas on this important area. I’ll certainly be having these conversations with my team.

As I said in my message to PS colleagues earlier this week, we continue to face challenging and uncertain times. We all have much to be proud of, both in the ways in which teams have supported each other and how we have worked together to ensure that we can deliver the best possible learning experience to our students.

I like to finish this message, Emmy award style, with a special thanks to a list of brilliant people, my fantastic PS leadership team – Janine Ellis, Niqui Ellis, Michelle Harper, Jayne Hindle, Kay Hodgson, Kate McNamee, Andrew Mullen, Emma Rose, Jared Ruff, Alison Wilson and Philippa Woods – a truly talented, brilliant and supportive team who I feel privileged to work with.

Please take care everyone and as always if there is anything you would like to talk to me about, either in terms of this email or any other matter, please get in touch.

Best wishes
Hannah

Dear colleagues,

We hope you have enjoyed a break during August. We have both had some time off here and there, and are looking forward to being on campus with renewed energy and excitement. The new academic year will start relatively soon, and academic and professional service colleagues across the Faculty are gearing up to welcoming our new and returning students. Over the last 18 months or so we have learned to live with uncertainty about how we will work. Hopefully, we will have less uncertainty this coming year, nevertheless a lot of effort has been put into planning for a full range of foreseeable eventualities. 

One unexpected challenge is the increase in size of our intake of new undergraduates for 2021/22 in the School of Social Sciences (SoSS) and in the Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS), and in some of the Schools in the other Faculties. In SoSS, as in AMBS, we are employing additional staff to deal with this, and are being supported by the Faculty and University through the provision additional space for staff and students.

One of our main tasks in SoSS this coming year, will be to review and update the School strategies for our core areas of activity that we were developing prior to the impact of Covid-19. Over the last year and half we have been in a more responsive than strategic mode. Despite this, we saw improved Unit Evaluation (UEQ) scores across the School, even if these did not translate into better National Student Survey (NSS) scores. We also had notable research successes which included the Research Excellence Framework (REF) submission with high quality publications and strong impact cases, as well increased grant capture. In terms of social responsibility, members of the School were invited to participate in a range of Covid-19 related advisory panels, and initiatives like the Justice Hub/Legal Advice Centre continued giving free legal advice virtually, whilst winning several awards for their work. But, it is time to look to the future once again.

The primary objective of all four Schools in our Faculty is to offer our students the best teaching and learning experience in as safe an environment as possible. As we prepare for the new academic year with both face-to-face and remote teaching, our teaching staff are undertaking training on dual teaching and our academics and professional service teams will continue to work together to support students in all aspects of their work, drawing on University-wide supports where necessary.

Staff from across the Faculty continue to be fully engaged in ‘size and shape’ planning. Following two years where external circumstances dictated our increasing size it is crucial that we return to a planned approach to growing student and staff numbers. For SoSS, already the largest School in the University in terms of student numbers, this is especially important. We will need to identify the right areas of growth to ensure that any increase will strengthen our research aspirations. The Dean and Faculty Executive fully supports this position. We will also continue to explore how we can make better use of the estate.

A second objective of the School is to support colleagues in more fully restarting their research. The past year was a difficult one for many colleagues and postgraduate research (PGR) students. Restrictions on fieldwork, travel, conference activities, as well as the increased intensity of teaching related activities, meant that the research activities of many colleagues changed, were delayed or stalled. While one of the advantages for me (Brian), was the realisation that my own empirical work could be effectively completed on-line, and that national and international travel was less of a necessity and could be ‘greener’ in the digital era, other colleagues experienced serious disruption of research. We need to make every effort to enable colleagues to get back on track with research, and move forward with the impact and social responsibility objectives that are part of their teaching and research.

What is perhaps less understood by some colleagues in the School and elsewhere, are the changes that will result from the Student Experience Programme (SEP), and one of our key areas of activity will be supporting PS colleagues to embrace the new structures and roles and engage with the technology being introduced to improve the experience for our students and staff and enable new ways of working across our University.

As has now become the usual state of affairs, we will face challenges and opportunities in the coming year that we are well positioned to meet and take advantage of. We have full trust in our colleagues in the School of Social Sciences, the Faculty and elsewhere to approach the coming year with the enthusiasm and commitment that you have always shown. We also trust that you will share our renewed sense of optimism for the year ahead and in developing plans for the future.

Best wishes
Brian Heaphy and Alison Wilson

Dear colleagues,

As the academic year draws to a close and we look forward to the year ahead we are hopeful that we will be able to return to a ‘new normal’ in September. 

Returning to campus 

As restrictions continue to ease across the UK, you will know that the expectation is that there will be limited restrictions on campus from 1 September. Plans can change of course, but we remain hopeful that on 19 August we will be able to confirm plans for working and teaching on campus in Semester 1. 

The Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS) building remained open for the majority of the last year and we are pleased that we have been able to offer study spaces for students who have been in Manchester. Last week we were delighted to be able to host some of our part-time Global MBA students on campus for their workshops. It was uplifting to see them and for them to see each other.  

We have both been on campus regularly over the last few months and have enjoyed seeing small numbers of colleagues and students in person. We have been cautious and there are lots of safety measures in place because we want to keep everyone safe and well. The experience of slowly returning has been a positive one. If you can, try to reacquaint yourself with campus and check your office ahead of the new academic year when everyone will be busy again. Arrangements should be agreed with your line manager in advance. 

Professional Services (PS) colleagues right across the University have been working in their teams to make plans for taking part in the Hybrid Working Pilot, which begins in September. Each PS team in AMBS has produced charters which set out their plans for on- and off-campus working. We are looking forward to seeing how the experiment works over the coming year. It is an exciting development.  

Size and shape 

Although it has been a year like no other, looking back on the past 12 months there is much to celebrate across the Faculty. Everyone has gone above and beyond, always putting our students first. We have seen first-hand, colleagues pulling together on Faculty projects such as the Size and Shape project. 

Against the background of securing long-term financial sustainability, the Size and Shape Taskforce was established to explore areas for growth via existing and new programmes. We were both involved in working groups and are now working on the successful implementation of a wide range of recommendations.  

Talking of new programmes, last year saw the launch of a new undergraduate programme in partnership with PwC and the ICAEW (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales). BSc Business Accounting with Industrial/Professional Experience combines academic study, integrated professional work placements and progress towards the ICAEW Chartered Accountancy qualification, the ACA. In October 2020, we welcomed the first intake of 40 high-calibre students from a range of diverse backgrounds.  

The academic year 20/21 saw the first intake of our new blended learning MSc Financial Management. Almost 60 students from around the world joined our programme, which they will complete on a part-time basis over two years. 

During the pandemic and in response to an increased interest in online executive education, we launched three new short courses in partnership with online education provider Emeritus. The courses are led by AMBS academics and cover data science; digital transformation in healthcare; and the future of finance. 

Our apprenticeship programmes are going from strength to strength too. Our PGCert in Management Practice is experiencing high demand. We have redesigned the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson NHS Leadership Academy programme to be offered under the apprenticeship levy scheme. The next cohort, starting in November, is already full.  

This year we also made preparations to relaunch our Manchester Doctor in Business Administration (DBA) programme in September 2021, following a review by our DBA Director Professor Timothy Devinney. We are also exploring DBA partnerships with international institutions. Finally, we recently launched our Global Executive MBA, an 18-month accelerated pathway of the Global MBA, for a closed cohort of senior MBA candidates. The first cohort will join us in July 2022. We have been busy!  

Research on Covid-19 and productivity 

So much great research has been undertaken across the University and Faculty on Covid-19.  

Professor Duncan Shaw brought together colleagues from AMBS, the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute and the wider University to work with organisations to develop plans for ensuring recovery from COVID-19. The team secured almost £1m, partly funded by the ESRC, to support research into the long-term recovery of local communities. They will develop guidance and create a framework that can be used to build resilience in communities post-COVID. Duncan was also honoured by the British Standards Institute for his work on producing guidelines for organisations and communities in the wake of the pandemic. 

Members of our Work and Equalities Institute have also been monitoring and commenting on the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on work and equalities within the UK and around the world. Institute Director, Professor Jill Rubery, gave evidence to the Women and Equalities Select Committee which looked at a range of topics related to the pandemic and at the effectiveness of various government support schemes that have been introduced, especially for female workers. Jill has also been invited to join an expert group advising the government on managing future employment post-Covid. 

It is almost 12 months since our £32million Productivity Institute launched, led by Professor Bart Van Ark. With academics from across the University, eight UK partner Institutions, and eight Regional Productivity Forums, it is helping policy makers and business leaders understand and improve productivity as the economy begins to recover from the impact of Covid-19. 

We launched our Original Thinking Webinars in response to the pandemic which have been a great platform for our new and newly-promoted professors to showcase their research and teaching. All our events moved online including our flagship Vital Topics Series and Annual Grigor McClelland Lecture given by Professor Diane Coyle on whether current business practices are to blame for capitalism.  

Take a break

While we appreciate that many colleagues are entering a busy time and laying the foundations for the year ahead, we urge you to take a break, enjoy the sunshine and spend time with friends and family over the summer months. We are both enjoying breaks in the UK over the coming weeks. Continue to look after yourselves and each other. 

Fiona and Janine

Message from Kate McNamee, Head of Marketing and Communications Alliance Manchester Business School

Last weekend I was back on Anglesey’s coastal path. For those of you that know the island I was on the stretch between Cemaes Bay and Porth Wen. The path dips down to a hidden cove before ascending steep steps cut into the cliff (clearly designed by someone with longer legs than me!)

At the top, the walk continues on an extremely narrow path that hugs the edge of the cliffs - beautiful but you need a head for heights!

Just like navigating that difficult section of the coastal path I was reflecting about how the most challenging things are usually the most rewarding.

As we edge ever-closer to complete lifting of restrictions we are all digging deeper into our reserves than ever before.

At the same time, many of us have used those reserves and the uncertainty of the current situation to innovate and find new ways of doing things. This in itself boosts energy by challenging our thinking and bringing fresh perspectives to help us navigate through.

Across the Faculty we have experimented and piloted new activity. For example, the PS Hybrid Working pilot is shaping up nicely. It is refreshing to see recognition that one size doesn’t fit all - empowering teams to focus on flexibility to deliver the best possible outcomes for their areas.

Academic and PS teams continue to work in partnership to deliver some exceptional activity.

Our Size and Shape work brings together academic and PS colleagues from across the Faculty who wouldn’t ordinarily have the opportunity to work together – sharing diverse expertise as we reimagine the future composition of Humanities.

Re-imagining what our research and teaching will look like in the next 5 years is an exciting proposition. Getting there will undoubtedly be messy, at times challenging but ultimately rewarding.

Throughout the project I have been keeping in mind advice from Google’s Avinash Kaushik: “70% of activity is about keeping focus on your core business, 20% is creating space to push the boundaries and the final 10% is about the super experimental stuff, getting uncomfortable and learning from the activity that fails. In this way every success, however small, builds a competitive advantage.”
We are working more closely in partnership with our students than ever before to innovate and deliver joint projects, such as the new Student Communications Framework.

We are getting to know our Student Union reps; running focus groups to listen and understand what’s important to prospective and current students - with the aim of supporting them in the best possible way.

New brochures for E2022 (SEED, SALC, SoSS and AMBS) have been developed in partnership with our students and each School, alongside new social channels bringing student and research stories to life - showcasing how we use both to support the communities we are part of. Our student ambassadors have already been busy with Instagram takeovers and Q&A sessions explaining why Manchester is a great place to study.

In the world of research, the recent Guardian Live event series showcased thinking from SoSS and SALC – thanks to Gary Younge, Rachel Gibson and Bertrand Taithe for taking part.

SEED is leading the University's contribution to the UK Government’s largest-ever programme on Greenhouse Gas Removal techniques, focusing on responsible innovation and societal engagement.

The AMBS Original Thinking webinars and magazine continues to extend the reach of our research.

Over the coming months we will be focussing on the Levelling Up agenda, working in partnership with Andy Westwood and John Holden and colleagues from across the University. The aim of the campaign will be connecting Humanities and wider University research, and plugging it into national and Greater Manchester policy discussions; as well as highlighting engagement through initiatives such as ID Manchester, Northern Gritstone and our longstanding commitments to supporting skills and widening participation.

On a more personal note, some of you may know that I joined the Faculty Team on secondment last summer. One of my biggest challenges has been leading and managing a new team, many of whom I haven’t met in person, continuing to lead the AMBS team, whilst simultaneously embedding the new SEP team structures.

I have found The Leading Through Uncertainty series - keynotes from external speakers and Manchester experts sharing practical advice - a useful place for inspiration.

When you are running on fumes it is easy to fall back to familiar patterns of thinking and behaviours. The session from William Winstone focused on how we can create a safe psychological space for teams and individuals to share new ideas and flag when things aren’t going as well as they might.

Having a curious, open mind set increases your chances of anticipating what’s next – both from a business and customer perspective. This is a team thing as well as an individual thing. Team curiosity helps avoid ‘group think’ - I am always mindful of this and challenge my team to maintain an inquisitive outlook!

Our Learning and Development Team have some excellent resources and LinkedIn Learning is a useful way to stretch your thinking and develop your skill sets.

With PDRs approaching I’d encourage everyone to reflect and use the opportunity to have rich conversations with your manager - celebrating successes; identifying what hasn’t gone well and what you can do differently, and planning for the future.

Going back to the start, once you’ve navigated the tricky coastal path and climbed the killer steps this is the view:

definitely worth it… especially if there’s fish and chips, and a glass of something cold at the end!

I’m looking forward to spending more time in Anglesey later this summer. However you choose to relax, enjoy your break, take time to recharge ready for whatever comes next.

Message from Martin Evan, Head of School, and Kay Hodgson,  Head of School Operations
School of Environment, Education and Development

Dear colleagues,

With exams finished and marking drawing to a close, early summer tends to be Away Day and Performance and Development Review (PDR) season. These are rare moments in incredibly busy diaries where we collectively and individually reflect on the past year and think strategically about the future. Looking back at the academic year in the School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED) and across the Faculty, colleagues have much to be proud of.

As the pandemic struck and we went into lockdown, it became clear that our teaching was going to have to change dramatically. SEED colleagues immediately leapt into action, organising a number of working groups to assess how we could continue to deliver for our students in such difficult conditions. These groups drew on Professional Services and academic expertise to develop and share best practice across a range of teaching, learning and research activities. The groups tackled key challenges such as: how do you do fieldwork without leaving your desk? How can we support our students when they are studying across the world? And crucially, how do we maintain the sense of student collegiality we are so proud of in SEED? The fantastic student feedback we’ve received across the departments, both informal and through the Unit Evaluation Questionnaires (UEQs), has shown their appreciation of this hard work. We know that across the Faculty, similar teamwork has ensured that the student experience has been an extremely positive one, despite the year’s many difficulties.

Despite the Herculean efforts that teaching has demanded in the past year, we have a wide range of research successes to report. A number of major research activities have completed their inception phases and moved into their core programme of work recently, most notably the £32m African Cities project. There have been new successes in research grants and fellowship programmes too in areas ranging from nature recovery to greenhouse gas reduction, with lots of innovative new work taking place in response to the Covid crisis. It is difficult to pick one out but the #BeeWell project by the Manchester Institute of Education, which focused on child mental health in schools in the wake of the pandemic, is an excellent example of SEED research making a difference in the world.

The breadth of social responsibility work in SEED has recently been highlighted through the six Making a Difference awards our colleagues and students won and the research case studies in the current University Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) campaign. It has been fantastic to learn more about the work of colleagues from across Faculty through these activities too, an uplifting reminder that social responsibility remains at the heart of Humanities. In SEED, we are now working closely with our Social Responsibility Director to shape and support a new series of student and academic activities and projects, which we hope we will be putting forward for next year’s Making a Difference awards.

As we start to look ahead, there’s a lot we can learn from the past 12 months. We know many of us have valued the flexibility that working at home has brought, while also missing elements of being on campus. Hybrid working is a positive concept, and for Schools like SEED and SoSS where space is a real challenge, it also offers exciting new potential to use our space in different ways. The launch of the hybrid working principles for Professional Service colleagues paves the way for new approaches to team working. Importantly, it will allow us to support critical aspects of working such as wellbeing and inclusion, while potentially improving our environmental sustainability through a reduction in travel and energy usage in our buildings.

While for many of us hybrid working will be the beginnings of a ‘return to campus’, we must remember that the campus has remained a vital part of our research and activities throughout the pandemic. Our colleagues in laboratories and workshops have worked hard to modify spaces for Covid security and continued to provide specialist facilities for staff and students. More recently, as Covid restrictions have allowed, some colleagues have been able to offer local fieldwork and opportunities for interaction with students around the campus. This practical and experiential teaching is an important part of what we do and we sincerely hope to be doing more of this as soon as possible.

Adaptability across the Faculty and University will be key as we take our tentative first steps on the hybrid working road – it is an exciting time but there are bound to be bumps along the way. We will need to find out what works and what doesn’t. Universities are collegial places of learning...where better to explore the ‘new normal’, in our practice as well as our research? Hopefully this will be a chance to use the campus for what it does best while allowing colleagues to retain what they have valued about our great experiment in remote working.

Best wishes

Martin and Kay

Professor Andrew James, Associate Dean for Business Engagement and External Relations
Jared Ruff, Head of Research and Business Engagement

Dear colleagues,

The Faculty’s contribution to culture, society and the economy depends in important respects on the way that the ideas we develop interact with and flow into business, government, community, and social and cultural organisations. The world is continuing to change dramatically in terms of the importance of engagement and impact, not only with regards to Research Excellence Framework (REF) requirements but also the wider funding landscape. Engaging with business has become a key part of the higher education sector across research, knowledge exchange and teaching and learning.

The post of Associate Dean for Business Engagement & External Relations was established five years ago to reflect the growing importance of business engagement and with the aim of developing a more strategic approach across our Schools. Each School now has an Academic Business Engagement Lead responsible for promoting business engagement in their School. The Faculty has a team of three business engagement specialists who act as a ‘front door’ to the Faculty providing advice, support and signposting to connect our academic expertise with external organisations. Professional services supporting our research have been restructured to draw together our business engagement and grant writing teams into a strategic funding team to align better with our priority themes, enabling us to respond to an increasingly volatile and shifting external funding landscape. This realignment of PS resources will support our strategic intent of further increasing our research income streams, from not only UKRI but also business and external donors.

Within our Faculty, we have some great examples of strong business engagement. SALC has partnerships with organisations including the National Trust and the National Crime Agency (using forensic linguistics to identify anonymous offenders on the Dark Web). The £7.5 million NERC Digital Solutions programme led by SEED involves links to multiple business sectors. We have the Manchester Scale-Up Forum – a network of ambitious scale-up businesses which is facilitated by AMBS in cooperation with the Scale Up Institute and comprises some of the North West’s fastest growing companies. In the social sciences, Manchester was the founder together with LSE and Sussex of the ASPECT programme (A Social sciences Platform for Entrepreneurship, Commercialisation and Transformation) which is seeking to raise the profile and significance of commercialising social sciences research. Across the Faculty, we have seen a growth in the number of Knowledge Transfer Partnerships and we now have KTPs in progress in each School. Earlier this week AMBS announced that, together with Audi, the School’s Executive Education team has been recognised with a Gold Award for their Audi LEAD programme in the Professional Development category of this year’s EFMD Excellence in Practice Awards, a huge achievement, and the AMBS Vital Topics series continues to attract exceptional business speakers, including Director General of the Confederation of British Industry Tony Danker, who will lead an event later in the year.

Working with businesses and non-governmental organisations has generated new areas of research. New Artificial Intelligence and related developments in information and communications technologies are potentially transforming the way in which financial and legal services are delivered and regulated. The Faculty of Humanities is playing a key role in understanding these developments through its business engagement activities with both sectors, through initiatives respectively known as FinTech and LawTech.FinTech applies new technologies to the design and delivery of financial services and our work with a range of businesses in the financial services sector has led to a range of new cross-disciplinary research activities. Similarly, collaboration with leading law firms such as Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and DWF has led to the development of new teaching and research initiatives focused on LegalTech and access to justice. The Manchester Law & Technology Initiative is a collaborative research initiative led by Law, AMBS and Computer Sciences and funded by our law firm partners.

The future research funding landscape means that business engagement of this kind will be increasingly important. Funding bodies are moving towards more mission-oriented research programmes that emphasise grand challenges, multi-disciplinarity and academic-business cooperation. This was evident in the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund and will be a strong feature of future funds for ‘levelling up’. We are in a strong position to respond to place-based opportunities, building on the success of the Productivity Institute and its regional business forums.

There are a number of ways for academic colleagues to explore the potential of working with external organisations. The ESRC Impact Acceleration Account funds knowledge exchange and engagement activities. Simon Industrial and Professional Fellowships provide opportunities for people employed in industry, commerce, the public sector or third sector to undertake a fixed-term placement within the University. We have established innovative new mechanisms for engagement with business including our “Innovation Labs”. These are one day facilitated workshops at which businesses and academics work together in multidisciplinary teams to address business challenges and pitch proposals for University seed corn funding. Colleagues can get advice on these mechanisms and others from their School Business Engagement lead and the Faculty’s business engagement support team.

This will be my last leaders message, in August I will be stepping down as Associate Dean and passing the role onto my colleague, Dr Javier Garcia Oliva who is currently Academic Business Engagement lead in Social Sciences. I hope that as you read and reflect on this update you will agree that the role has certainly changed and evolved over this period, business engagement for Humanities was once seen as an impenetrable area but now we see it as a key part of our activity deeply embedded in much of our strategic thinking and directly linked to our research strategy. Despite the COVID-related challenges of the last year we have continued to make great strides and I’m confident that Javier and the team are in a great position to build on our good work and build on this position of strength.

Andrew and Jared

School of Arts, Languages and Cultures

Alessandro Schiesaro, Head of School and Jayne Hindle, Head of School Operations

Dear colleagues,

Lockdown has reminded all of us, among other things, what a fundamental role creativity and the arts play in our lives. Even if we had to dispense with theatres, cinemas and concerts, books, television and internet provided a crucial space for the life of the mind. While we look forward to more normal conditions in this and other respects, we are pleased that the recent creation of the Creative Manchester University-wide platform signals The University of Manchester’s commitment in this area. In the meantime, you may want to take a look at SALC: Connect, Engage, Inspire to get a sense of the great variety of activities that take place in all parts of the School. This new website has turned out to be a great way to connect with our current and prospective students.

Like many of you, we were very disappointed that the recent government announcement has prevented the overwhelming majority of our students from returning to Campus. Nevertheless, some of our staff and students across the Faculty of Humanities have returned to Campus. Indeed, some of our colleagues have remained on campus for the majority of the past 13 months, including our technicians in the Geography labs and some of our Professional Services colleagues. We hope over the coming months that they will continue to be joined by more staff and students as we gradually open up more of our campus. 

While most of teaching in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC) continues online, at the end of March we were delighted to start to welcome our Music, Drama and Film students back to campus. This has been possible thanks to the efforts and extraordinary generosity of colleagues across the University: we are grateful for the many colleagues who have advised on risk assessments, as well as timetabling, technical and estates teams who have helped to identify and prepare spaces for teaching. Thanks are also due to the Students Union, who have provided access to their large Academy spaces, basement club and theatre space. Between us, all as part of a great team effort, we have created a dynamic set of spaces for our student activity.

A different, but equally extraordinary effort has gone into ensuring that teaching in all subjects would meet the highest standards. We are proud of the fact that online delivery proved successful: a collective effort to turn momentary problems into opportunities for innovation has been the key feature of our teaching this year. Needless to say, no one will want to experience again the stress, uncertainty and danger caused by the pandemic, but a lot of lessons have been learnt that we will certainly want to reflect upon and perhaps adopt in the future. There are aspects of on-campus, in-person teaching that are irreplaceable; at the same time, we are now aware of a broader range of creative options for delivery and enriching our teaching.

For Drama, Film and Music, however, coming back to campus was a priority, given the nature of their activities. The default setting for creative practice teaching in the Drama department, for instance, is working in groups and spending extended time in space, a context that allows for the chance ideas and occurrences important for creating an artistic output. Returning to campus has thus been a complete joy. But, this year, staff and students have also developed a mass of approaches and creative projects impossible to imagine a year ago, genuinely positive and innovative ways of teaching and making that would not have happened had studio and lab spaces been available to us in the usual way. The student-led Drama Society has reinvented itself to deliver an online festival of work and training programme, and to become a micro-commissioning hub supporting and mentoring new projects from members. Our alumni have given their time for free through this last lockdown, providing unique insights into how the creative sector is surviving the pandemic, as well as plenty of useful advice, via a series of well-attended early evening careers sessions.

Brilliantly, our ‘digital native’ students have embraced the possibilities of an online environment, blending theatre with screen media in ways that both preserve the electricity of live performance whilst also exploiting the creative possibilities of film as a practice. A hybrid form – not ‘theatre’, not ‘film’ – has emerged from student work. Just one example. Students in the second year Devising for Performance course were asked to experiment with lip-synching as a technique, drawing on the approach used by Rachel Maclean and Clio Barnard in the film The Arbor. Two students, Hal Winston-Fletcher and Alex Macfarlane, created a short piece, ‘The Future’, based on an excerpt from an episode of Tomorrow’s World originally recorded in 1966, during which children were asked to imagine the future. The skills in this short clip, shared here with the students’ permission, are impressive - lip-synching is harder than it looks and the quality of the editing is excellent. But it is also compelling to witness these words, originally spoken in 1966, re-enacted by two students navigating a present and a future even more fearful and uncertain than that imagined by their younger peers more than 50 years ago. 

The prolonged campus closure has been especially challenging for students in Music, who normally keep the Martin Harris Centre buzzing from dawn till dusk with a packed programme of rehearsals and public concerts. Undaunted, the student-run Music Society (MUMS) and University Chorus have found inventive ways of keeping the music alive, acquiring a host of invaluable new skills in the process. Up to 100 singers attend our weekly Chorus rehearsals held on Zoom, with this year’s repertoire including world premieres of several compositions by our own students. A new tradition has also been established, with special guests giving invited talks in the second half of the evening: these have included composers Paul Mealor and John Casken and conductors Matthew Hamilton and Justin Doyle. Our chamber choirs Ad Solem and The Cosmo Singers have also been busy making a lockdown album, with their voices recorded individually and then mixed by Master’s student Benoît André: here they perform Bruckner’s ‘Os Justi’.

Meanwhile, the weekly programme of online events hosted by MUMS has included Virtual Symphony Orchestra rehearsals, String Orchestra Socials, the series ‘Brass Band Presents…’, virtual lunchtime concerts and club nights, listening parties and house jams, masterclasses with professional artists, and a series of talks and Q&As with special guests from the music industry.

There is a further piece of news that brightened the last few days. Emma Moran, who graduated last year from our MA Screenwriting, has had her new original comedy show ‘greenlit’ for Disney+, a remarkable success. She's our first graduate to have a complete original TV show greenlit, and we are very proud of her as we are of all our students, in all subjects, who have risen to the challenges posed by this unprecedented situation. They keep us all going.

A huge amount of work is now going into making sure that next academic year will run as smoothly as possible, and we look forward to welcoming our new Head of School in June. Once again, the commitment of PS and academic staff alike, even after over a year of disruption, is truly inspiring, and it enables us all to look to the future with confidence.

Best wishes

Dear colleagues,

The completion and submission of the Faculty and University’s submission to the Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) in a year of global societal crisis is an amazing achievement, which we must take time to celebrate. First, however, let us acknowledge the fantastic work of our School Research Directors, Unit of Assessment/Impact Leads, and the professional support teams, all of whom have dedicated themselves to completing this task with an astonishing sense of commitment and purpose. They have truly exceeded expectations, working tirelessly to get us over the submission line, working largely off-campus, under the most trying of circumstances.

There is no doubting that the breadth and scale of our research capacity in Humanities is vast. A snapshot of our return shows the sheer scale of the task that we have just completed.

• Staff submitted: 819 (766.7 FTE)
• Research outputs: 1675, including 190 double-weighted books
• Impact cases: 73
• Environment statements: 20
• Research income: £117 million
• Doctoral completions: 1908

Recently a colleague asked me what I would have done differently in relation to the present REF exercise. I do not believe that this is the right time to address this question. Instead, I believe we should be reflecting at this juncture on what we got right.

The defining point came in the summer of 2020, with REF2021 paused and nationally the picture uncertain as to whether the exercise would actually continue, perhaps with an adjusted timetable, or be abandoned. Faced with this uncertainty, we took the important decision to press ahead regardless, working to the best of our ability within the confines of the current timetable. We took this crucial step in order to enable us to bend and flex as necessary, mindful of the possibility of further unforeseen events that might necessitate the shifting of our scarce resources to meet the new demands prevailing. In consequence, we built in the necessary reserves of time and energy to meet the inevitable setbacks (relatively few in number) that did occur, thus ensuring we have delivered all of the elements of our submission to Research England a week in advance of the deadline set by Research England, the body overseeing the exercise within our country. The extra time our contingency planning bought us enabled us to further strengthen and enhance our environment and impact case studies, ensuring that the returns pertaining to all 20 of our units of assessment (UOAs) reflect, to the best of our ability, the many and varied research accomplishments as a whole.

There is no question that this has been a team effort of Herculean proportions. We have all played a vital role, working together to secure the best possible outcome. Whether or not we will attain the outcome we are hoping for, of course, now lies beyond our control, but we have put everything in place to maximise our chances of success, and I am grateful to you all for your selfless dedication and teamwork.

The end of this major piece of work also summons the beginning of a new one and we must not now become complacent. In many respect this is a reckoning time for us, a dividing line between the then pre-COVID world and the new, highly uncertain world we are continuing to grapple with on a daily basis.

We are already moving ahead with great pace in the creation of our new post-REF/post-COVID research strategy, driven by our passion for continuing success. Although there are going to be many challenges ahead, we are doing everything in our power to ensure we are well placed to address them. The investments we have made in our beacons, institutes, and the new platforms, have positioned us well to adapt to the rapidly evolving funding landscape and to take advantage of new opportunities, while maintaining our focus on the areas in which we excel.

On the basis of what we have already achieved over the last REF cycle, especially over the last year, together with the planning that is now in place, I am confident that we are well-placed to commence the next leg of our journey.
Thank you once again to everyone for the parts you have each played in this collective endeavour. Irrespective of the eventual outcomes, which we won’t know for another 12 months, I am proud of what we have accomplished together.

I wish you all a richly deserved, extended Easter break.

Gerard

Dear colleagues,

As we approach one year since the first lockdown came into effect and when most of us relocated our workplace to home, the government this week published its roadmap for our coming out of this latest and, hopefully, last period of lockdown. Further details of what precisely the roadmap and associated DfE guidance means for us in terms of on campus activity, including in-person teaching, for the remainder of the academic year is under consideration and will be communicated in the coming days. 

Many of us will have found this lockdown more difficult than the previous periods. Along with heightened worries about the virus and the challenges of isolation from family and friends, we have had to contend with the long and cold winter nights, and fewer opportunities to get outdoors. For many colleagues, the return of home schooling has presented a significant challenge while the uncertainty about when and how we come out of lockdown affects us all. Mercifully, the roll out of the vaccine provides great cause for optimism. There is a palpable sense of release - verging on joy - when colleagues learn that family and friends have received that first vaccine dose. We now dare to look forward to doing more of the things that enrich our lives, many of which we have necessarily had to forfeit.

We all find our own ways of seeking to cope with the current situation and maintaining our morale.  We know that challenges to our wellbeing can cover anything from occasional low mood to more acute mental health issues. The University has an extensive range of support available to help us with our wellbeing. As I said in a previous message, please don’t feel it an indulgence to engage with these activities and support. We also have a number of options available to support colleagues currently balancing work with caring responsibilities or commitments.

We are launching a short online staff survey on 1 March which gives colleagues the opportunity to provide feedback on how our University is responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and in particular staff wellbeing. There are 22 questions and it will take up to five minutes to complete. We are working with an external organisation, People Insight, to carry out the survey and analyse the results on our behalf. Though the answers are reported anonymously, participants will be asked for demographic data to enable analysis of answers by area, occupational group and protected characteristics. I would encourage you to take the time to complete the survey. The responses are very important to us in gauging staff views and morale, and in influencing our approach to policy, practice and colleague engagement.

The Student Experience Programme (SEP) continues to progress with Cohorts 1 and 2 now running in parallel. Colleagues from Cohort 1 - student marketing and recruitment, and admissions and applications - are working at pace to populate new structures. This are scheduled to complete by the end of March, and will be followed by the roll out of the new technology platforms that underpin new processes and ways of working. During this time Kate McNamee and Emma Rose and the new teams will be working closely with Heads of Schools and their leadership teams to ensure a smooth transition.

Cohort 2 started again earlier this month and activity is picking up pace. The themes covered are: teaching, learning and student experience, PGR, Widening Participation and student communications. During March proposals for new process, team structures and technology will be shared and everyone will have an opportunity to feed in views – helping to shape the new approach.

Over the coming weeks Heads of School Operations will be sharing a video explaining these proposals and giving more detail about how colleagues can get involved. Look out for monthly drop-in sessions that will give colleagues an opportunity to feed in views and ask questions.  

Can I remind colleagues who participate in promotion and staff recruitment panels to ensure they have completed two online equality, diversity and inclusion training sessions in the last three years.  The courses are Diversity in the Workplace and Unconscious Bias and take around an hour each to complete. If you are unsure whether you’ve completed the training in the past three years, you can view your training record at My Manchester

Finally, you may have seen that in recognition of the efforts being made by our staff and the impact that the ongoing pandemic is having on us all, the University has announced that we will be giving colleagues two extra days of holiday  around the Easter break on Thursday, 1 April and Tuesday, 6 April.

All good wishes,

Andrew

Dear colleagues,

Last week we saw a deluge of documents issued by the Department for Education (DfE). Like many colleagues in English universities I was particularly interested in what the Government had to say about the Augar and Pearce Reviews, both some two years old now, and in the consultation on university admissions, to a possible post qualification admissions (PQA) model, that has also emerged from reviews led by UCAS and Universities UK. But alongside these, there was also a long-promised further education (FE) white paper and by the end of the same day a grant letter from DfE to the Office for Students (OfS) with, amongst other things, a plan to significantly reform teaching funding and capital.

In a previous life I used to write very similar documents, so I like to think I’m at least a little bit sympathetic to officials and advisers when new versions appear. They depend on so many different things that they are very hard to get right. Perhaps the most important factor is really knowing what you want to achieve and whether you have the resources with which to do so. But in this latest set of publications, neither look very obvious to me.

For Augar and its proposals to reduce tuition fees, reform entry to university, and rebalance spending across the whole post-18 tertiary system incorporating FE and HE, the response is only an ‘interim’ one. Yet again the can has been kicked down the road - this time to a spending review expected in the Autumn. The message is that all the original proposals remain on the table and that it is now over to the Treasury (and to No 10) to decide what they want to do with them. It means further uncertainty over the short and long term and perhaps deliberately, is meant to keep universities guessing at the final shape of the system.

Ominously though, the response includes the line that Augar highlighted ‘the significant and growing taxpayer subsidy in the higher education student finance system’ and the statement that ‘it is important that the student finance funding systems remain sustainable’. Amongst the many impacts Covid-19 is having on higher education, the weakening prospects for graduates, including ours, entering the labour market in the short to medium term means that fewer will be able to repay their student loans at the rate before the pandemic. As colleagues in Economics will know, this isn’t a temporary effect but rather a longer term ‘scarring’ to earnings and life chances over time. As a result the cost of the system increases and the Treasury will be watching these figures very closely.

The Pearce Review is a very thorough examination of the Teach Excellence Framework (TEF) since its introduction in 2016. Carrying out an independent assessment was a concession in the Higher Education and Research Act passed in 2015 and finally we are getting to see a document that has been on ministers’ desks since August 2019. The upshot of the Government’s response to it is that there will be no subject-based TEF and no more gold, silver or bronze awards. In my view both of these were bad ideas in the first place - especially the ‘medals.’ 

In fact the TEF in its current form will all but disappear and be replaced by a new version with four levels and likely to apply for a longer cycle (closer to that in the REF). There will be another consultation led by the OfS soon and as in its first iteration, the Government’s intention is still to bear down on ‘low quality’ and ‘poor value for money’. That will still be the focus and, one assumes that the DfE’s main hope is that a reformed TEF will be better able to identify them. That is a clear enough goal, but it’s almost impossible to do via any scheme like this. There have been some important metrics but next time, like in this model, none have told us very much about teaching quality.

We have heard most of the proposals in the ‘Skills for Jobs’ white paper before, including promises of a Lifetime Skills Guarantee, expanding Institutes of Technology and rolling out ‘T Levels’. Likewise, the push for developing higher technical qualifications - Augar’s ‘missing middle’ - and expanding progression and participation on L4 and 5 qualifications. There are also commitments to introduce a flexible four-year entitlement to loan funding post-18 (due to be implemented in 2025) and a fully credit-based system across FE and HE. These are all decent aims for a post-18 system that is pretty starkly unbalanced compared to other countries. But as with the Augar response, DfE is seeking major system change with few upfront financial commitments from the Treasury.

We often think that the pace of change is high (and perhaps becoming ever faster) in higher education. However it is very much worse in further education. Since the Further and Higher Education Act in 1992 there have been 15 Government-commissioned reviews of FE or the skills system in England (or significant aspects of it), at least 15 white papers and five major Acts of Parliament. There have been seven different departments overseeing FE and at least 30 junior ministers with responsibility for skills, though notably between July and December 2019 the Government forgot to appoint one. The Secretary of the State then and the 13^th overall is Gavin Williamson. Unlucky for all of us perhaps?

What does it mean for The University of Manchester and for the Faculty of Humanities? Firstly in the short term the undergraduate tuition fee will be frozen for a further year and so in real terms, that’s a further fall as other costs continue to rise. The prospect of a fee reduction or of some restriction on numbers in the future may mean extra pressure in what looks like another extraordinary summer and an unpredictable 2021/22 academic year. Like last year, A Level results are likely to mean more meeting offers and wanting to take up places. But in the longer term it may be much harder for Humanities - or similar faculties elsewhere in the sector - to grow in the way they have in recent years. Places or fees may be restricted and we certainly shouldn’t assume that growth, or the Government paying for it, is going to be automatic.

But the most important message in all of the documents is that while the Government retains big ambitions for reform in both FE and HE, it hasn’t yet decided what they are. More may or may not become clearer in the Autumn but for now it is another set of uncertainties for us to manage in the Faculty as well as in the University as a whole.

Best wishes

Andy

• Read Andy’s latest blog for WONKE, also shared on Viewpoint.

Dear colleagues,

My mum reminded me recently about the family ‘Christmas round-robin letters’ which started to arrive about this time of year when I was kid. They’d contain, often in far too much detail, the news and reflections of my great aunts, cousins and other far-flung family members in chatty and definitely somewhat cringey style!

I did consider for a moment basing this message loosely on this format, as I’d like to take the opportunity to reflect and celebrate our many achievements in this extraordinary year. Mercifully though, I will save you all from that experience as that format simply won’t do justice to the Faculty, and the Rundle family is far too boring to have enough news (unless you are interested in all the lockdown family walks we have done!)

As I look back across 2020, we have much to celebrate as a Faculty. That said, this extraordinary year has had many highs and many lows. As leaders, we have got some decisions right and we have got some decisions wrong and it is important to recognise these imperfections but also recognise they are accompanied by best endeavours and an unwavering commitment to the future of The University of Manchester, its staff and its students.

2020 started with the Rundle family moving into our new family home in Trafford. People aren’t kidding when they talk about how stressful moving is! I was starting to settle into my new role and the kids were learning all sorts of new phrases at their new school. I had to Google what our six-year-old meant when he told me to stop ‘mithering’ him!! My husband was finding his feet with remote working for the Met Office which is based in Exeter. Suddenly in March as lockdown began, the kids and I were also at home and he was no longer unusual in remote working!

I am incredibly proud of the way teams came together across the Faculty to safely close down campus and begin to deliver our Professional Services (PS) activities, teaching and research remotely. Teams across the Faulty not only stood up very quickly their activities remotely, but also looked after each other, worked flexibly, juggled new complexities around home and work life, and have done so ever since. It was something, frankly, we had little preparation for, and certainly no business continuity plan for (that has now been fixed).

Recently, I’ve had the pleasure of presenting at three of our four School annual Visits, along with my fellow Faculty Executive colleagues, with just SEED remaining. It has been a wonderful opportunity to share some of the exceptional work that has happened this year across the PS teams in the Schools and Faculty office. A few of the highlights I have shared include:

• Admissions and student recruitment teams who have supported confirmation and clearing twice, processed a huge volume of applications and delivered some amazing conversion work.
• TLSE teams who have seen an unprecedented volume of work, with major changes to areas such as timetabling. The teams have worked incredibly hard to keep all activities on track despite the ever changing environment we are working in.
• The work of the SALC University Language Centre PS team who have collaborated closely with the Academic team to deliver a very different pre-sessional course this year, with synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning delivered fully online over the summer.
• The cross-School and Faculty Office team who have lead the complex process of reopening our buildings, our return to campus and the implementation of our covid-secure measures.
• Research teams who have been crucial to the support for externally funded grants and Research Contract staff, including advice on managing/restructuring finances and extensions.
• Amazing awards for PS colleagues in SoSS including a Higher Education Academy Fellowship.
• Colleagues in the Marketing & Communications teams who have helped with student emails and enquiries at both a School and University-level during this very busy period.
• PS colleagues in AMBS have supported the launch of a new series of online executive education courses in a very short time period.
• SEED B.15 Workshop production of PPE visors for the Manchester NHS Trusts during the national lockdown first phase.  

This is just a few of the highlights, and in this message, as in the meetings, so many points had to be left unsaid. Suffice to say, I am truly in awe of what we have achieved together this year.

I am also deeply mindful that whilst we have a huge amount to be proud of in terms of achievements this year, both academic and PS staff are overstretched, we have relationships with students to heal, and ongoing financial and sector uncertainty. For PS teams in most areas 'business as usual' simply doesn't exist this year and almost all of our activity is far more complex or needs reworking as teams support a blended model of teaching, movement between tiers (Department for Education, National, University?!) and dealing with major changes in how students and staff interact with our services. Significant additional student numbers are also putting major pressures on many teams.

I am working with my PS Leadership team to plan for how we resource and support the teams who have been impacted heavily by the recruitment freeze and the voluntary severance schemes. We are cautiously and prudently releasing our PS recruitment freeze, focusing resource into key areas and extending a small number of fixed term contracts. We have also recruited a cohort of interns to work with Schools this year and they are in the process of joining teams at the moment. There is much more still to do, and this is our main priority at the moment.

Decisions about resourcing of teams, are, for a large group of PS staff in the Faculty, related to the plans for the Student Experience Programme. Over the next few weeks we’ll be sharing some major updates about our future plans and next steps relating to the Student Experience Programme (SEP), building on the recent update from Simon Merrywest, Director for the Student Experience and SEP Programme Director. We are developing a number of plans about how we manage the demands on teams of supporting this really important transformation project, with managing all the challenges I set out above, and will share these as part of the wider SEP update.

2020 ends for the Rundle family with us looking forward to our first Christmas together in our new home, hopeful that the vaccines, which look so promising, will bring some opportunities later in 2021 to spend more time with friends and family, and our six year-old looking forward to a ‘dead good’ Christmas. I didn’t have to Google that one!

Take care of yourselves, and thank you.

Best wishes,

Hannah

The University remains at Tier 3.

Dear colleagues,

As you will have seen from Nalin’s earlier message, the University, in conjunction with Public Heath England and other key partners, reviewed its Tier status on Friday, 23 October and has agreed to continue operating at Department for Education (DfE) Tier 3.

This status will be reviewed again on 11 November.

The Director of Public Health and Public Health England noted the significant downward trend in the number of positive cases amongst students.

However, given Greater Manchester’s Tier 3 “very high” status, the University has decided to remain at DfE Tier 3 in order to protect the health and wellbeing of our staff, students and local communities.

We remain committed to moving back towards more in-person teaching when it is safe to do so.

What does this mean for the Faculty of Humanities?

As before, DfE Tier 3 means we will continue to deliver the majority of our teaching online, including Academic Advising and small group sessions.

A small number of our programmes will retain some essential on-campus laboratory and practice-based face-to-face teaching.

Our aim continues to be giving our students the best possible learning experience, alongside protecting their physical and mental health.

As before, it is worth noting the campus remains open - so please encourage students to use the facilities available to them. This includes study and library spaces that students can book in advance, and a number of catering outlets.

Although our focus remains on addressing the immediate situation, we are continuing to do all we can to maintain our excellence in research.

Funding continues to be available to support some research activity, such as attending virtual conferences. We will look to release further funds once we have a clearer picture of PGT numbers in November.

Meanwhile, our REF preparation continues at pace and we are still managing to win a significant number of grants from UKRI and other funding bodies. It is encouraging to hear a stream of good news from researchers.

It was particularly gratifying to see History colleagues winning three of this year’s national Philip Leverhulme Prizes. Congratulations to Stefan Hanss, Rian Thum and Alexia Yates, this is an exceptional result winning three of only five national prizes from just one department.

Earlier this month we received the wonderful news that five colleagues from the School of Social Sciences were conferred as Fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences, along with one colleague from Alliance Manchester Business School.

Other exciting research projects include Dr Sarah Marie Hall, Reader in Human Geography, who has been awarded £1.5 million by the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship programme to lead an austerity and altered life courses project and, of course, the new £32m Productivity Institute, hosted by Alliance Manchester Business School. The Global Development Institute has also been awarded a new research contract of £32 million to establish the African Cities Research Consortium.

Thank you once again for your ongoing hard work and commitment. We continue to see excellent examples of academic and PS collaboration and teams working together to innovate and deliver the best possible experience for our students.

Please continue to work at home where possible and remember that all meetings should continue to take place online.

Any colleagues who are vulnerable or extremely vulnerable to COVID-19, or who have a vulnerable person within their family/support bubble, will not be expected to attend campus. Please speak to your line manager in the first instance who will be able to offer further support.

We will update you again after the next tier status review in November.

Best wishes,

Keith Brown, Vice-President and Dean Deputy Dean

and

Fiona Smyth, Vice-Dean for Teaching, Learning and Students

Fiona reflects on our remarkable achievements since March.

We cannot pretend that the last few months have been easy. I start every week hoping that things will be a little calmer than they were last week but somehow by Monday lunchtime my optimism has usually faded. At the start of last week, just as some colleagues were relieved by the move to online small group teaching, others were disappointed not to be on campus and supporting student learning in the classroom. Whichever side of this divide you were sitting on, it seems likely that we will all be delivering elements of our teaching on and off campus for the rest of the semester and into next year.

The relative stability of a period of online delivery until the review date at end of October gives us a short breather and time to take stock. This time last year, it would have been inconceivable that we would be delivering a form of blended learning to students just 12 months later. It seemed like it would take us some time (or a lifetime) to embrace the opportunities presented by new technologies and yet here we are delivering teaching and assessments online for a second semester. The list of software that is available to support teaching has become strangely familiar: Zoom, Voicethread, Blackboard Collaborate, Padlet, Piazza and many more (although I have to admit to not having used them all myself).

What we have achieved since March has been remarkable. We have all learnt new skills that many of us thought would never be part of our teaching. The lecture, that has been the practice of university education since medieval times, has been transformed. We could finally rid ourselves of the biannual task of trying to decipher handwritten exam scripts. And, as we become more confident in new technologies, there is an opportunity for us to rethink some of our assessment methods.

I think perhaps just as important as the skills we have acquired, however, are the new ways of working I see across the institution. The three faculties are working much more closely together now than they have at any point in my time here in Manchester. There is more sharing of practices and ideas between colleagues in the different faculties. On a daily basis I see the ways in which professional services and academic colleagues, within and outside our Faculty, are working in partnership. Together, academic, professional services, technical and support colleagues are delivering on different elements of teaching, learning and the student experience. 

It is important that we all continue to remember how far we have come in a matter of months. It has not been easy for everyone and, of course, we won’t always deliver a great lecture, get through everything on our to-do list or make the right decisions. But we need to be kind to ourselves and to take time out to replenish our energies.

I hope that you manage to enjoy some Autumnal sunshine this weekend and that you find time to reflect on the positives whatever you are doing. I am sure next week will bring a new set of challenges but nothing that we can’t manage together.

Best wishes 
Fiona

Dear colleagues,

This week I have returned to work after a lovely and much needed break. I cannot stress how valuable it has been to take some time away from the office (well, the kitchen and the attic to be accurate) and enjoy some quality time with family. Our children also returned to school on Wednesday after 165 days at home (not that I was counting!). It was wonderful to see them buzzing with excitement, and to see what a brilliant job their teachers are doing to make the experience a positive and engaging one for them despite all the COVID-19 measures the school has in place to keep them safe. So kids back at school and holiday done, I returned to work with my batteries recharged ready for the week ahead.

And what a week it has been! I was very pleased to see the message from Nalin on Tuesday, sharing the University context and guidance on the phased reopening of campus. As I’m sure you will appreciate, preparing for this is a complex undertaking and a significant amount of work has and continues to be done across the Faculty and Schools to ensure our safe, phased return. There are many academic and PS colleagues who are working together to do everything possible to ensure a smooth transition - thank you to everyone who has been involved in the planning, your dedication is much appreciated.

It is often the period before change, rather than the change itself, that can be the most unsettling. Now that we have greater clarity about what a phased return to campus looks like, we can perhaps begin to process what that means for ourselves. While I know it’s already been covered by Nalin and also my emails this week I want to reiterate that there will not be a full or unrestricted return to campus. Colleagues will only be required to return to campus where required by the relevant senior manager and line manager. We’ll be initially focusing on supporting the return to campus for academic staff who are teaching and specific groups of PS staff who are needed on campus. We are also mindful of the need for some colleagues to return to the campus to support their own wellbeing and we’ll accommodate this where we can. If you have any questions or concerns, please talk with your line manager. You are also welcome to get in touch with me directly.

If you haven’t done so already, please take some time to look at our new ‘Return to Campus’ microsite on Humanities StaffNet which you can access from the landing page. It gives easy access to a wide range of guidance, support and resources that you may find useful over the coming weeks and months.

We have been working closely with the other Faculties on our plans for reopening. They have had significant numbers of academic and PS colleagues on campus for a couple of months now and we have a learnt a great deal from them to support our local arrangements for reopening safely. I know that while some of you will be looking forward to returning to campus, I also understand there will be others for whom this may not be so straightforward. We have each travelled a different path during lockdown, and our personal situations and experiences are unique. Managers will be starting conversations with their teams/departments over the coming weeks about staff returning to campus. I am confident that we can have constructive discussions which provide a supportive environment for colleagues to begin a phased and safe return to campus where it is needed.

Our resilience continues to be tested, and I certainly have found it a challenge to balance the responsibilities of home and work life on many occasions. You may recall that back in June, the Faculty Executive agreed a number of small practical steps to try and give colleagues some time away from Zoom and emails. As we move into the new academic year, I’d like to reiterate our commitment to these steps and ask you to support us by ensuring these are being implemented where helpful and appropriate. 

Finally, I’d like to finish with a special thank you to our student recruitment and admissions teams and everyone else who has been involved with confirmation and clearing. What has been achieved over the last few weeks has been truly incredible, and our teams continue to put tremendous efforts into ensuring the Faculty achieves its student intake targets. It is now our collective challenge to ensure that all these new students, as well as our returning students, get the fantastic experience they deserve at The University of Manchester. 

Best wishes,
Hannah

Dear colleagues,

Another month has gone by, and our ‘new normal’ is becoming more familiar. Like many of you I am continuing to balance our work and home life as best I can. I am not sure who was happier, us or the kids, about the end of home schooling and start of the summer holidays and a few days of holiday club! Life certainly doesn’t feel ‘normal’ yet, and I am so grateful for the ways in which colleagues continue to balance the complexities of remote working with home life.

A great deal of work is taking place across the Faculty and the wider University to prepare for a safe and phased return to campus as we head towards the start of the next academic year. For now the message remains the same, all staff who are able to work from home should continue to do so until at least 1 September 2020. Further guidance on our phased return to campus will be released later in August. For now, I would encourage all colleagues to visit the Campus reopening webpages and in particular to review the FAQs. There will be further FAQs published as we move forward, if you think there are FAQs we could usefully add at this stage, do drop me an email.

As well as planning for our return to campus, we are also thinking about our longer term plans for how we work at our University. If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to complete the ‘What works?’ survey. We want to hear the experiences of colleagues to understand how work has changed for you since lockdown began. We will use your experiences and feedback to help inform future decisions about the way we work at our University. 

The past few weeks have brought with them a number of key announcements about how the University’s Senior Leadership Team and Professional Services Leadership Team are working to ensure we are in the best possible position as we move into the future. One of these was the recent message from Patrick Hackett about the plans to reshape Professionals Services. I hope that you have all had the chance to read his message but if not, I encourage you to take a few minutes to familiarise yourself with the plans, whether you are an academic or PS member of staff.

As Patrick mentioned, we will be continuing with our existing strategic change programmes (Student Experience Programme (SEP), Modernising IT, Research Lifecycle Programme) and launching two further programmes early in the new academic year: Library Reshaping and Technical Review, with other programmes to follow. Over the next academic year all areas of professional services will be reviewed. 

Specifically on SEP, the current Programme pause will be extended until the end of September and colleagues who have returned to the Faculty will remain in their usual (non-SEP) roles, so they can continue to support our business as usual activity. This includes most of the PS leaders previously driving forward the Theme Working Groups which remain suspended, as well as some colleagues who were supporting the implementation and transition to new technology and processes. We remain committed to progressing with SEP and delivering its benefits. However it is very important that, when thinking about how the Programme may be delivered over the coming months and years, we consider the University’s change of circumstances as a result of Covid-19. The SEP Board will consider plans for the full recommencement of the programme in early September and we will provide further updates after that.

Within the Faculty we are working to a challenging PS savings targets as part of our mitigations for an anticipated major reduction in income (largely through loss of international students) for the University. As we have shared previously, it is likely that we will lose about 15% of our total income and could lose 25% of that income if there is a major reduction in students coming to study with us from outside the UK. We have approved a significant number of voluntary measures applications for PS staff across the Faculty and have paused all but absolutely critical new staff recruitment including replacements and fixed-term contract extensions. As a result, we are on track to realise so far, a c.18% saving in our PS staff costings across the Faculty for the next academic year. This is as a result of some extremely difficult decisions, and a great deal of hard work and contingency planning by PS leaders and managers.

The impact of delivering savings at this level, over such a short time frame, will be significant. We have a great deal of work going on across the Faculty Professional Services to minimise the impact on our core activities of teaching and research and to ensure we support colleagues who are impacted by these changes. However, we also need to ask for patience and understanding as we navigate the next few months with fewer colleagues, and some significant additional challenges as we manage for example our return to campus, a blended delivery next year and the need for an urgent focus on our recovery from the ongoing impacts of Covid-19.

I hope that collectively, rather than focusing on gaps and issues arising, working together as academic and PS colleagues we can come up with creative and efficient new ways of working, agree where we will pause activities and adjust our expectations given these unprecedented times. It is going to require a team effort, collegiality and a lot of mutual respect to make sure we are supporting all colleagues and our core activities through the next academic year.

We are committed to sharing transparently the savings we are delivering and the financial impacts we anticipate for the University in as timely a manner as possible but I also know that they can be a source of concern as we also come to terms with the impact of the pandemic on every aspect of our working and personal lives. We have some very difficult decisions to make going forward and I want to reassure you that all our Humanities senior leaders are committed to keeping you informed at every step of the way. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with your line manager if you have any questions at all. You are also very welcome to contact me directly.

For some of our colleagues, change is happening sooner rather than later. Over the next few weeks, and in some cases already, we will be saying goodbye to valued colleagues and friends who are leaving us after applying for voluntary severance, or because their fixed term contract is coming to an end. Thank you to each and every one of you. Whether you were with us for a few months or many years, I’m sure you have made a real and lasting difference to your team, the Faculty and the University. I wish you well in your future endeavours.

The summer months often tend to be the time when we plan to conquer those tasks that never seem to make it to the top of our ‘to do’ list during term time with so many competing pressures. I think I speak for many when I say that this summer will be different. Please be kind to yourself and remember that while you may not have completed one or two of those tasks, instead you might have helped to plan and deliver a virtual open day or graduation ceremony that students will remember for the rest of their lives, created content and plans which will shape our blended learning offer, supported critical activities like confirmation and clearing, kept our websites, staff and students up to date on a wide range of topics, or undertaken vital research you couldn’t have planned for. Thank you.

And finally, a repeated plea to remember to take some time for yourselves over the summer. I am making the most of the quiet of these ‘meeting lite’ weeks to crunch through my to do list, and looking forward to a much needed week by the sea with my family at the end of August.

Best wishes

Hannah Rundle
Director of Faculty Operations

This week Fiona Smith, Deputy Dean and Vice Dean for Teaching, Learning and Students, and Emma Rose, Head of Teaching, Learning and Student Experience, update us on the work of the Faculty Taskforce and talk about our student recruitment progress.

So we have got to 100 days of lockdown. We still can’t quite fathom what has happened to our world over the last few months. It has most definitely been a challenge. We have both appreciated not having to commute on a daily basis but it has been challenging not being able to just catch up at the end of a meeting or as we bump into one another along Oxford Road. The last few months have made us appreciate so much about our university community but, for two people who normally work almost entirely in the office, it has also made us reflect on how we may do things differently in the future. We certainly want to retain the ‘best bits’ while also restoring some of the ‘normality’ when the time comes. Working from home can be a lonely experience and for Fiona trying to teach her mum to zoom remotely has challenged both her teaching skills and patience but they managed it (once). The thing she will remember most, however, will be trying to balance home schooling and meetings: “I was first at the gate when my son’s school reopened and I think he was just behind me!”

Over recent weeks it has been heartening to see colleagues across the Faculty working together to create solutions for the delivery of teaching in the upcoming academic year. As you will know, we are progressing with a ‘blended’ offering for the next academic year, which will mean all lectures and assessments will remain online, with small group teaching taking place face-to-face. By keeping lectures on line, we can make best use of the space we have for small group teaching whilst maintaining social distancing requirements. The University’s central timetabling team has now received requests from all Schools and are looking to produce a timetable over the next few weeks.

Within Humanities, our Faculty Taskforce has recently agreed a set of principles and guidance for the blended learning offer for our students. The Taskforce is working to ensure that the guidance makes it as easy as possible for academic colleagues to deliver teaching in this new format while also ensuring that we provide clear and easy-to-access content for students, as well as consistency across course units.

This guidance was sent to you previously but is also available on a new website. This website will continue to be developed over the summer to provide a ‘one-stop-shop’ with guidance on tools, training, templates and support all in one place and includes a list of the ‘Champions’ for eLearning methods, promoting peer-to-peer support etc. Following feedback from colleagues after the initial closure of the campus, we are mindful about not over-loading you with too much information so we will be working to get the balance right between providing enough (but not too much) information. Please do get in touch with us if you think we haven’t got that balance right.

Alongside work on the delivery of teaching itself, we are preparing for ways of creating a sense of community for our new students in October. A University task and finish group is developing a programme for Welcome, Induction and Transition. The ‘welcome’ and ‘welcome back’ is aiming to help students feel connected with each other, to feel part of our University community, and to ensure that they feel confident and support in their ability to succeed in their studies.

Someone said to us recently that this feels like the never ending term and we couldn’t agree more. Under normal circumstances we would be preparing for graduation ceremonies that mark the end of the academic year, at least for our undergraduate students. Many of us would be hoping to get a break from emails and possibly even a holiday. It is clear that this year is very different. The last few months have been long and stressful for us all. We can’t promise an end to that but we’re hopeful that we are moving to a brighter outlook. Our Schools, along with many colleagues from across the Faculty and University, have done a fantastic job in promoting the University and processing applications such that we are in as strong a position as we could be for the recruitment cycle that starts in August. Our pre-sessional English language courses are up and running and while the 10-week course has seen a reduction in attendees, our six-week course has more attendees than last year. Our Global MBA programme has recruited 76% of its target, this is significantly higher than we dared hope for at one point. As we all know, this University and many others will be significantly impacted if student recruitment does not hold up. We continue to plan for the worst, hoping for the best but our University community is strong and we are confident that our academic, professional services and technical staff are all doing everything that they can to ensure the best outcome for next year.

Given how hard everyone is working at the moment, it is difficult to single out colleagues and teams for a thank you. However, we do want to thank all of those who have been involved timetabling, admissions and exams this summer. None of these are ‘easy’ tasks but there have been some particular challenges this year. Ken Clark and Danny Allen have done an amazing job supporting Schools right across the Faculty to implement our No Disadvantage Policy. It has been challenging to calculate a robust baseline mark for every undergraduate and postgraduate taught student across the Faculty but we have got there. Thanks also to all of you who have just finished marking and who are now starting to look ahead to next year. Thank you to all the language tutors and everyone in the Language Centre who are working with over 1,500 students to help them to prepare for study next year. Thank you also to everyone in the Teaching and Learning Leadership Team. We have spent far too much time in each other’s company over the past few months but we appreciate all the work that you do (often behind the scenes). As we get towards the formal end of the academic year, thank you all: your efforts to get us through this year and ready for next year have been outstanding.

Best wishes
Fiona and Emma

This week Brian, Head of School and Alison, Head of School Operations in the School of Social Sciences, update us on their recent activities, developments and successes.

In the School of Social Sciences (SoSS) we have adapted speedily and very well to the new ways of working necessitated by the current pandemic. Academic and professional support colleagues have made outstanding efforts to keep the show on the road whilst working from home, often at the same time as juggling childcare and home schooling.

Like everyone else, both have us have faced new and unexpected challenges but have also received an enormous level of support from across the School, Faculty and the University. We have also found it difficult not seeing family and friends during lockdown, and Alison is very happy that she is now able to see her two-year-old granddaughter Willow in person!

Some initiatives that once seemed difficult to implement, like online teaching and learning, have taken off in a way that none of us would have predicted. Learning outcomes have been met, assessments have taken place and students will be awarded their degrees. The fact that some students have made the effort to thank colleagues for their efforts speaks volumes about how successful colleagues have been in transitioning to online teaching and learning. We have no doubt that we will have an even better online operation for the next academic year. You can find out more about our resources here.

Professional Services (PS) colleagues continue to be highly committed and flexible in their roles, as well as being open to integrating the new lessons learned into future practices. Most academic teams have also shown a high degree of flexibility, for example in the rapid revision of their teaching plans for next year. They have also been innovative in altering research activities and plans in light of the current situation.

Despite the social and financial constraints linked to the pandemic, research has continued at pace, with more research funding applications than is usual for this point in the year, and with a notable number of applications for COVID-19 related projects being submitted. As well as that, some of our colleagues have been invited as advisory members of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), and others have given high profile ‘lockdown lectures’.

As you can see, there are many examples of excellent work that we could choose to share with you.

Just one of many is the contribution being made by our colleagues in the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing (MICRA) as they highlight the impact of COVID-19 on older people. Their webinar series and blogs are helping to ensure their solutions for future change are shared with policy makers and communities.  Elsewhere, in the mainstream media, Professor Gary Younge has made high profile and widely engaged with contributions to recent debates about developments with respect to 'Black Lives Matter'. Coverage includes the Washington Post and the Guardian.

One thing that some colleagues (including Alison) don’t miss is the commuting between work and home. But we both do miss face-to-face interaction with colleagues, corridor conversations and the like.

One thing that we are looking forward to is a mixture of virtual and face-to face-meetings – while we are delighted that our Zoom meetings have been so successful, some of us are also definitely feeling over-Zoomed at the moment. As we look to a new way of working in the future, balancing virtual and face-to-face activities seems to be the key to happy worklife. We would also encourage you to read Emily Brook’s message about a number of staff wellbeing proposals focused around meetings and annual leave.

From colleagues’ feedback it seems that there is improved communication between managers and colleagues during the pandemic. Alison has been joining PS team meetings (as opposed to whole School meetings) to enable better mutual engagement, and Brian is attending more departmental meetings than usual as well has having School ‘Open Meetings’. Heads of Department have continued their departmental meetings and Performance and Development Reviews are progressing. These forms of communication have been extremely useful in connecting the School’s leadership team to colleagues, their concerns and how we might address them.

Beyond the School, Alison is part of the Humanities Taskforce Group, charged with looking at a significantly enhanced market-led remote teaching offer for 2020 entry. She is specifically working on the sub-group looking at the holistic remote student experience drawing in activities and services offered by DSE, the Library, the Students’ Union and other central services. Amongst other things, Brian meets with the Faculty Executive on a weekly basis, and with the Senior Leadership Team of the University regularly, and feeds back as much information he can gather to SoSS Senior Leadership Team, Heads of Department, and School Policy and Resources Committee. 

While there is no doubt that we will encounter more challenges as we move towards and into the next academic year, we have every confidence in our School’s capacity to meet them.

Best wishes,

Brian and Alison

Professor Gerard Hodgkinson, Vice-Dean for Research, and Jared Ruff, Head of Research, PGR and Business Engagement, talk about our resilient research environment.

Resilience is a word that we have heard a lot of recently. The resilience of our health service; the fire, police and community services; and hopefully how our civil society and economy can be resilient to the dramatic shock that we are all enduring. Nelson Mandela said: “Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

Over the last three months we have all worked hard to stabilise the delivery of the important work we are each doing across the University, with a natural focus now on teaching, in what is clearly a crucial recruitment cycle.

Despite the challenges of the pandemic, not least the wholesale shift to remote working and the uncertain financial challenges that lie ahead, our research community across the entire Faculty has pulled together and, in so doing, adapted remarkably quickly. In short, our research activity remains incredibly buoyant, and the Faculty as a whole is displaying the resilience that is so essential to our enduring success. Of course, we are working in a period of great uncertainty but many of us have grasped this as an opportunity to embrace the new ways of working that are enabling us to continue to break new ground. A recent round of discussions with senior research managers across the Faculty revealed numerous inspiring stories exemplifying our collective efforts to respond positively to the challenges of the present crisis.

We are adapting to an online environment to ensure enhanced social and emotional support, vital for our well-being and resilience and this is happening among our academic staff, professional services and postgraduate research communities such as:

• team building and collaboration via online web and chat forums, sharing ideas and concepts quickly and imaginatively, leading to new research projects, and publications;
• innovative remote PhD supervision and viva examinations;
• our PhDs students engaging in online dragons den challenges with businesses;
• checking in on our wellbeing, having a much needed coffee break or a well-deserved drink at the end of a Zoom-numbing week!

The space and time to explore research that may have lain dormant due to previous time constraints has now exploded into light, inspired by sudden sparks of individual and collaborative efforts such as:

• more time to focus on the development of innovative grant applications and publications outside of the normal confines of REF and external deadlines that has led to new and innovative collaborations and partnerships;
• opportunities to enjoy recent research grant successes on wide ranging areas across all of our four Schools and consider the wider societal impact of these successes;
• successfully hosting online seminars and workshops, involving unprecedented numbers of participants locally, nationally, and internationally.

As an illustration, Professor Khalid Nadvi, Director of the Global Development Institute (GDI) provided an insight into how lockdown has seen a surge in activity, with GDI colleagues holding a series of webinars and involvement in the production of various COVID-related outputs including publishing at least 30 blogs, video posts and media articles on COVID-19 and its associated impacts on global development. Some of these have come out as opinion pieces in the UK and international media – including in The Conversation, Project Syndicate, The Telegraph, Indian Express, Business Daily (Kenya), and Daily Maverick (South Africa).

Working closely with our research leaders, our research support teams have also delivered a major assessment, the COVID-19 Disruption Project. This piece of work has documented the fact that much of our pre-lockdown research portfolio has managed to continue without major disruption. While timescales and delivery targets have been adjusted in some cases, our collective display of agility and creativity has kept the majority of our funded research projects on-track. A good example of this is Professor Pete Wade’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded work ‘The cultures of racism in Latin America’where his research team were locked down in Brazil, Vancouver and Manchester. To quote Professor Wade: “we all boned up quickly on virtual ethnography, discussed it in project meetings and I got an external expert to give us a virtual master class on the topic.” The team adapted quickly to their online world, pushing on with their work conducting fieldwork in virtual meetings and by email and participating in online events.

Manchester is, and will remain, a research-intensive university. Our present emphasis on teaching and learning is essential, but our overriding mission remains as it always was and our ambitious research agenda will continue underpin all that we do. We are a research powerhouse in its truest sense and have unprecedented opportunities to work across all aspects of the arts and social sciences, and to continue to collaborate with researchers across the STEM areas, particularly in terms of major, crosscutting societal grand challenges.

Recently we were amused by a colleague who due to home-schooling had had to brush up on their ancient Greek and Persian history and the story of Xerxes (try pronouncing that!); Persia’s ‘King of Kings,’ who in 480 BCE, faced with insurmountable odds at the battle of Hellespont, ordered his forces (outnumbered 4-1) into battle. Inspiring them, he signalled: “If you were to take account of everything you would never do anything. Big things are won by big dangers.” In a similar vein, former American President Harry Truman once said “I don’t have time for a crisis, I already have a busy week.”

The pandemic is challenging us all to adapt to the unprecedented uncertainties we are facing, and it is clear we are doing so remarkably successfully. It is vital, however, that we continue to maintain the momentum that has gathered, and capitalise on an increased sense of community and resilience, as we move towards a recovery.

Best wishes

Gerard and Jared

Dear colleagues,

I used the phrase ‘these are strange times’ many times in the early weeks of lockdown when talking to colleagues and family members. Over the last month or so it has really been sinking in for me that ‘these strange times’ are here to stay for a good while yet and are increasingly becoming our new normal.

It is certainly not an easy ‘normal’, personally I am continuing to juggle work alongside home-schooling our two children. I know a lot more about rivers than I did a few months ago, and if you need to practice counting in twos give me a shout! I’d like to reiterate what I said when I wrote to you all a few weeks into lockdown. Academic and Professional Services staff across the Faculty are  facing a huge range of different circumstances as lockdown and remote working continues, some of us have children at home, others are caring for elderly parents, and others are coping with the ongoing loneliness of this new situation. I really encourage you to continue to think about what works for you in terms of work-life balance and your own wellbeing at this ’strange’ time, to let others know your plans, and to feel fully supported by me and the wider leadership team in continuing to put this into practice.

Looking ahead

I am currently holding monthly Faculty PS Zoom meetings and producing a monthly team brief video to keep people up to speed on what is happening in the University and the impact this has on our PS staff. However, just two weeks on from those activities, there has been such a lot of activity and there is a lot to say for both Professional Services and academic colleagues. Things are moving forward and the approach to the reopening of campus is developing. Last week’s message from Janie Ellis and Martin Evans, our Faculty representatives on the University Campus Re-opening and Corporate Support Programme Board, gave us a very clear and helpful update on what we can expect over the coming months in this area. You can also hear about the latest developments in the phased campus reopening, by reading Nalin Thakkar’s weekly updates on StaffNet. There are many colleagues, both academic and PS, working hard to ensure that our campus is safe to return to. I would like to add my thanks for your commitment to this vital task.

Work is progressing on the shape of what the new academic year will look like, through the various boards and groups. You will have seen last week’s message by April McMahon, Vice President for Teaching, Learning and Students, on the shape of the new academic year. As April says in her message, the COVID-19 situation remains uncertain, and we will need to remain flexible, however what won’t change is our commitment to staff and student safety and wellbeing; and to delivering to the best of our ability an outstanding teaching, learning and student experience.

The work of the Faculty Taskforce is also progressing at pace. As you know, the group is focusing on developing an enhanced blended teaching offer for 2020/21, and ensuring it is effectively communicated and delivered. Many colleagues across the Faculty are working on one or more groups, each addressing a key priority area for the University’s progress, and I continue to see great examples of the ongoing work. The Taskforce subgroups have all now met and have agreed their deliverables for the coming months, and you can read more about these on the Taskforce StaffNet page. As a priority, the Taskforce will be agreeing the Faculty’s Principles for the Blended Learning Offer. These principles and guidance have been developed to support delivery of a consistently high quality educational experience to our students and they will begin to be cascaded to Schools in the coming week.

Voluntary measures, changes to process and PDRs

As you will have seen from the recent emails from Karen Heaton, as part of our planning for the financial impact of COVID-19 we have offered a number of voluntary options for staff, including reduced working hours and a voluntary severance scheme. If you feel one of the options is right for your personal circumstances please make sure you submit your requests before the end of July deadline. If you have any questions about the measures please speak to your line manager or HR Partner for further clarification, or visit the Voluntary Measures for Staff pages on StaffNet.

Over the past few weeks there have been many announcements and updates about how COVID-19 is impacting our usual University processes, leading to significant changes for some of our colleagues. We are aware that there is a lot of change happening in a short space of time and I’m really grateful for the ways in which colleagues are adapting to the changes.

I am pleased that we will be going ahead with Performance and Development Reviews this year as planned. Whilst it is not ideal for these conversations to take place virtually, I believe it is essential that all colleagues get an opportunity to have a high quality discussion with their manager about their progress, how they are managing the impacts of recent months, their aspirations for the future, and their wellbeing.

Black Lives Matter

I would like to express my strong support for the statement which was shared on 3^rd June that at The University of Manchester we condemn all racist violence and oppression, and for the Black Lives Matter movement. Professor Nalin Thakkar, Vice-President for Social Responsibility, has written very powerfully and movingly on the steps our University is taking to tackle racism and where we need to do more. I am listening, learning and reflecting, and if anyone would like to talk to me, share their experiences or engage on the actions we need to take across the Faculty, please do make contact with me, or of course with our Associate Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Susie Miles. Now must be a time for action, we are absolutely committed to this as a Faculty, and will share our thinking and plans as we move forward.

Recent successes and a thank you

While it is said that necessity is the mother of invention, where our colleagues are concerned it is clearly also the mother of perseverance, diligence, creativity, and collaboration. This week I want to share with you some recent stories that caught my eye from across the Faculty which highlight our determination to rise to the challenges we face. This is just a selection, there are many others I could have included!

Our ability to adapt was truly highlighted by the four SALC PhD student organisers of the recent Iron Age Research Student Symposium. They made the decision to switch the event to Zoom, and were rewarded for their efforts when more than 250 delegates from across the globe registered. Three times more attendees than the event would have been able to host had it taken place face to face were able to take part in the redesigned programme.

SEED’s Professor Diana Mitlin, working alongside long-term collaborators SDI Kenya, is helping to address the enormous challenges of dealing with COVID-19 in informal settlements. The project is helping them to build a community-based COVID monitoring system, filling a much needed gap. And another great partnership, our Knowledge Transfer Partnership with British Salt which is led by Hongwei He from AMBS, has been shortlisted by The KE Awards, in the KE Partnership of the Year category, a significant achievement.

The Justice Hub team from SoSS are continuing to provide free legal aid to the community with a virtual vacation scheme and a group of 40 law students are set to volunteer their services during their holidays to help people affected by the coronavirus pandemic, providing written and video advice online.

At the end of May many colleagues across the Faculty, both academic and PS (including myself!), took part in a challenge to see how many steps we could walk in a week. I was amazed at how active some of us are! A huge congratulations to Steven Priddis from AMBS who walked a staggering 430,800 steps – my total wasn’t remotely close, despite dragging two protesting children on several long walks! I’d like to thank the Faculty Social and Wellbeing Activities Group, especially Julie Butterworth, for organising the challenge. There have been calls to make this a more regular challenge so perhaps next time even more of us can give Steven a run for his money!

Thank you

It has been quite a remarkable first 10 months in the role as Director of Faculty Operations, I thought through lots of possibilities about what a move to a new role in Humanities at Manchester might involve, but I certainly didn’t envisage leading my new team during a pandemic! From my first day in the role I have been amazed by the warmth, creativity, passion and dedication of the community of staff across Humanities. Last week the Dean and Deputy Dean, Keith Brown and Fiona Smyth, wrote to everyone across the Faculty to thank us for our hard work over what has been an extraordinarily difficult semester-  I would very much like to add my thanks to you all for all your hard work and support.

Best wishes,
Hannah

Dear colleagues,

Since the University moved its teaching online and closed its non-essential facilities, most of us have been adjusting to new working environments that are greatly different to those we were used to. We have turned attics into offices, dining rooms and kitchens into meeting rooms and replaced face to face experiences with Zoom. It’s been a challenge, but we know from talking to colleagues in our own Schools that it’s one we’ve faced with determination.

While we have embraced these new working arrangements, there are things about being surrounded by our colleagues that we all miss. Those impromptu catch ups in the queue at Lime Café, or a quick chat about family while you walk to a meeting with a team member. While Zoom is a fantastic way of keeping us connected, I’m sure that many of us are looking forward to a time when we can come together once again with our colleagues, students and our friends.

As Keith mentioned in his eNews message last week, we have now set up the University Campus Re-opening and Corporate Support Programme Board. As your Faculty of Humanities representatives on this Board, we wanted to provide you with an update that was more tailored to our Faculty than some of the other communications many of you may already have received through other channels.

Campus Re-opening Group

The Board focuses on the preparation and adaption of our campus which is required to enable our staff and students to return to operational readiness. It also ensures that business continuity plans are in place, in strict accordance with UK Government guidelines. The Board is chaired by Nalin Thakker, Vice-President for Social Responsibility, and comprises representatives from the three Faculties (both academic and professional services), together with senior staff from Estates, IT, Library, Internal Communications, Compliance and Risk, Safety Services and Human Resources.

As your Faculty representatives we wanted to reassure you that we will not all be rushing back to campus at once. The re-opening of campus will take place in a phased way and will follow a roadmap linked to the Government COVID alert status which you can see on documents at Manchester.

We are currently at alert level 4 and the majority of us are continuing to work from home where possible. However, the University has started to open some laboratories where COVID research is taking place as well as some selected labs needed for priority research work linked to grants, publications and PhD completions. In order for this to happen, safety checks and cleaning have taken place and the buildings have been prepared to ensure they follow the current social distancing guidance. 

The work of the group so far has focused on research activities that cannot be undertaken off-campus. We will be preparing for teaching and other activities moving forward, working in conjunction with the University Teaching, Learning & Student Experience Board.

Guidance documents have been prepared, which will be flexed for each alert level. These include building re-opening information and guidance for staff and students returning to campus. We will be following the Government guidance on flexible ways of working considering those who have to use public transport and reducing numbers in labs and offices. As this guidance becomes available, it will be published on StaffNet along with FAQs and a contact address for any feedback.

Faculty of Humanities priorities

In our Faculty, we have prioritised buildings where more urgent laboratory research or data lab access is required. We have also been talking to colleagues in the Library about getting a click and collect service up and running as soon as possible for those colleagues who need to make a physical collection.

Other Humanities facilities are likely to open when the alert level decreases and we will prioritise those areas where on-campus activity is particularly important such as music and drama, visual anthropology and areas where teaching may start sooner than the standard term such as AMBS Executive Education. A full list of current Humanities priorities is below. This is an evolving document developed through consultation with schools so we welcome feedback if there are local priorities that have been missed. Please email either Martin Evans or Janine Ellis.

First priority

• Building access for collection of equipment and personal items
• Geography labs
• Secure data access (AMBS/HBS/Ellen Wilkinson)
• Library access
• UK Med – COVID-19 related research

Second priority

• AMBS spaces for Executive Education & Global MBA workshops from 1 Sep
• Ellen Wilkinson – initial teacher training
• Computer clusters for PhD students with challenges working from home
• Visual Anthropology Suite
• Access to space for staff training and onboarding for virtual teaching
• Confirmation & clearing
• University Language Centre office space
• AMBS Data Visualisation Laboratory
• Spaces for practical teaching (e.g. Music/Drama – Martin Harris)

Third priority

• Other office-based activity in the Faculty

We should reiterate that the current guidance is that if you can work at home you should. Once buildings are open there will be a phased return to working on campus and you will be given advanced warning of when you will each be able to return. None of this is quick and simple but we will continue to work with the group to ensure that key Humanities facilities are opened as soon as it is safe to do so.

We will be keeping you up to date on the work of the group, either through meetings such as the monthly open meeting for PS staff, your team meetings, or via eNews.

Finally, we would like to thank everyone who has helped in the planning or implementation of the building access opportunities that have been taking place across Schools and the Faculty Office. It gave many colleagues the chance to collect both work related and personal items that they’ve been missing for a few months. Your support in this is greatly appreciated.

Best wishes

Janine Ellis                                                                  Martin Evans

Head of School Operations, AMBS                         Head of School, SEED

Over the weeks since we closed most parts of our campus, I have been struck repeatedly by the diligence, dedication and resourcefulness of colleagues as they adjusted to working in lockdown with the personal challenges that presents. Many colleagues have had to juggle home schooling and childcare. Living spaces have had to be repurposed as offices and classrooms – sometimes shared with partners and house mates. Colleagues have adapted teaching and service provision rapidly to maintain the University’s business and to seek to maintain a rewarding student experience. At the same time worries about family and loved ones can loom large. My wife and I have found that not only are we sharing a workplace, albeit with separate rooms, but that our recently emptied nest has been repopulated with our two young adult sons. The experience has been largely positive, but, on occasion, we have had recourse to newly coined clichés such as ‘new normal’ and ‘in these challenging times’ as euphemisms for describing our changed circumstances.

We shouldn’t forget or overlook those colleagues who have continued to attend campus to support vital operations as well as those who have been furloughed under the Government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. Both present challenges of a very different kind.

As noted in the recent communication from Patrick Hackett, our Registrar, Secretary and Chief Operating Officer, over the coming weeks and months, we will be shifting the focus from our initial incident response to COVID-19 to a number of new recovery and transition priorities. Among the eight priority areas is a group overseeing employee aspects, which links closely to the priorities relating to campus reopening and financial sustainability. Campus reopening will be done in a phased manner and will happen only when it is safe to do so.

There is no getting away from the unprecedented challenges presented to us in 2020/21. You will have seen that as part of our efforts to mitigate the scale of further action that will likely be needed when we know the full impact of reduced student numbers on our financial position in October 2020, we have launched some other Voluntary Severance (VS) Scheme and Voluntary Measures. I should highlight that colleagues are under no obligation to take up any of these measures and should not feel any pressure to put themselves forward. It is highly unlikely, however, that once the new VS scheme closes on 31 July, the University will be able to offer further voluntary severance schemes for the foreseeable future.

There continue to be many resources available for staff, including online learning and development, and a range of personal support. Don’t feel that it is an indulgence to engage with these activities and support. It can be those of us that would benefit from them most who are least likely to do so!

• StaffNet Learning and Development
• University Counselling Service
• Wellbeing Support on StaffNet
• Wellbeing through change support on StaffNet
• Learning and Development Toolkit – Coping with uncertainty
• Staff Learning & Development Career Development webpages

There is also a host of information available on the University’s dedicated Coronavirus web pages. These are updated on a near daily basis.

Finally, I would also encourage colleagues to take leave as normal. While we cannot always enjoy and spend our downtime in the ways we would ideally prefer, it is vital that we take time out from work to rest and recuperate.

All good wishes,

Andrew

Dear colleagues,

At the World Economic Forum in 2018 Justin Trudaeu said: ‘The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again.’ He was talking about changes to technology – specifically automation and artificial intelligence (AI) – and the shifts in social, economic and political culture that are happening as a result. All those shifts are still there, but now we also have the most significant health and economic crisis in most people’s lifetimes changing broad aspects of our work and home lives. 

As we moved through March and April this year it became apparent to us all that the domestic and international outbreaks of COVID-19 were going to radically change the way that we go about our personal and professional lives. There was an immediate requirement in March to take unprecedented decisions to keep students and staff safe, and to organise our efforts to support the local, national and global efforts to combat COVID-19. On this basis the University initiated an incident management governance structure, which took the decision to close campus, prioritise critical areas of work, and move all possible activities to remote working. 

As I write this it is eight weeks since we were on campus, seven since our country entered lockdown, and it is clear that, personally and professionally, things are going to be very changeable and more than a little strange for some time to come. There are particular qualities that have been important in getting us through the last couple of months – that have enabled us to move to delivering our core business without our campus in a really short space of time. These are about the ability to adapt, to collaborate and to commit to creating solutions in imperfect circumstances. These qualities will continue to be really important for us, as staff, as we move through this. We will need to do some things in a smarter way. Equally the University, as a sum of the people that make up its parts, needs to evolve from its immediate incident management approach and find new ways to adapt and overcome challenges.

The scenarios that we are planning for are many and diverse. Some will give us short-term problems to solve, others are likely to change society and the sector in the longer term. All of them will need us to exercise the above qualities in our response. The 2020/21 academic year, at least, will almost certainly be abnormal in terms of structure, priorities and approach. We also need to keep testing and adapting our longer-term strategic intent as things become clearer, to ensure that the choices we make stand the test of time.

As a University we will manage this through a series of groups (some new, some existing) set up to address priority areas. All will involve cooperation between academic and Professional Services leaders, and all have a list of priorities to focus upon in the coming months. These groups are as follows:

Intake and admissions: This group will monitor intake scenarios and impacts on longer-term size and shape. It will also direct applicant communications and strategies for conversion, clearing and admissions processes.
Faculty representative: Emma Rose, Head of Teaching, Learning and Student Experience.

Teaching and learning: This group will oversee the structure of the 2020/21 academic year, as well as making academic decisions relating to current students (for example around assessment and curriculum changes). It will also lead the development of our online/blended offer. 
Faculty representative: Professor Fiona Smyth, Deputy Dean and Vice-Dean for Teaching, Learning and Students.

Student experience: This group will focus on change required to the non-academic student offer, for example support, residences and library services. 
Faculty representative: Emma Rose, Head of Teaching, Learning and Student Experience.

Financial sustainability (new): This group will assess the financial impact of COVID-19 on the University, and will lead the development of plans to ensure a sustainable financial recovery.
Faculty representative: Professor Keith Brown, Vice-President and Dean.

Employees (new): This group will focus on staff wellbeing and support, as well as managing the furlough process and ensuring that staff can use HR processes remotely. It will also put mechanisms in place to enable us to flex staff resource to supplement priority areas.
Faculty representatives: Professor Fiona Devine, Head of Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS) and Jayne Hindle, Head of School Operations, School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC).

Campus reopening and corporate support (new): This group will plan for the re-opening of the campus, including safety and social distancing requirements. It will also plan for business continuity in the event of further waves of infection. This group also has the responsibility for resolving corporate support requirements to sustain operations, particularly during campus closure.
Faculty representatives: Professor Martin Evans, Head of the School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED) and Janine Ellis, Head of School Operations, AMBS.

Minimising disruption to research (new): This group will assess and manage impacts to research from changes to policy and regulation, as well as impacts from changes to teaching requirements. It will also oversee the student experience and progression of postgraduate researchers (PGRs). 
Faculty representatives: Professor Gerard Hodgkinson, Vice-Dean for Research, and Jared Ruff, Head of Research, PGR and Business Engagement.

Functional areas: This includes Faculties, and our ability to continue the delivery of operations. We will manage this through the existing Faculty and Professional Services Leadership Teams, which link into School Leadership Teams through their respective Heads of School and Heads of School Operations.

Campus foresight (new): This group will assess longer-term impacts of COVID-19 and the campus closure period, and will make adjustments to our strategic direction.
Faculty representatives: Professor Andy Westwood, Vice-Dean for Social Responsibility and Professor Gerard Hodgkinson, Vice-Dean for Research.

As we move forward I’d encourage you to speak to your line managers and colleagues about ideas you have to improve the efficacy of the way that we currently work. We’ll make sure that we keep you updated about this work, and about decisions that are made. 

Best wishes

Emily

Dear colleagues,

Like many of you, I’ve been reading warnings from Universities UK and other sector groups including the University and College Union (UCU) on imminent holes in universities budget (estimates currently range from £2 - £7 billion next year). I wrote about it a few weeks ago on Wonkhe (also more recently republished on the University’s ‘Viewpoint’ blog). So I was keen to see the detail when the Government announced its ‘bailout’, or ‘stabilisation’ package for universities last week. It comprises of a number of measures including temporary number controls restricting institutions to their forecast numbers +5% for Home/EU students and re-profiling tuition fee payments in 2020/21 as well as bringing forward £100m of quality-related (QR) funding in research. On top of that there is a reminder that universities can access other announced support from HM Treasury (HMT) including for some business loans and salary measures such as that for furloughing staff (where eligible). 

At the moment it doesn’t feel like it is enough either to stave off big falls in income if international students stay away, or to stabilise institutional finances more widely in the short and medium term. Furthermore the tone of the announcement also feels like it is falling short. The press release accompanying the announcement said that ‘the Government expects access to the business support schemes, re-profiling of public funding and student number controls should be sufficient to help stabilise most providers’ finances, and that should certainly be the first port of calls for providers. Should that not be sufficient, such that a higher education provider finds themselves at risk of closure, the Government will only intervene further where we find there is a case to do so, and only where it believes intervention is possible and appropriate, and as a last resort. In such instances, the Department for Education (DfE) will be working with HMT and other Government departments to develop a restructuring regime, through which we will review providers’ circumstances and assess the need for restructuring. Where action is required, this will come with attached conditions.’

Alongside this ‘last resort’ language come temporary powers granted to the Office for Students (OfS) to levy fines of up to £500,000 (or 2% of teaching fee or grant income whichever is higher) on institutions that over-recruit Home students inappropriately in the summer recruitment market (and beyond) and that threaten the ‘stability or integrity’ of the sector. The OfS intends to police this ‘vigorously’. 

Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State at DfE, describes the stabilisation package in a rather more conciliatory tone saying ‘I know this is an unsettling time for all involved, and we are working tirelessly with the sector to do everything we can to stabilise admissions and protect a vital part of our country’s economy and society.’ But to take an analogy from American history (which I studied here as an undergraduate), we might have wanted an intervention in the style of Franklin D Roosevelt’s New Deal but we have ended up with Theodore Roosevelt, who famously said ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’.

Perhaps given the current policy regime in English higher education – after the Higher Education and Research Act and the creation of the Office for Students – we should not have expected anymore from DfE or any significant departure from the regulated market approach that has now been in place since. But over time neither this, nor the bailout package, look well placed to manage in the future.

On research I am rather more optimistic about the future of government policy, funding and their impact on The University of Manchester. The package announced offers little in the immediate future with only the bringing forward of £100 million of QR funding and the formation of a ‘sustainability taskforce’ on research and development (R&D). This will involve an advisory sector working group considering how best to respond to the challenges universities face as a result of Covid-19, with the aim that university research can continue to support the UK’s economic recovery following the crisis.

Writing in Research Fortnight, former universities and science minister Chris Skidmore describes the £100 million of QR funding as a down payment on new thinking for research investment. This comes against the backdrop of the Budget where Rishi Sunak announced that Government funding for R&D would more than double. This remains a game changer for university research and knowledge exchange. Taken together with other government priorities such as ‘levelling up’ regional inequalities, this still provides a very important opportunity for research intensive universities outside of the ‘golden triangle’. Most importantly for us at The University of Manchester this gives us a focus for both influence and income as the country plans its recovery from Covid-19. For many of us in Humanities that will include research into how society and the economy are able to renew and reconstruct themselves.

Skidmore points to the words of David Sweeney, Executive Chair of Research England, in the same bailout announcement. He says:  

‘Accelerating this funding recognises an immediate need and the shared responsibility between government, funders and universities in supporting national economic and societal recovery. English universities will want to similarly develop more detailed proposals to build an efficient, effective and sustainable research and development system and Research England looks forward to working with them and the government to achieve that end.’

I was reminded of this in a recent Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) discussion, when Lord Stern, Chair of the British Academy and author of a recent review of the REF described how William Beveridge had written his famous report in 1942 during the early years of WW2 and which led to the setting up of the Welfare State after it. This is something else I studied here as an undergraduate (and now teach as part of our MA in Governance and Public Policy). In the discussion about social science research, Stern said that severity of the pandemic and its longer term impact on the economy and society will require thinking and planning of the same order.

So I take this part of the ‘bailout’ as a clear call for detailed proposals against a backdrop of increased R&D funding and a ‘levelling up’ agenda that is unlikely to disappear after Covid-19. We should be thinking creatively about how the Government can best support and sustain research but also how in turn that research can better support regional and national recovery after the pandemic. In my own role as Vice Dean I see this as a way of focusing and rethinking our priorities for social responsibility in the Faculty and in the University as a whole. But in Social Responsibility as well as in teaching and research, it is unlikely to involve just doing exactly the same as we have in the past. 

Chris Skidmore also says that the way R&D funding is spent and accounted for in universities should also be changing and ‘institutions should sign up to an agenda that prevents cross-subsidy going on under the radar.’ So ultimately this comes down to us rethinking our business models and the cross subsidies that exist between teaching and learning, international student recruitment and research. But it also comes down to us rethinking what the whole R&D system looks like, how it operates and what it is there to achieve.

These are not insignificant tasks. But then again putting universities, research and teaching and learning on a sustainable footing is no little task either.

Best wishes
Andy Westwood

Message from Brian Heaphy

It’s a pleasure to let you know of developments in the School of Social Sciences since the ‘old’ SoSS and the ‘old’ School of Law merged in August of this year.

First and foremost, the initial stages of the merger have gone very well so far, and should proceed without any major problems. This is largely down to the efforts of the professional services and academic staff who have been involved in implementing the changes required by the merger, and the willingness of all colleagues to iron out minor hiccups in everyday operations that were encountered on the way. Considering that colleagues are also engaging in other developments such as the implementation of the Student Experience Programme (SEP) and curriculum development, the high degree of commitment and eagerness to make the new School and these new developments work has been impressive.

We are now a School with eight departments, those being Economics, Criminology, Law, Philosophy, Politics, Social Anthropology, Social Statistics and Sociology, and host or have strong links to several centres of research excellence such as the Cathie Marsh Institute, the Manchester Institute for Collaborative Research on Ageing and the Sustainable Consumption Institute, as well the Legal Advice Centre amongst others. The merger has provided new impetus to collaborations across the School and the Faculty, and the intellectual benefits of these are already beginning to show.

The merger has also opened up new possibilities for collaboration across teaching, student experience and postgraduate research. We are just beginning to tap into these, but it is clear that there are opportunities for learning from each other in terms how departments and programmes deal with issues such as teaching, learning and the student experience in areas with large numbers, as well as developing innovative strategies for teaching and learning and opening up support, career and training opportunities across the School.

So far this year we have had a number of notable successes in the School including large grant applications and awards, as well as a very large grant capture by a relatively junior member of staff. Four of our colleagues were elected as Fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences along with three other colleagues across the Faculty, and earlier in the year another SoSS colleague was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy, adding to the Faculty’s already growing number of BA Fellows. As is the case across the Faculty, a very large number of our academic and professional services colleagues were nominated for recognition in the student Teaching and Learning Awards. Colleagues have also continued to be nominated, and to win awards for, their social responsibility related activities.

One other thing that the merger has clearly demonstrated to me is that despite the worries or anxieties that change can produce, our colleagues are not only resilient in the face of it but also embrace it when they feel that it will produce better outcomes for our working lives, research, students, the University and the broader social world.

I’m looking forward to enjoying a break with Pablo (my dog) in Cornwall over the coming holiday period, and I hope you are planning to take time out to party and/or rest too.

Best wishes for the festive season!
Brian

Message from Hannah Rundle

It is a real pleasure to introduce myself as the new Director of Faculty Operations for Humanities. My first few weeks have been full of acronyms including ‘DoFO’ which is apparently the accepted short hand for my role title! I have had quite a few people ask me what a ‘DoFO’ does. In short, I am responsible for leading the Professional Services (PS) across the Schools and the Faculty Office, I contribute strategic and tactical advice to the Vice-President and Dean and to the Faculty's senior management, chair the Faculty Professional Services Senior Leadership Team, and I am a member of the Faculty Executive. 

I have also been asked lots of time since I arrived here at Manchester to ‘tell me about yourself’, a question which always leaves me momentarily (and unusually) silenced. In summary, I am a proud mum, lover of books and board games, passionate about arts and culture and a keen baker. My family and I have had quite an adventure this summer relocating from Devon (I worked previously at the University of Exeter) to Trafford where we are settling in well now and getting used to the rain!

I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to lead the wonderful PS team in the Faculty, and to collaborate with so many incredible academic colleagues. It is still early days for me in this new role. The focus for my first few months is very much on listening and I am trying to get out to meet as many academic and PS colleagues as possible and to learn as much as I can about the Faculty. I have been exploring what is working well, what could be improved and what might be the priorities for the PS in the coming years. If I haven’t met you yet, please do reach out to me, drop me an email with your thoughts, invite me for a coffee and a chat or invite me along to a team meeting.  

We are all well versed in the current external challenges facing higher education, however I am convinced that the strength and depth of Humanities here at Manchester puts us in a strong position to ensure that we thrive and don’t just survive in the coming years. I have written recently for the Viewpoint blog on the value of Humanities - I encourage you to share your thoughts on the blog!

The old adage ‘change is a constant’, is as true as ever and change is very much a feature of higher education at the moment and for the foreseeable future, particularly for PS colleagues. Since, I joined the University I have been very involved in one of the major change projects for the institution, the Student Experience Programme (SEP). SEP brings together several inter-related University change projects under a single programme of work. The Programme is introducing new technology and processes to improve services for our students, staff and our organisation. In tandem, it will also create a revised staffing model through people and structural change, making us more flexible to respond to changing demands. The services we provide are evolving, as are the expectations of students when they arrive here at Manchester. The ‘on demand’ nature of many services today – be it TV and film, banking, or shopping – bring a culture of self-service and instant access for all of us. Just as these services have evolved in response to customer demand, our educational services and means of resourcing those need to do the same.

The Student Experience Programme is working to respond to challenges across six broad areas:

• wellbeing: make support and wellbeing services more visible and easily accessible, and better identify where students need support;
• efficiency: make existing activities as efficient as possible – this will free up resources to do more, and make us more financially resilient;
• consistency: offer all students the same great experience; make our structures clearer to help staff connect and network; understand who is doing what and where;
• data: use data to strengthen our relationships, get better at predicting future behaviour, and help senior leaders make more informed decisions;
• compliance: make teams more able to comply with the latest legislation as it develops, to protect personal data and our reputation;
• sustainability: increase our organisational, financial, technical and reputational sustainability – making us more flexible, agile and able to respond to changing demands.

You can read more about SEP or ask us a question about the project at: https://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/sep/

Finally, this last week has had quite a celebratory feel for me having attended, on Monday, the launch of the ‘In Focus: Humanities Researchers campaign’ where we saw some amazing portrait photos accompanied by stories of the brilliant research some of our colleagues are doing. Then, on Wednesday, I attended the Foundation Day event where we awarded Honorary Degrees to some incredible individuals. One of my early priorities is to share and celebrate successes across the Faculty, especially from a personal perspective, of PS colleagues. If you see examples of colleagues making contributions that we should be celebrating please do drop me an email.

As I said before, do also feel free to contact me to introduce yourself and share with me any comments, ideas or questions to help shape my thinking in my first few months in my role.

Best wishes,
Hannah

Message from Fiona Smyth

The heating has not yet been switched on in my house but it feels like the summer has definitely come to a close. The news that has dominated the airwaves for the last few months, however, seems to show little sign of abating. What has been striking over the last few months has been the spotlight placed on the individuals at the heart of those stories: Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn and Donald Trump. When we look back in the future, however, the individual who may have made a real difference to the world that we live in is Greta Thunberg. I say that not just because of her environmental activism but because of the broader range of qualities that she demonstrates and the ways in which she inspires others through her actions, passions, commitments and achievements. 

While not every student will commit to playing out those qualities on the world’s stage, university should, and does, provide a transformative opportunity for students to learn, develop their skills and to find their place in the world. At the heart of learning is intellectual curiosity. Our students build their knowledge and understanding of the world as they observe, interact, engage and make connections with new ideas and prior understandings. One of our recent priorities in teaching and learning has been to increase the international mobility of our students through year-long ‘with International Study’ programmes. Rather than seeing this as another complication to add into our already complex portfolio, let me explain why I think this will help us to deliver on our teaching and learning priorities.

At the heart of my job is student experience. I see this as going far beyond simply making students happy, it is about learning and supporting our students to achieve their best. The opportunity for an international experience is an increasingly important part of the Manchester ‘offer’ to both home and overseas students and students from all backgrounds. It encourages students to examine their discipline from a different standpoint and challenges their cultural position in relation to their studies and thought processes in a particularly powerful way. Through our own research, and that of others, we know that international mobility enhances academic performance; increases the likelihood of students achieving a ‘good’ degree; enhances employability and increases self-confidence. 

A recent student of mine told me: “Completing a year abroad at the University of Toronto was undoubtedly the highlight of my four years of studying.  …It made me appreciate lots of things about The University of Manchester. I took one class and remember the lecturer waxing lyrical about two or three professors…It was a surreal moment as these were all professors who had lectured me in my second year in Manchester and that’s when it hit home how priceless it was to study here. 

“In the UK, we don’t talk to university professors as much as they do in Canada. I came back and invested the time in developing relationships with those who taught me, ultimately helping me get a first class degree…. Studying abroad was the differentiator in me getting my job. Never underestimate the impact that living abroad can have on a 20-year-old!”

This student reminds me of the importance, for both staff and students, of the relationships that we develop. Our goals can only be achieved by focusing on the people within our institution: those who work and study here. Just as we are talking to students about how to enhance their experience, it is also important to reflect on the ways in which we can enhance our experiences as colleagues across this faculty. 

Alongside my role in enhancing the student experience, I will be leading on actions arising out of the Staff Survey with Jayne Hindle (Head of School Operations in the School of Arts Languages and Cultures) and Hannah Rundle (Director of Faculty Operations). We will be speaking to colleagues across the faculty in due course about the issues raised in the staff survey. We want to identify what we do well and do more of that alongside those areas that need improvement. If you have any thoughts on these issues please feel free to get in touch with any of us.

Best wishes for the new semester

Fiona

This week Andy talks about the week in parliament.

Many of us will have been returning to work this week after some kind of summer break. I’ve managed a trip to Wales in between two to Belgium. In the first of these I was at a meeting in Brussels and amongst other things I learned the Wallonian phrase ‘to lie like a dentist’. Unsurprisingly it was in a conversation about politics. 

I also spent some time in Antwerp - a fantastic and underrated European city in the Flemish half of Belgium. Its many highlights include one of the grandest railway stations in the world and a museum dedicated to printing. Stay with me. The Plantin and Moretus family printed some of the first books in Europe on science, religion and philosophy, codifying and spreading knowledge throughout the world. Rubens supplied some of the artwork. 

Just up the River Scheldt are dockyard buildings originally operated by the Red Star Line in the early decades of the 20^th century. Over 2 million people left Europe for North America on their ships and a museum now tells the stories of some that sailed. They included Albert Einstein, Irving Berlin and Golda Meir. With this history of knowledge, migration as well as culture and industry. Antwerp reminded me of outward facing cities like Liverpool and Manchester - each with a rich and glorious trading past but with rather less certain futures. 

But back in Manchester we will be looking forward to the familiar rhythms of a new term - lectures, seminars, meetings and new or continuing research. In the next few weeks we will be meeting new students and colleagues from throughout the world. However, so much that surrounds and underpins this now looks profoundly unstable and unpredictable. 

It’s been a very big week in Parliament as MPs too have returned from their summer breaks. At the time of writing, anti ‘no deal’ MPs including former Conservative ministers Philip Hammond, Greg Clark, Justine Greening and Sam Gyimah have defeated the government and taken control of parliamentary business. On Wednesday night (4 September) the bill extending the current 31 October Brexit deadline until the New Year was passed by MPs and is expected to clear the Lords by the end of Friday, 6 September.

Boris Johnson remains fiercely committed to leaving – “no ifs or buts” - on Halloween and so has proposed a general election on Tuesday, 15 October. But like all the big parliamentary votes this week he has lost. Along the way he has also lost 22 Conservative MPs (so far) and his working majority. Since becoming Prime Minister in July, he and his new cabinet have been in campaigning mode. This week’s hastily brought forward Spending Round is one example with promises of an additional £14 billion of expenditure. Education is a beneficiary with significant increases to both schools and college budgets but with little discussion of higher education. 

Jo Johnson, the returning Minister of State for Universities and Science had been keeping a fairly low profile since his reappointment. And then yesterday he resigned as both MP and Universities and Science Minister. In the past he has been as critical of the Augar Review: Times Higher, and the Industrial Strategy:  Times Higher as he has been of Brexit.

But the combination of Boris and Jo did briefly offer some pointers to the new academic year. Jo had been the main architect behind the Office for Students and UKRI in his previous stint at the Department for Education (DFE), the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills/Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BIS/BEIS), and of the policy frameworks that we in universities have been working within since. That renewed sector expectations that the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) and the strengthening regulatory role of the OFS weren’t likely to go away.

So all of those issues will have to come after current political matters are settled. Questions about Augar, tuition fees, research and development targets and spending, access to EU funding and the TEF, including at subject level will all have to wait. With uncertainty over an election and any outcome it may be some time before we have a government that is very much interested in governing. But at some point there will have to be an election, manifestos must be written and new promises will have to be made. At some point there will be a new universities minister though it hardly seems worth bothering with one at the moment.

It’s going to be a busy and uncertain autumn - and difficult to think very far ahead with any real certainty either in politics or in higher education. But as a Belgian dentist might say, “don’t worry, it’s not going to hurt a bit...”

This week Marianne talks about work/life balance and stress management.

Writing the ‘senior leaders’ message can be a daunting task. It’s a privileged opportunity to engage with all staff, and you never want to mess it up.

This time, I had more time to think about it, and I looked through all the messages which had been written in the last year. They have taken the audience on a cultural journey through music, films and literature. There has been political turmoil, financial pressures and news of the Dean splitting his trousers!

The last two messages from Keith and Andrew have both touched on the Staff Survey and I’ve recently been involved in discussions on our Staff Survey Action Plan. Like many organisations, we need to look at ways to better support work/life balance and ways in which we can reduce or better manage stress. These conversations have inevitably led me to think about the support I give to my own team, but also reflect on my own experiences throughout my life and career.

I’ve never had what I would consider to be a terrible time.  I haven’t suffered life changing trauma, but like many people, I have experienced stress and anxiety. I want to share my experience in the knowledge that some people may dismiss it, but in the hope that it might make one colleague stop and recognise something in themselves that means they take a step towards improving their own self-care.

I like to do a good job (who doesn’t!) I enjoy doing work that challenges me and possibly scares me a little. If I don’t feel like I’m being stretched, I will actively seek this out. This is something I have repeated many times in the course of my career, and it generally leads to me taking on more work. I love this but I hate it at the same time. I’ve got better at managing the way I do this, but I’m never going to get it 100% right.

I know that I need support from family, friends and colleagues. Equally, I understand that I need to keep checking in with myself about how I’m feeling. Sometimes, even with that knowledge, I still miss something and am annoyed with myself for ending up stressed again. The lesson I’ve learned is that just because a particular approach worked last time, doesn’t always mean that it will work the next time.

I am so much better at spotting the signs. It could be that I’m tired, that I don’t want to go to work, that I start forgetting things or that I don’t cook or exercise as much. The last time I realised I was stressed I was so pleased with myself for noticing and doing something about it. On this occasion, I didn’t completely stop anything, I just adapted the way I did things. I might not have gone swimming twice a week, but I did go once every two weeks, and I made sure that I was buying and eating the right food. I was ticking all the right boxes, and I flagged it early at work. I felt like I was absolutely nailing it.

But I wasn’t. I was ticking the box of using my support network, going through the motions but it wasn’t working. The time I was spending with my friends and family felt different - I didn’t feel as connected to them anymore. They had a lot going on, so I had categorised my ‘big deal’ problems to talk to them about, and trimmed everything else out so that I wasn’t bothering them. In reality I’d trimmed too much. It’s still hard to explain. It took a counsellor to help me put my finger on what it was – I’m fairly self-aware, but I would never have got there on my own.

The University offers a whole range of activities and support for well-being and you can find more details here. This is still a tough subject to talk about, but with one in four of us experiencing mental health problems in any given year we need to talk about it. Time to change can help us to breakdown some of those barriers. We are all very different, and how we invest in self-care will inevitably be individual and can change over time. If you have got this sorted then I’m in awe of you. If you’ve not, take the first step, see what help and support is out there and, when you are ready, use it.

Dear colleagues 

I expect many of you will have recently enjoyed or be looking forward to taking a well-earned break as we hit the peak holiday season. For the first time in many years, the timing of my summer leave wasn’t planned around school holidays. My wife and I spent a very agreeable 10 days on the Ligurian coast of Italy making a brief trip to visit relatives of a friend in Turin. Knowing that my professional background is in higher education they gave us a short tour of the University of Turin and its impressive Norman Foster-designed Campus Luigi Einaudi. The city centre and campus were resplendent with graduates donning the traditional laurel wreath which is worn for the remainder of the day after graduation in most Italian universities. I reflected on the assets and traditions of our university and city, and before leaving we offered to return the favour to our hosts and show off our fantastic city to them. 

My holiday reading comprised a couple of unread books off my shelves which I hadn’t got to during the year. One was The Earth is weeping, Cozzens’s account of the so-called Indian Wars that followed the American Civil War and which marked the final end to the traditional way of life of the indigenous peoples of the nascent US. The narrative was dotted with accounts of the role and character of many US military and first nation tribal leaders. I found myself being as absorbed by the leadership styles of the major players as by the unfolding denouement. So, I guess both my time in Turin and the prism through which I engage with my holiday reading betray my professional life and interests. 

Refreshed and reinvigorated for the challenges the coming year presents, here are some updates on key HR priorities and recent developments.  

Staff survey results and next steps

You will have seen that the University Senior Leadership Team (SLT) has identified the following broad themes to address as part of the institutions level action plan: 

• communications and SLT engagement across the University;
• maintaining a positive working environment for all staff;
• how we manage change. 

As the Dean highlighted in his July message, the themes are very much reflected in the Faculty and School level results. Our Deputy Dean and Vice-Dean for Teaching, Learning and Students, Fiona Smyth will be the lead on action planning relating to academic and research staff matters while Jayne Hindle, Head of School Operations in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC) will lead on matters pertaining to professional services (PS) colleagues. We decided to appoint two leads this time in recognition that the results in some areas of the survey were very different for the various staff groups with academic staff results reflecting more adverse views in a number of areas (eg work/life balance and change management). Nevertheless there will be a single action plan at Faculty level with Fiona and Jayne working closely in looking at the common themes. 

Schools and the Faculty Office are also developing local level action plans and I would encourage you to engage with work aimed at developing initiatives in response to the surveys. 

As Keith signalled in last month’s message, we need to better understand the reasons for the answers and consider how we best address the workload and bureaucracy issues that seem to beset the working lives of many colleagues. Key to that understanding will be listening to colleagues’ views and thinking creatively and differently about how we can reduce the burden. 

Ethnicity Pay Gap (EPG) report

We published the University’s first ever annual EPG report  on 25 July. Unlike Gender Pay Gap (GPG) reporting, there is no statutory requirement to analyse and report in this area, though the University wanted to be among the first of UK employers to examine its performance. The analysis and the emerging action plan in response form part of the University’s Race Equality Charter Mark work and its wider commitment to eliminate racial inequalities, and to foster an inclusive culture. 

The analysis show we have a mean pay gap of 10.5% and a median pay gap of 8.4% (in both cases in favour of white staff), which, though narrower than our GPGs, highlight the known issue of underrepresentation of BAME staff within our University.  

Changes in HR Services

You may have seen that the starters, changers and leavers process teams within HR Services are to be realigned such that staff will operate within teams aligned to the Faculties and central PS functions. This change forms part of a comprehensive service transformation work stream aimed at improving service delivery about which I wrote in my update in November last year. 

HR Partner allocation

As a result of the merger of Law and SoSS, from this month the HR Partner (HRP) allocation in the Faculty is as follows: 

• SEED and Faculty Office: Martin Banks
• SoSS: Jenny Knights
• SALC: Catherine Tann
• AMBS: Jo Couling 

The main changes are that Catherine will no longer act as HRP to Law, Jenny will cease to have SEED in her portfolio, though will pick up Law as part of the change, and Martin will support SEED in addition to the Faculty Office.  

Feedback

Do feel free to contact me with any comments, ideas or questions relating to any HR matters. 

I hope you are able to enjoy a break in the coming month if you’ve not already had one. 

Best wishes
Andrew

Dear colleagues

This week I had an amazing day. I got to spend the day at Levenshulme High School, talking to 800 of their amazing young women about my career. 

When I was asked to present I really wanted to make sure that I used the time well, so instead of writing a presentation about what my jobs were, I wrote one about what I’d learned from each of them. When I finished my presentation I realised that I’d quite naturally written a presentation about values, and how they’ve affected my career so far.

Values can often be used as a bit of a punch bag by some types of leader. Most organisations have them, but in whispered conversations in corridors there’s often a quiet consensus that nobody really takes that stuff seriously; that the whole idea of values is a bit flaky, or cultish. Really though, don’t we all have values? I’ve worked with a lot of traditional, highly masculine, alpha leaders. Rarely sentimental, and often the same people who would laugh at a values consultation, they would still be the first people to say that they deeply value the people they have around them, the purpose that they are trying to achieve, or even their ability to go home on time and spend time with their loved ones. They didn’t necessarily frame these most visceral of workplace needs as “values”, but the message was still there – there were things in their working environment, the tasks they were doing, and the relationship between work and home, which were vitally important to whether or not they loved their jobs.

Moreover there’s a hard case for having values which fit with those of the people you employ. As all of you will probably know, business media is full of articles referencing studies which link values and culture to greater job satisfaction, better performance, and increased retention. Here at The University of Manchester I’d argue that we’re a people business. Most of what we spend is on the people we recruit, our students are people and much of our research is undertaken with the aim of making something better for people. That’s before you even start on our third core goal of Social Responsibility.

That’s why I’m happy that, thanks to the Our Future feedback you gave last autumn, people will be at the centre of the new strategy for the University. The first step of that is the current piece of work being undertaken to try and understand what’s really important to our staff. 

I’ve had good and bad days in every job I’ve had, as do we all. When I reflect on the days where I’ve absolutely loved my job it’s usually because of one of the following reasons:

-       I’ve learned something new;
-       I’ve done something which qualified as an adventure;
-       I’ve had amazing people around me;
-       I’ve managed to make a difference.

I started my presentation to Levenshulme High School talking about the things I really liked when I was ten years old, younger than these young women are now. The things I listed (after talking to my mum!) were:

-       learning;
-       adventures;
-       being part of a team;
-       looking after others.

I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career when I was ten years old. This week I realised that throughout my whole career I’ve gravitated towards organisations and roles which aligned to these four things. My happiness at work is very closely linked to the extent to which my job allows me to be involved in things which meet these needs. Equally my team all have different needs, which is something we’ll reflect on together as we complete their P&DRs and I think about the things I can do to make my team feel valued. 

I think it’s really important for an organisation to know what makes its people tick. This means that sometimes they have to ask you. If you want our University to behave in a way that’s important to you, you need to talk about what that means. To contribute to uncovering our University’s values you can share your stories online. It takes about three minutes, you have absolutely nothing to lose, and potentially you might gain a workplace which fits more closely to the things that you hold dear. You have until Wednesday 31 July to share your stories and give feedback on our existing University values. It’s important that our University’s values reflect everyone who works here.

Thanks to Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS), and their partnership with the local schools that make up the Education and Leadership Trust, for letting me loose to speak to young people! If anyone fancies doing what I did this week get in touch with Michelle Kipling – I promise it will be worth it.

Best wishes

Emily

I have been thinking a lot about issues of morale and resilience over the last six months. At the beginning of the calendar year, I moved into the new Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS) building with professional staff and it was thrilling to be in at long last. We all had a bounce in our step and looked forward to academic colleagues joining us in the coming months.

Then, at the end of January, we found out we had fallen quite considerably in the Financial Times full-time MBA rankings. (I am not going to give you precise figures as I do not feel inclined to dig them out!) Given the MBA is a flagship programme for virtually all business schools, we were crestfallen. The programme itself is great and we know that from the students and alumni who tell us it is a transformative experience on a regular basis. A large reason for the drop was a change in methodology and the removal of one criteria on which we had done very well.  

The MBA programmes team, which looks after our large blended learning Global MBA as well, felt very miserable and, of course, I and colleagues across the School did too. Yet, after a bit of time when we licked our wounds, colleagues started to bounce back. The team, ably led by Dr Xavier Duran, is now working hard to recruit the next cohort of Global MBA students who start with us in July and the full-time students who begin their programme in early September. Recruitment has been affected by the rankings drop, especially in Asia, but everyone is forging ahead doing their very best. I am really grateful for this individual and collective resilience that can be found right across the School. 

The move into the new building has been accompanied by many `snagging issues’, a turn of phrase which does not quite capture the cumulative effect of everyday irritations, routines that get disrupted and so on. The School Head of Operations, Janine Ellis, has had a lot of operational issues to deal with for sure! Nancy Rothwell did warn me it would take a year for everything to settle down in the new building and I am sure it will. Be that as it may, it has been wonderful to witness academic colleagues across the four Divisions of the School move into their new space and really like it. Having been scattered across eight buildings for the last two years, it is great to bump into people coming through the same front door, in the queue for a pizza or whatever.     

What I have seen is colleagues’ morale greatly lifted by the move. It is now half way through the year and the School finds itself celebrating success at a different FT ranking.  We came second in the UK and 21^st in the world in the ranking of customised executive education programmes. (Yes, I can easily quote these places!)  Jane Crombleholme, Manager Director, and Graham Winch, Academic Lead of Executive Education, have a fabulous team and we are all very proud of this achievement. Last week saw the formal opening of the new AMBS building. Lord David Alliance and his family joined us and David unveiled a plague which acknowledges his contribution to AMBS, The University of Manchester and the city.

Over 200 guests joined a discussion between Nancy Rothwell and Andy Haldane, Chief Economist at the Bank of England, on the topic of the role of universities in the future of UK productivity. The conversation was facilitated by Ian King, a History alumni and a member of the School’s Advisory Board. Our many donors and supporters joined us for dinner in the Mill Restaurant afterwards. On Wednesday morning, Ian broadcast his show, Ian King Live on Sky, from Café 65 in AMBS. Andy Burnham came in to speak, Nancy joined the show and three students contributed too.

The programme was a great opportunity to reference the launch of Greater Manchester’s Local Industrial Strategy the following day. This plan is very important for the future economic and social well-being of the citizens of the city and region. I look forward to Alliance Manchester Business School playing its part supporting a vision that makes `Greater Manchester fit for the 21^st century’.

Dear colleagues,

One of the rare pieces of good news for universities recently is that the government has called for an increase in PhD numbers. Last month the Universities Minister, Chris Skidmore, told an audience at the London School of Economics (LSE) that we as a nation ‘need to do much more’ to educate more of our own brightest students to doctoral level, as well as to increase the number of international PhDs. A big growth in PhD numbers will be needed, he said, if the government is to achieve its 2.4% R&D target.

But isn’t this just about STEM? One thing is clear: if a Faculty of Humanities doesn’t believe in the capacity of our disciplines to address the big social challenges of the future, it will be STEM that gets the resources. But in fact we have a real opportunity: the minister himself recognised that ‘we don’t just need scientists and engineers, but a host of people with the human and cultural skills to make the science work.’ That’s obviously true in key areas such as AI (artificial intelligence), a field that was shaped as much by linguists, philosophers, and economists as by mathematicians and cognitive scientists. Skidmore rightly stressed that innovation thrives on the interaction of creative skills with scientific knowledge, and he emphasised the R&D needs of the creative industries, which it is the role of the universities to help meet.

We shouldn’t need government ministers, or an industrial strategy, to tell us why PhDs matter. That was a key message in a wonderful talk given here by Robert Gibbs, from the University of Toronto, when Alessandro Schiesaro, Head of the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC), hosted him a year ago. They are at the heart of the modern university. That’s true historically: the invention of the PhD was coterminous with the birth of the modern university in early nineteenth-century Berlin. UK universities introduced the PhD, a hundred years ago, at exactly the moment when, in the wake of First World War, they came to see research as a central part of their mission.

It remains true. Most academics know that our own intellectual vitality depends on having a lively and innovative community of PGRs and post-docs around us. That is certainly my experience. When I first came to Manchester, in 1990, the old Faculty of Arts, in the wake of the Thatcher cuts, had virtually no PhD students and was, in truth, intellectually stagnant, in spite of the presence of some very distinguished names. It was transformed within a decade, by an influx of new staff but also, and equally, by the dramatic growth of PhD numbers.

We’re all aware of the impending financial pressures on UK universities which will make it hard for us to invest in our priorities. Our Schools spend a lot on our PhD students, much of it to leverage external funding, which normally comes with match-funding commitments. We need to make sure we get maximum benefit from this investment. That means selecting students who won’t just complete successfully but will make a difference with their research. It means, as supervisors, nurturing our students’ ambitions, integrating them into our research groups, and mentoring them for success in a volatile research environment. It means ensuring that we train PGRs to bring their research to bear on important social problems and to work with other sectors to ensure maximum impact. That adds up to a challenging job for supervisors, but when done well it is transformative not just for our students’ careers but for our collective research.

Best wishes

Stuart

There are many exciting developments in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC) these days. Let me begin by mentioning David Olusoga’s inaugural lecture, the University’s new Professor of Public History. I initially booked a 240-room theatre, but fortunately Anne-Marie Nugnes, our Creative Manchester manager, made me see the light, and persuaded me to go for a much bigger one. She was spot on, and over 500 people attended on Wednesday. David is a celebrity, of course, but the appeal of this success owes a lot to our sustained commitment to Public History and the relationship with the city-region which it fosters. Now, with both David and Michael Wood on board, we are by some measure the leaders in this important field. And, with the Peterloo Anniversary events coming up in the summer - we support Manchester Histories - it is safe to expect an even greater surge of public interest in the events that have shaped the recent past and their continuing relevance and impact on our world.

Public History is one of the many areas where we expect significant growth thanks to the Creative Manchester initiative, which was officially launched last October. Several new appointments have already come on stream in Creative Writing, Digital Humanities and Heritage Studies, and we have now established a partnership with HOME Manchester (the first of many, we hope) which will lead to a series of co-curated events; with Manchester Camerata, and with Lime Pictures. As part of the programme we have also added to our stellar cast of Honorary Professors: actress, Maxine Peake; the Director of Manchester International Festival (MIF), John McGrath; Artistic Director of the Royal Court, London, Vicky Featherstone, as well as the new Directors of the Manchester Museum, Esme Ward, and of the Whitworth, Alistair Hudson.

Creative Manchester is part and parcel of the University’s core goals - research, teaching, and social responsibility, not an add-on. We want to create more opportunities for students, while at the same time developing cutting-edge research and creating new and different ways of engaging with the Manchester communities. Multilingual Manchester, for instance, has been very successful in promoting language and cultural diversity through public engagement. A recent example of this is ‘A Celebration of Faith and Language Diversity’, which will be held on 25 June 2019 at Manchester Cathedral.

The new digital image viewer is also key to reaching out to wider communities. The image viewer partnership has been led by Dr Guyda Armstrong, Faculty Lead for Digital Humanities, in close collaboration with colleagues from The University of Manchester Library, the John Rylands Research Institute, IT Services, and academics from the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures working with the collections. This state-of-the-art, free tool will make special collections, held at The John Rylands Library accessible to both scholarly and public audiences.

Community involvement is also central to the UNESCO City of Literature project, which is now taking shape with the creation of a trust and the appointment of the chief executive and director. Again, together with our partners we have chosen to take this important award as an opportunity to create stronger links with the myriad literary and publishing initiatives which are part of the city’s flourishing culture. We all know and love the Literature Festival, of course, but a lot more is happening around town, and this is a perfect opportunity to create a network based on engagement and creativity. The fact that we also expect City of Literature to attract to Manchester some major publishers only goes to show that creative industries are decisive for future prosperity - let us not forget that Manchester is home to the second largest number of activities in this sector.

It was inspiring to see Isla Atay (MusB 2020) being awarded The University of Manchester student Volunteer of the Yearfor her singing collective project. Isla directed this intergenerational choir at the Leonard Cheshire’s Acquired Brain Injury Service, Stockport, with members including those with traumatic brain injuries, hearing and visual impairments, behavioural difficulties, autism, Asperger’s and other learning difficulties.

As the University reaches out, we also invite larger sections of community in. We have just begun working on the new Oxford Road Corridor Festival of Light, which will premier in February 2020, and will open up the creativity of the cultural institutions and the University to all. In the meantime, we are consulting with a large numbers of colleagues throughout the University to map out various strands of research and engagement around creativity and the creative industries in what is overall a very successful ‘cultural university’. You can read more about this next week in my blog post on Viewpoint.

SALC, to be sure, continues to thrive in many other ways as well. The quality of our colleagues’ research is inspiring, and while REF preparations can be testing, they are also a fantastic opportunity to get to know what research is carried out in different parts of the School. This year we welcomed a large number of excellent new colleagues in many areas, a very good indicator of the continued vitality of the School. And our students continue to be a source of energy and pride. A new programme, ‘Student Scholars’, pairs groups of undergraduate students from different subjects with a member of the academic staff, in order to engage together in a team project, usually linked to a University collection or archive. The pilot has been a great success and we look forward to rolling it out further next year: one of the many things to look forward to.

Dear colleagues,

Prosperity, Purpose and Wigan

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority (CA) has been working on a local industrial strategy as one of three pilot areas first announced in the Government’s national version in 2017. The first stage has been to assemble an evidence base, commissioning research papers from a wide range of sources including from many of us here in Humanities including Professors Ruth Lupton and Lorna Unwin in the Inclusive Growth Analysis Unit (IGAU), and Drs Chiara Marzocchi, Kieron Flanagan and Elvira Uyarra in the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIOIR). 

The evidence has been brought together into one summary overseen by an independent panel chaired by Professor Diane Coyle - now at Cambridge University but an Honorary Professor here at Manchester - and Professors Henry Overman at the London School of Economics (LSE), Mariana Mazzucato at University College London (UCL) and Ed Glaeser at Harvard. They were also joined by Stephanie Flanders of Bloomberg and Darla Singh of EY Consulting. You can read the summary here.

Its messages and recommendations range from skills and education to infrastructure and productivity. Like the Industrial Strategy Commission, run jointly by Policy@Manchester and the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) at the University of Sheffield, it also found that significant inequality within Greater Manchester was holding both economic and social ambitions back. In Greater Manchester (GM), like the UK as a whole, that inequality is stark and also runs largely on geographical lines with the poorest areas in the north of the city region. 

One of those is Wigan. It’s a borough we’ve been hearing more about in recent events held at the University. Firstly at the recent Faculty Leadership Conference, former Chief Executive Donna Hall spoke about running the council during eight years of austerity when its budget was cut by some 40%. Secondly the local MP, Lisa Nandy also came to the University when we held a seminar with the Centre for Towns on campus recently. Both spoke about drastic cuts in services, the decline of the high street and the widespread frustration felt in the town about identity, culture, poor quality jobs and low wages. If you’re interested in hearing more you can listen to both, as well as Ian Warren from the Centre for Towns, in ‘Going to Town’ recently broadcast on Radio 4. You can download or listen on the BBC website.

In both discussions, as well as in the process leading to the Greater Manchester Industrial Strategy, we have been asking what a university like ours should be doing to support such strategies and places like Wigan. This is at the same time as we continue with our own strategic planning process where we are asking about our own purpose and what it means to be a civic university in Greater Manchester. There will be many different views but these are surely questions and issues that we should consider more thoroughly.

All of this unfolds as the bigger, related issues of leaving the EU remain unclear. The newly extended time period for agreeing a deal allows politicians to reflect on what kind of country we want to be. The broader role and purpose of universities in that vision is also unclear. The extension to the negotiating period will - perhaps - finally see the publication of the Augar Review with its recommendations about further and higher education.

But who will be around to respond and to implement it? We now know that it is unlikely to be Theresa May. That has significant implications for the Industrial Strategy as well as for Augar. It’s fair to say that many Conservatives including those considering a run for the leadership, are less enthusiastic about an active, interventionist state. Sajid Javid, in his time at The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), once said “that the words ‘industrial’ and ‘strategy’ should not be uttered in the same sentence”. Liz Truss recently tweeted that during recent visits, including to Bolton and Wigan, people wanted money for “core services like schools, police, NHS, transport and defence not industrial subsidies and pet projects.”

All of which takes us back to our own purpose and strategy. I doubt that too many of us think that either should be solely driven by the agenda of governments or whoever happens to be leading them. Instead our thinking demands the consideration of broader as well as longer term issues and questions. But also perhaps to our own institutional history. Today we describe ourselves as ‘England’s first civic university’ in ‘the world’s first modern industrial city’. That puts the future of Greater Manchester’s economy, including in places like Wigan, into a rather different context.

Best wishes

Andy

Dear colleagues

It is often said that time flies quickly. I am now almost 18 months into my term as the Faculty’s Vice-Dean for Research and I can assure you that this particular period has flown by at breath taking speed. 

A major piece of work that I am leading is our work towards finalising the Faculty’s submission to the next Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021) exercise. In doing so, I am acutely conscious that at the end of the next 18-month period, we will be just two months away from the deadline by which we must submit our returns to Research England. The deadline for submissions is the 27 November 2020. Our preparations at all levels of the University are gathering pace accordingly.

With returns to a total of 17 units of assessment (UOAs), our Faculty will be contributing to roughly half of the University’s overall submission. It is vital that we do everything in our power to maximise the quality of all aspects of our returns. How well the University does overall will determine its ability to thrive as a major research intensive institution, amid the many uncertainties we are all now facing across the global higher education sector. A good outcome will strengthen our ability to attract the best colleagues and students, enhancing our prospects of securing additional investments from government, industry, and other bodies.

The UK’s four higher education (HE) funding bodies have published the key documents that provide guidance to UK universities when submitting their returns in connection with REF 2021. In a major departure from previous research evaluation exercises, we are required to return all academic staff with a contractual obligation to pursue independent research. So, the Research Review Exercise (RRE), the internal peer review process by which the University takes stock of the quality of its publications, has never been more important. Our success in REF2021 will stand or fall on how closely the judgements we make, in terms of which outputs we believe represent the very best of our collective efforts, are matched with the judgements of the various UOA panel members who will ultimately evaluate the work we put forward. It is they not us who will have the final say. The reliability and validity of the RRE, therefore, is critical to our long-term success. It is incumbent on all of us involved in REF 2021 preparations to devote the time and care necessary to ensure the RRE meets this fundamental imperative.

No less important is the requirement to ensure that in the time remaining we develop a strong portfolio of impact case studies. In a further significant departure from previous exercises, a quarter (25%) of the overall outcome of each UOA submitted in REF 2021 will be determined by the quality of the impact cases we submit. The Faculty, and indeed the University more widely, fared exceptionally well in terms of impact in REF 2014.

Great impact is in our Manchester DNA. Making a real difference to the world’s cultural, economic, political, social, psychological and physical health, security, and wellbeing is surely the very essence of our tripartite mission. The impact cases we are preparing for REF 2021 afford colleagues the opportunity to showcase and present work that we believe represents some of the very best of our wider collective endeavours within these realms.

School Research Directors, School Impact Leads, and UOA leads are working hard to ensure we build up a sufficient volume of high quality impact case studies across our full suite of returns. In recent stock taking meetings, it has been heartening to see that a good number of cases are progressing nicely toward being ready for submission. However, many more are still at an embryonic stage of development and the window of opportunity for gathering the evidence that will be required to render them world-class or internationally excellent is fast closing. Reflecting the importance of the task that lies ahead, we have set aside the resources necessary to ensure that colleagues who are working on impact cases that are clearly worthy of the investment required are supported accordingly.

Our 17 UOA REF teams across the Faculty have also commenced the task of drafting the research environment statements that will form the third vital ingredient of our returns. A number of colleagues have protested that it seems rather too early to be driving this element of our REF preparations. I disagree! As someone who has been heavily involved in drafting environment statements over four previous REF/RAE cycles, my judgement is that now is precisely the time to begin the heavy lifting. All-too-frequently I have witnessed situations in which colleagues have left it too late to garner the considerable body of evidence that is needed to inform a submission document of the level of excellence required. Crafting these documents is no less demanding than crafting publications of 4* quality, often more so.

Working tirelessly to support us all, in our efforts to secure the outcome we need, is a highly talented and dedicated team of Research Services colleagues. They are working closely with our School Research Directors and UOA and Impact Leads to help us secure the best returns possible. To this end, in recent weeks I have chaired a series of REF planning meetings across our Schools, which will continue throughout much of the period remaining until the submission deadline. 

The success of any exercise on this scale is invariably the result of a huge collective effort, a genuine partnership of academic and Professional Services staff. We are all members of this team and we all have a vital role to play.

Best wishes

Gerard

Dear colleagues,

In the School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED) all of our job adverts include as one of the essential criteria a ‘commitment to collegiality’ and I always ask a question to explore what candidates understand by this. Responses to these questions typically include concepts such as good citizenship, civility and being a good colleague. These are characteristics of any productive and enjoyable workplace and perhaps, as such, a given in most industries. Universities however are not just any industry. For almost a millennium universities have been communities of scholars and this remains a core part of our identity. At the moment universities are facing an uncertain policy landscape and are expected to deliver an ever wider range of societal good. The scale of the demands mean that I firmly believe that modern academia has to be a team game so that the commitment we have to collegiality is more important now than ever. Three examples will I hope demonstrate the ways in which a commitment to collegiality is not simply fine words but essential to what we do.

As a research intensive university all of our teaching is informed by world class research but in delivering this teaching we have to make the best use of our mix of skills, blending staff contributions which comprise different portfolios of research and teaching, and valuing both equally. I was delighted to see that in SEED last year we made a considerable number of promotions of teaching and scholarship staff indicative of this parity of esteem.

Similarly, delivering a programme is not only about teaching and research but about the professional support required to keep the wheels turning. Teamwork between Professional Services (PS) and academic staff in Manchester has come a long way, and the expertise of PS staff embedded within Schools and working closely with academic colleagues is integral to delivering everything that we want to across teaching, research and social responsibility. Key to this is in SEED is recognition of the real expertise of PS staff in their specialist areas and their intimate knowledge of the particularities of the school.

The original communities of scholars included both teachers and students and collegiality between staff and students is still fundamental to success. When I was an undergraduate I really valued the sense that I was part of something that mattered, a department and a university, and felt that it was a privilege to belong. I think this sense of belonging is integral to student experience and that this is an important part of reported student satisfaction in exercises such as the National Student Survey (NSS). As our students are filling in NSS it is worth thinking about what more we can do to enhance this aspect of collegiality. In SEED fieldwork is integral to the way that many of our disciplines engage with the world and this provides opportunities for students and staff to spend intensive periods of time learning and socialising together which supports collegiality. Other disciplines find imaginative ways to engineer these situations for students and I would argue that we need to redouble our efforts here.

Collegiality doesn’t just happen. We can get ahead of the game by hiring colleagues who meet the essential criteria but we also have to work at it. We have to make the time to talk to colleagues and to recognise that the challenging targets we have to meet as departments, schools and faculties are a team effort. We must also recognise that each and every member of staff has a contribution to make. We have a right to expect that all our team mates are making a contribution but we have to recognise the almost infinitely variable nature of that contribution in a university context. To draw on a rather predictable analogy it is the hard work in the midfield that allows the superstar striker to score the eye catching goals.

As we face challenges ahead including Brexit, Augar, demographic changes and much more, collegiality will be critical to helping us to navigate what may be very trying conditions. It will be important for all of us to nurture this core university value in the years ahead.

Best wishes

Martin

Dear colleagues

We spend a lot of time talking about employee engagement. Whether we call it employee engagement or think of it as having a conversation with colleagues to understand a different point of view or hear about something which is coming our way, it doesn’t matter. What is important is that those conversations happen. Our staff survey is about to launch (4 March) which is our regular health check on how we are doing as an organisation. Like a general election the results are only as good as the participation rate – if we are getting engagement right we should know what we are likely to hear back because we will have already heard it throughout the course of the last two years, but if it is not working we want to hear from you. More importantly, where we know there are gaps we should be taking steps to improve engagement, and replicate best practice where it is working well.  

We all have a role in getting employee engagement right. It isn’t just about telling everyone about the good stuff, although we absolutely should be celebrating success, hard work and innovation. Employee engagement is about creating the culture and environment for open and honest conversations. It is about accepting challenge and hearing and understanding what our colleagues have to say. It isn’t about everyone getting their own way, that is never going to be possible. It is about making sure that there is trust, recognition and understanding in our conversations, meetings, decision making and announcements. For me employee engagement sits on the sofa right next to leadership, management and organisation culture.   

Each year I run a session at two leadership courses on this very subject. My first questions to the group are always what do we mean by engagement, what is it, how do we do it here and why is it important? The bottom line is that if we get it right we will have staff who enjoy their work and feel like they are making a contribution. For example, staff who are involved in setting the operational priorities for their part of the University can see how their role makes a difference. Whatever we do, we should all know how our role contributes to the bigger picture.

I’m not sure that there is a special recipe for engagement – but I know that it definitely needs leaders to set the tone and team managers to make the links to individual staff. The final ingredient, which isn’t always talked about, is us – you and me. Individual employees have as much responsibility for engagement as senior leaders. If we don’t hold ourselves to the same standards we expect of our leaders, managers and organisation, then we can only get so far. I know a number of ways I could be better at engaging as an employee – making time for that coffee and a chat, properly reading papers and preparing for all my meetings, spending time suggesting ideas and solutions rather than moaning!

The Staff Survey is one way as individuals we can get involved in shaping future plans and feeding back on what we think is working well and what we think needs developing. So fill it in, make sure your voice is heard and when the results come out find out how you could be involved in making improvements or sharing ideas that are already working well. If we all did one thing to improve our own engagement we would definitely make a real difference.

Best wishes

Marianne

Dear colleagues,

I begin every semester promising myself that this one will be different, that I will stay on top of everything. Like my New Year’s Resolutions, my good intentions get me through the first couple of weeks in January but now we are in February and it always seems like there is more to do. As I write, we are waiting for the next round of Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) data and we are beginning to scale up our preparations for entering subject level TEF. There remains significant uncertainty over the exact format and timing of the TEF. A second pilot is underway and we can make some ‘best guesses’ as to what will be involved. It seems likely that the National Student Survey data will contribute to the metrics alongside employability and retention data. These metrics will provide an initial rating (currently gold, silver or bronze) that will be tested alongside a statement written by the subject leads from our departments. These statements have had a substantial impact in both institutional level TEF and, according to those who participated in the pilots, in the first pilots of subject level TEF. In the institutional level TEF, we know that approximately one quarter of institutions moved up or down the ranking once the statement was added to the initial metrics.

Our challenge, perhaps, is recognising what we do that is distinctive and telling a good story. I’ve recently been involved in a number of peer review training sessions and the comments back from a number of participants have been particularly about how rarely we talk about teaching and learning within our schools and disciplines. Colleagues have appreciated the opportunity to talk about what makes good teaching and the diversity of good teaching within our Faculty. We need to find ways of capturing the small initiatives as well as the big ones, the low-tech as well as the high-tech developments and the initiatives developed by our Professional Services within departments, schools, the Faculty and the University because all of these contribute to our students’ experience. We should share these in TEF submissions but, more importantly, we should learn from one another. 

I still remember the essay question in one of my finals. It began with the proverb ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’. At this time, higher education is in flux. It will be necessary to change some of our practices but, of course, we are always changing. We have just launched our first degree apprenticeships in the Alliance Manchester Business School; we are developing a suite of online and blended programmes through University of Manchester Worldwide; the new My Manchester will be launched this semester that, in time, will help us support our students’ progression and attainment, the Student Lifecycle Project will bring new ways of interacting with our students, the Augar Report is expected to change fees and who knows what Brexit will bring. It is clear that we are going to have to change how we do things. We need to see this as an opportunity. What can we learn from developing new kinds of programmes in a digital context? Should we be considering offering some of our modules online instead of face to face? What kinds of new markets might we be able to attract students from and how will that help us to think about how we teach?

A degree from the University is a transformative experience for our students. Like our experiences at university in the past, that transformative experience places them on a new path. We need to embrace the transformations that we are encountering at the moment and to use those changes to think about how we do things.  Of course, there will be challenges along the way but there will also be opportunities to make The University of Manchester an even better place for our students and staff.

Have a good semester

Fiona

Dear colleagues

I assumed tenure as interim Head of the School of Law in summer 2018, in a rapidly changing political and institutional environment. Consequently, my custodianship of the School has been marked by a number of internal and external challenges. Externally, factors linked to the Brexit process impact in complex and unsettling ways on all planning relating to research and teaching activities. Similarly, ongoing policy debates regarding the possible reduction of student fees create additional pressures and uncertainties, and the outcomes of these debates will surely have far-reaching consequences across the entire higher education sector in the UK. At the same time, we have been confronted with very exacting performance expectations attached to REF 2021 and the upcoming Teaching Excellence Framework.

To be sure, not all these factors are simply causes for alarm or consternation. Debates attached to Brexit have made these very exciting times for researchers and students with an interest in Constitutional Law, and our teaching and research have often acquired heightened relevance and impact because of this. Nonetheless, most of our work in recent months has been focused on the need to prepare effectively for the REF and to ensure a good response in this year’s NSS, so that we eventually perform creditably in both major assessment exercises and move forward in a strong position. As we have addressed these challenges, I have been really delighted to observe how many people in the School are prepared to go the extra mile to ensure that we give a good account of ourselves, and many colleagues have been willing to assume additional duties and responsibilities, often at short notice. On a more personal note, none of these challenges have entirely stifled the intense pride that I have felt in leading the School of Law at such a great University, in such a great city, and in attempting to enhance the reputation of the University and the city in so doing.   

The School of Law has many outstanding features, and I have become more aware of these as I have acquired more detailed institutional intelligence over recent months. The School has very clear strengths in some of its research activities, and many of our colleagues have developed outstanding global profiles for their research. Characteristically, a large proportion of our research is focused on questions with broad social importance, and, across different sub-fields of legal inquiry, much of it is unified by the commitment to real-world social impact. This social emphasis means that our research is very widely cited; it has high levels of impact in a number of different countries; and it has helped, in a range of settings, to shape legislation and public policy concerning matters of global importance. Moreover, this means that our post-graduate students are integrated into a vibrant, diverse and highly motivated research community. Vitally, of course, it also means that our undergraduate students are offered very distinctive learning opportunities within the School. This social emphasis is reflected, for example, in the work of the Legal Advice Centre and our many other social responsibility initiatives, in whose success colleagues have invested great amounts of time and energy. Overall, the ethic of social responsibility clearly shapes our activities, and members of the School can take great pride in working in a community whose research has such tangible real-world benefits.   

In the coming years, new challenges will undoubtedly present themselves to all Universities and to all academic disciplines in the UK. However, it is probable that challenges faced in Law Schools will be particularly complex, demanding particularly complex solutions. In addition to the challenges mentioned above, there are also major changes underway in the legal profession and in the relation between the legal profession and Law Schools in Universities. As a result, as far we can look forward with certainty, it seems likely that members of Law Schools in the UK may be required to step outside more traditional approaches to teaching and research. For example, they may well be required to identify new sources of funding for research; to diversify their research focus and engage in more extensive interdisciplinary collaborations, especially with colleagues in other social-science disciplines; and perhaps to link teaching more closely to research initiatives. I am confident that the School of Law at The University of Manchester is in a very good position to adapt to these potential demands. In my view, in fact, the proposed merger of Law and the School of Social Sciences would likely create an institutional framework in which such challenges could be more effectively addressed, and it comes at an opportune moment. The merger could create new opportunities for collaboration in teaching provision and new openings for cross-disciplinary collaboration in research which may well be vital in the coming years. Amidst the challenges, therefore, I am sure that there is also much to look forward to.  

Best wishes

Chris

Dear colleagues

Dear Colleagues

It’s a busy time of year in finance, a time when we draw a line under the previous financial year with the publication of our annual accounts, take stock of this year’s performance as we produce our quarter one forecast and still continue to look ahead as we enter the planning round for producing the 2019-20 budget and five-year forecast. 

During the summer the finance team were at work preparing the financial statements and providing information for the annual audit. Four months on and the conclusion is that the University financial statements were published last week on the University website. 

In 2017/18 our total income increased to £1,059.2m – a growth of 5% which is a positive result.  However, our operating surplus has deteriorated compared to the previous year and was £25.1m (2.4% of income) compared to £63.9m (6.3%) in 2016/17. We don’t exist to make a profit, but we do have to take care to ensure that we have adequate surpluses available to invest back into our University to maintain our long-term financial sustainability and to give us the ability to invest in our strategic goals within the current challenging environment. We aim for an operating surplus of between 5–7% of income per year to allow us to be able to afford investment that we need. We fell short of that target in 2017/18 which emphasises the need to progress our plans to improve financial sustainability, generate new income sources through philanthropy and online, blended and transnational education, and make efficiency savings through projects such as Student Lifecycle Project (SLP).

We want to ensure all of our colleagues understand the financial environment that we operate in so this year we have published a short document to help explain some of the key messages from the financial statements, how we spend our money, the risks we face and the initiatives we have planned to ensure a financially secure future. It’s well worth taking the time to read it. You can find it here.

And so to the future and we are already looking ahead to 2019/20 and beyond as we start the planning and budgeting round. It’s important that budgets underpin the needs of the business and support local priorities as well as achieving the University strategic vision. The planning process should be an opportunity to ensure the right conversations happen at all levels of the organisation so that we develop a budget that supports our purpose. Our resources are limited to our income generating ability and this may require difficult decisions to prioritise expenditure in order to maintain a sustainable contribution.

If you’re a budget holder, you may have noticed a change to the format and frequency of the budget reports that you receive. This is part of the Finance Automation project that is taking advantage of new technology so that we can deliver budget statements direct to budget holder’s inbox every month, freeing up finance team time that was deployed in preparing the reports, so that we can offer more support to you in managing and planning your budgets. The changes began in October to those with core finance codes and the next stage is to roll out to research grant holders in the new year. With over 6,000 budget codes in use across the University it’s challenging to meet all users’ needs but we are working with colleagues to provide training and support and to collect feedback on the positives of the new process and any suggested improvements. If you have any feedback and suggestions about the reports you are receiving, we would like to hear about it so please talk to your local finance teams. 

Best wishes

Nicola

Dear colleagues

How we enable and enhance the experience that our students get at Universities is a seemingly inexhaustible topic. There are constantly stories in the media about ‘value for money’, contact hours, the cost of higher education. Politicians, when they talk about universities, focus on this area rather than the broader role we fulfil, and the regulatory regime in which we operate now is driven by the Office for Students which is separate to regulation, funding and support for research. There is no Office for Universities. We are, for the time being at least, subject to an increasingly marketised environment.

In this context, we have recognised the need for our University to provide a modern, responsive infrastructure and services to support and optimise the student experience. Very significant investment is being made in the Student Lifecycle Project (SLP) which has been taking place over the last two years. SLP is about providing a better enabling infrastructure to support students, academics and professional services staff to provide a more seamless set of information and advice, and to manage our administration more effectively and in a more standardised way. We are not only delivering new student systems, but thinking about how our processes can work better and more consistently. It’s also about developing a more accessible online environment for students and staff, so that we can deal straightforwardly with common student issues while having the time to spend on more complex issues where a more personalised response is needed.  That online information source will also ensure that staff will be able to see a much clearer set of information about students which will support a more personalised experience.

Over the past few months we have been considering how we best enable these changes through our Professional Services across the Directorate for Student Experience, Faculties and Schools.  It has been clear that we need to provide more consistency, simplification and, where it makes sense, standardisation, to enable the student experience. There are some principles that have been agreed around doing things in a similar way across Faculties, ensuring that we minimise duplication and confusion about responsibility in different areas, and developing and sharing good practice across the University. 

Another consideration that has been high on the list is the Faculty of Science and Engineering Review. That Faculty is moving from nine to two schools and as a result has been looking at the professional services structures that are required to deliver an excellent student experience, as well as other objectives. We have taken the opportunity to develop a more consistent structure across all Faculties and to provide clear leadership throughout.

This work has resulted in the proposed new leadership model which you will have heard about earlier this week and is currently subject to consultation. The model is part of the work we are undertaking, under Patrick Hackett's leadership across Professional Services, to look at how we ensure that what we are providing is effective, clearly contributes to achievement of our strategy, and is done in a joined-up way across the University. This is a major undertaking that will take some time, but it provides exciting opportunities to think about how we can ensure that our Professional Services are world-class.

And while many colleagues will relish the opportunity to be part of these developments, I also understand that change can be unsettling and people want to know how this will impact on them. I have already been talking to senior academics, and to our PS staff across the Faculty, and am intending to continue to come out and talk to teams and answer any questions about the New Leadership Model (NLM). Alternatively, you can email me directly or email nlm@manchester.ac.ukwith any questions.

Best wishes

Vikki

Dear colleagues

Taking up the role of Head of SoSS has been more pleasurable than I had dared to hope or imagine. This is largely due to the support I’ve had from professional services and academic colleagues. It’s been heartening to realise that SoSS, like all the successful parts of the Faculty and University, is underpinned by a very real commitment to teamwork in achieving shared goals and meeting the University’s objectives in research and teaching excellence and social responsibility. We also aim to make a meaningful contribution to society, culture, policy, politics and economics, as well as enhancing academic and everyday understandings of social continuities and change, and their implications.

A large proportion of our research in SoSS is concerned with local, national and global social developments (including economic ones), and focuses on Greater Manchester as a 'living lab' where global issues become local ones, and where local concerns are also global ones. Examples of the range of research we undertake, often in collaboration with other Schools within the Faculty of Humanities and beyond, could be grouped together under the theme of Critical Social Justice. This includes research on gender, race and ethnicity, migration, ageing, work and employment, personal relationships, health and wellbeing, political movements, as well as social and economic inequalities. 

There is also a body of research in the School that is concerned with Social Innovation, which fits well with the University’s ‘Creative Manchester’ initiative, led by SALC. Innovation is too often seen in narrow technological terms, and while many of our colleagues do engage with technological innovation, colleagues are also concerned with organisational, group and individual innovation in responding to and influencing socio-cultural change. Many colleagues are concerned with how individuals, groups and networks develop innovative responses to the changing nature of social and economic institutions, especially when they are deemed to be fragmenting or in demise.

The University itself has no choice but to grapple with change and the challenges we face in responding to the mounting external pressures of diminishing sources of academic research funding and the reduction of student fees, and the ever-increasing interrogation of the value of Universities also requires innovation on our behalf. We need to rethink some of our established ways of working to protect our research and continue to provide the best education and employment opportunities to our students. There is a need to continue to grow our research and teaching collaborations with business (broadly defined to include local and national government departments, charities and third sector organisations, local/national/international community organisations, as well as potential employers) to support our research and provide students with the opportunity for work experience where possible. 

We also need to reflect on how we teach, assess and provide feedback to students, and consider the value and challenges of web-based teaching and distance learning. One challenge is to maintain our disciplinary excellence whilst at the same time being open to interdisciplinarity. Across the Faculty we have a key strength in our internationally acknowledged reputation for its innovations in theory and rigorous empirical work. This work informs our cutting edge teaching and enables students to benefit from being taught by renowned experts and leaders in their academic fields. Most of our disciplines run successful specialist programmes, and contribute to large interdisciplinary programmes. Our staff are dedicated to teaching, and colleagues regularly win distinguished teaching awards. It is worth considering how we might share our experience and expertise in research-based teaching to a wider range of students, and the part new modes of delivery might play in this. 

I have often been struck by the fact that SoSS staff rarely shout out about their successes. I wonder if this is also true about other areas of our Faculty? This is something that I’m keen to change to raise our profile within and outside of the University. Only by letting our academic and everyday audiences know what we do, and especially what we do well, can we encourage other academics, businesses, charities, and local and international communities to collaborate with us. This is central to gaining recognition for the value of our Departments’, Schools’, Faculties’ and the University’s work.

Best wishes,

Brian

Dear colleagues

I’ve had quite a whirlwind introduction to my new role as Associate Dean for Research, which I stepped into at the beginning of September. I’ve met with a wide range of key academic and Professional Support (PS) colleagues from across the Faculty, and read through countless documents, in order to get up to speed with as many aspects as possible of our research and research-related activity, which is hugely diverse (at times dauntingly so). While there has been pressure and I’m still in the process of finding my feet in this role, the upside is that I’ve learned a wealth of genuinely interesting things in the past couple of months, not just about fascinating research projects that are being carried out or are proposed for funding, but also about issues like our possibilities for business engagement, the potential use of bibliometrics beyond merely counting the citations of individual staff, career development options for early career researchers, and much more.

Despite the breadth of the issues that I’ve had to familiarise myself with, I’m sure it’ll come as no great surprise to any of you that my principal focus of attention has been the status of our Research Excellence Framework (REF) preparations. As a Faculty, we’re in a hugely privileged position to have so many colleagues doing high-quality research, much of it with tangible impact outside academia. Our current state of REF-readiness has required sustained hard work on the part not just of academic colleagues on the ground, but also of School Research Directors, Unit of Assessment (UoA) leads, Impact Officers, Research Review Exercise (RRE) reviewers, and Research Support staff across the Faculty, and from this point on, our joint efforts will only intensify.

We have almost completed UoA allocations, and UoA leads are beginning work on our draft environment statements. We’re also preparing the next RRE, which will commence in January. This is arguably the most crucial round of output reviews in the current REF cycle, and analysis of its results will give us a much clearer picture of what our eventual output submissions will look like. What is already manifest is that we cannot afford to be complacent. We still need colleagues to continue to make every effort to complete further potential 3* to 4* outputs between now and the REF census date in July 2020. Apart from the fact that we can never have too many outputs, there are still areas where we are some way from being where we want to be.

Another central concern from here on will be developing our impact case studies. To do this, we rely crucially on those colleagues who have been identified as impact case leaders within each UoA. We want both them and UoA leads to know that the Faculty will do everything we can to support the further development of the many promising cases that are not yet ready for submission, as well as the identification of a number of case studies that are still missing in certain areas.

Looking at impact beyond REF2021, it is worth drawing attention to the fact that we’ve recently been awarded a three-year extension, worth £1 million, of our ESRC Impact Accelerator Account. This funding is to be spent between April 2019 and March 2022, and more detailed information about how to apply will be circulated shortly.

Despite the overwhelming presence of REF2021, we do of course have other priorities on our agenda. One that I see as very important is the elaboration of a successful Open Access strategy for the Humanities. Major funders not just in the UK, but also in a number of other countries, are currently reviewing their policies and are pushing for a challenge to the currently dominant model of scientific publishing – a model which many of you will no doubt agree is not sustainable in as much as it effectively sells our own work back to us at increasingly exorbitant rates. As researchers in Humanities, we have to work to make sure that our particular perspective is taken into account by decision-makers, however. This will require careful consideration, and I welcome suggestions and feedback from colleagues.

Best wishes,

Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen

Dear colleagues

As other senior colleagues have noted, we face a number of external challenges at present with a range of factors contributing to an uncertain future for which we must nevertheless plan. The Augar Review and Brexit are two obvious issues for us while at the same time we develop our new strategic vision as part of Our future. 

Brexit

In reviewing the HR service we provide to you, it is my job to tailor our service to address wider strategic and operational priorities while also dealing with the external statutory requirements that impact on employment. Brexit clearly presents a major challenge to us as we try to plan for whatever new regulations may govern the employment of staff recruited from the EU from 2021. There are also new arrangements for existing non-UK EU staff in relation to formalising their ongoing status in the UK. While we deal with the operational implications of this, it is important that we don’t lose sight of the anxiety this creates for non-UK EU colleagues. (We have over 300 in the Faculty!) As we approach the point at which the UK leaves the EU, therefore, it is particularly important that we continue to support our current colleagues and welcome new ones from Europe and other continents, and show them how much they are valued.  

Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI)

One of our equality, diversity and inclusion priorities for the coming year is to improve the ethnic diversity of our workforce, particularly numbers of BAME PS staff who are underrepresented when compared to the Greater Manchester population. As such there was recently a change to recruitment advertising practice in Professional Services. Our previous practice of advertising PS vacancies at grades 3-6 internally only, before advertising externally, was understandably having an adverse impact on the ethnic diversity of our applicants across these grades. As a result this practice was changed in October so that posts are advertised internally and externally simultaneously. Led by Rosie Williams, HoSA in SEED, who represents the Faculty on the University’s PS EDI Group, we are developing and will pilot new approaches to advertising and positive action measures in pursuit of our targets to diversify our PS workforce.

We recently underscored our commitment to our EDI targets and agenda by advertising for the new role of Associate Dean for EDI with responsibility for providing strategic leadership on EDI matters for both staff and students.

Two major strands of work

We aim to deliver the best possible HR service to everyone that works or seeks to work for us, and, as I mentioned, align it to our organisational goals and ambitions. Based on this overriding objective and your feedback on HR services, we have two major strands of work in progress within the HR Directorate. One is a wide-ranging HR Service Improvement Plan (SIP) and the other is through the implementation of the Employee Lifecycle Project (ELP).

The SIP has been produced in response to feedback of our users about the need to address the speed and quality of areas of our centrally provided operational services such as issuing of appointment letters.

ELP aims to deliver:

• improvements in our online recruitment system for both candidates and hiring managers; 
• introduction of a fully online expenses process;
• roll out of manager self-service to allow a simpler means of initiating and tracking HR services;
• online on-boarding (i.e. the process by which new employees complete a checklist of activities as part of their introduction the University).  

Away from the day job, and as you read this, I will be preparing to join a small University team with over 400 others in the Booth Centre’s annual Manchester Sleepout in the grounds of Manchester Cathedral. The Booth Centre - of which I am a Trustee - is a Manchester-based charity providing vital support to people in the city who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. I must confess to feeling a little apprehensive and I am keeping a close watch on the weather forecast. The sleepout is a good opportunity to gain a small sense of what it is like for those people for whom sleeping rough is an everyday reality rather than, like me, a temporary disruption to their otherwise comfortable lives.

Feedback

Do feel free to contact me with any comments or questions relating to any HR matters.

Best wishes,
Andrew

Dear colleagues

External environment

This week I presented an update on the external policy environment for higher education to our senior leaders at the Humanities Core Brief Meeting. I talked about perhaps the most challenging issue for any university at the moment being uncertainty about the longer term. We face a wave of disruptions – from the political to the technological – and that makes for a difficult time to plan ahead. But that is exactly what we must do, in Humanities as well as in the University as a whole. And we can all be involved through Our Future.

Universities are vital institutions that must help the country and its citizens best respond to a wide range of challenges. But universities must also help to lead and shape our society as it is confronted by disruptions ranging from Brexit to automation and technological change. Our responsibilities extend to society as a whole, as well as to our nearby communities as they too face up to these issues.  

But back to the politics for a moment. The world of higher education policymaking might be seen as challenging enough on its own. From Brexit to the Augar Review as well as the forthcoming Budget and then the Spending Review in 2019, there is much to try and keep track of. And before all of that there may be a fundamental change to student loans after a review by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) about how and when they are recorded in the national accounts. This has been prompted by a number of organisations including the Office for Budget Responsibility who recently described the current system as a ‘fiscal illusion’. Select Committees in both the House of Commons and Lords have picked up on this issue and following correspondence with the Lords Economic Affairs Committee (‘Treating Students Fairly’), the ONS launched their formal review earlier in the summer. Philip Augar, leading the Post 18 Review, must now wait until the ONS complete their work before he makes his own recommendations in the new year. It is easy to think only about the changes that might affect us in universities but he has some other big issues to solve. These include a 60% fall in part time higher education participation since 2010 as well as longer standing weaknesses in further and technical education. 

Civic university

These issues have also been a focus for the Civic Universities Commission. This week they published their progress report which focuses on rebuilding universities’ role in lifelong learning, as individuals and communities face up to the ongoing impacts of the same political, social and technological changes that confront us all. The Commission visited Manchester earlier in the summer and took evidence, including from Nancy Rothwell and from Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester Mayor. It is well worth a read and the report can be found here.

The idea of a civic university is an important part of our own history here at the University of Manchester. We often describe ourselves as one of England’s first such institutions and in our first century we were dedicated to improving the lives, businesses and public services of the city. That too was a time of great social and economic disruption and the University was established to help ensure that Manchester could be at the forefront of shaping the city, and the world, as it developed and changed during the Industrial Revolution. As we face our third century, the challenges may have changed dramatically, but perhaps our primary institutional role has not?

Social responsibility

This takes me to our commitment to social responsibility and my own role, as well as that of many others in the Faculty. Many of our social responsibility activities take place in and with communities in Greater Manchester, from our work with schools (including our school governors and access programmes) to the research and teaching and learning programmes that engage our communities. All of these initiatives feel more important than ever, especially here in Greater Manchester where many towns and communities have often failed to share in the recent economic growth witnessed in the centre and to the south of the city.

This was a major theme of our recent planning afternoon for SR leads in Humanities. We were joined by Matt Atkin, Director of Planning, and James Thompson, Vice President for SR, as we discussed our projects and ideas in the context of the external environment and the University’s future strategic plan. How we relate to the towns of Greater Manchester is likely to be just as significant as how we work with the city. 

We are developing new priorities and programmes in social responsibility and chief amongst them will be how we address these spatial inequalities and how we work with Greater Manchester’s ‘left behind’ communities. This is both a ‘local’ and a ‘national’ issue and a growing priority for leaders in Greater Manchester, as well as for national political figures. In Humanities we want to play a big part in how we understand these challenges as well as how we develop interventions that will make a difference. I think that’s part of our civic and social responsibility today just as much as it has been in our past.

If you have any thoughts about this institutional role or any ideas about how we can best fulfil it, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

Best wishes

Andy

Dear colleagues

Earlier this week, I was invited to discuss our performance in teaching and learning over the last year with colleagues from the University. Inevitably, we focused on the areas where we could do better.  We operate within a culture of continuous improvement, and rightly so, where we are always looking to make positive gains in student experience, teaching quality, assessment, retention, employability and so on. Such metrics have become a measure of ‘success’ even where the metrics measure something slightly different than the quality of what we actually do. In this environment, it can be possible to lose sight of the great things that go on in teaching and learning within this Faculty. 

The majority of students find that studying in Manchester is a transformational experience. We have many inspirational teachers and the majority are excellent. Our programmes are rigorous and stretching and encourage our students to aim high and to achieve their best. Studying in Humanities is not an easy ride. Our students are continually being challenged not just to learn but to think differently, to read and reflect and to be able to articulate complex ideas in written and oral contexts. Last week, I was involved in a training session for peer reviewers across the Faculty. The discussion reminded me of the commitment of so many to both teaching and supporting our students. We had a long discussion about the many different ways that we and our colleagues teach and engage students. We discussed the ways in which a reviewer might be able to recognise high quality teaching and that that teaching might take many different forms. Of course, teaching is recognised and rewarded outside of the parameters of such events as peer review. It was notable last year that teaching and learning was central to a number of successful cases for promotion. Next week, Keith and I will be hosting a celebration for some of our outstanding teachers within each of our schools who were nominated for awards last year. As a core part of our mission, it is important that we fully recognise the contributions that these colleagues and others make to our student experience. 

Alongside our excellent colleagues, we also have amazing students. As well as studying, many of them participate in sport, volunteering activities, student union societies and paid employment.   Students in Manchester have a huge number of opportunities to study outside of their programme, to learn new languages, to go on a professional placement, to study abroad and so on.  At the beginning of the semester, I gave one of the plenary sessions for the Sustainability Challenge that is part of the Ethical Grand Challenges programme. At the end of the challenge, students come together for a final session that makes links between the challenge and the research that takes place within the University and our Faculty. The enthusiasm of these students is great to see. There is a buzz in the lecture theatre as students from across the University share contact details and make new friends. Such events are part of that transformational experience that makes a university.

Of course, we must also remember the challenges that our students face. I went to University at a time when students did not pay to study and grants were available for subsistence. Today, almost all will leave university with significant debt. They are under pressure to do more in order to secure employment at the end of their degree and to have a rounded CV that will get them the job that they want. We have considerable success in supporting our students in achieving employment. We tend to think of this as just another metric but employability is the sum of what we have achieved. We have stretched, we have inspired, we have encouraged and supported. Of course there is always more that we can do but the product of our and our students’ achievements is that they leave university with choices about what they do next and where they might go. This is one of our many success stories and perhaps we need to stand back more often to recognise our strengths and the quality of what we all contribute to in our different ways.

Wishing you all a great semester.

Fiona

Dear colleagues

Ours is a unique university in a unique city. A city pervaded by infectious energy and creativity, made up by many different communities and speaking 150 languages. We are a part of that creative energy and we want to do more. That’s why the Creative Manchester programme is making a major effort to enhance the University’s role as a key player in this cultural renaissance.

The University boasts a uniquely rich cultural offering: major international attractions such as the Whitworth and the Manchester Museum, for instance, are an integral part of the University, but are also deeply intertwined with city policy, as are research, performances and exhibitions in Arts, Drama, Film, Music, to name just a few. Day after day, our colleagues prove that an innovative and ambitious approach to art and culture can secure both a distinguished place among world-leading research institutions and a deep, lasting impact on the lives of a huge number of people in our fantastically diverse community.

Art, culture and creativity stand at the core of SALC’s mission, and ‘Creative Manchester’ will make it possible to expand our work in many directions. Our programme of investment will have three principal strands. There will be new and pioneering research that has a direct impact on the creative sector; we will make bold changes to our curriculum; and we plan to become a much more active partner in the cultural sector, in Manchester and beyond.

The successful bid for UNESCO City of Literature status, to which SALC made a key contribution, is a perfect instance of what the University and the City can achieve together. This is a transformative moment in Manchester’s status as a creative city which will enable us to join a prestigious international network and to foster important synergies with Manchester Literature Festival, of which SALC is sole Higher Education Partner. The John Rylands Research Institute's growing international reputation and partnerships will be further enhanced by sustained and increased funding for its activities. And thanks to Creative Manchester we are making a major investment in Digital Humanities (DH), including the creation of a DH Centre, a DH Lab, and the acquisition, in partnership with the John Rylands Library, of a state-of-the-art digital imager which will make the countless riches of its collection available online. Many other initiatives will also benefit from this funding stream: Manchester Histories, which is gearing up to mark the Peterloo anniversary, and Multilingual Manchester, a model for promoting awareness of language diversity and the opportunities it offers. The Centre for New Writing is welcoming new staff to join its stellar line-up, including a new post which will be shared with Drama and HOME, and new undergraduate and MA programmes will ensure a strong pipeline of graduate talent.

We also plan to participate actively in the decision-making process in the Creative Economy sector at regional and national level. We have just heard that our Institute of Cultural Practice's bid to join the consortium of university and industry partners which will deliver the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s (AHRC) Creative Industries Policy and Evidence Centre has been successful. Its vision is to produce independent and authoritative insight to aid policy that will support the growth of the UK's creative industries, the only Humanities-centred area included in the green paper on the country's future industrial strategy.

Creative Manchester looks beyond the School of Arts, Language and Cultures and indeed beyond campus. ‘Creativity’ defines the very essence of a research university in all fields, and we aspire to build bridges across all disciplines. This includes laying the ground for a degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences, rooted in exciting new dialogues between fields, and planning for a research beacon on creativity, innovation and social change.

The intellectual traffic between Arts, the broader Humanities, and the Sciences has never been more intense. For the first time, to name but one example, the next Horizon 2027 EU blueprint for scientific research calls for embedding Social Sciences and Humanities research in missions and clusters.

E O Wilson, the great champion of creativity and of the consilience of arts and sciences, wrote that ‘the realm of science is everything possible in the universe; the realm of the humanities if everything conceivable to the human mind’. What is now clear is that the borders between these two realms are increasingly porous and excitingly fluid. It’s a great moment for venturing into uncharted territories. The future begins now.

Best wishes
Alessandro

Dear colleagues

At this time of year I am always struck by how many things ‘just happen’.  Clearly this is because of the commitment and expertise of many people working together across the University to ensure that everything is in place for the start of another academic year, and there is an immense effort put in, so that what appears to me as the end product working like clockwork has undoubtedly had its pain and pressure points for many colleagues.  

Just as there are many things that we ‘just do’, there are some areas where we need to look at what we do, how we do it, and why.  One area where we face some challenges, both in the Faculty and the University more widely, is around the diversity of our staff and the implications of a lack of diversity for the way in which we deliver advice, support and services across PSS. Over the last year I have been working with a group of colleagues to look at the challenges we face as a result of our lack of diversity. There is a significant evidence base now showing that organisations with a more diverse workforce engender better performance. While we have made significant improvements in terms of gender diversity, especially at more senior levels – in fact in PSS in the Faculty our challenge is to attract more men into senior positions – we have a very low representation of colleagues from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds. 

Our current position shows that just over one in ten of our PSS colleagues is from a black and minority ethnic background. That compares with about one in five of the relevant Greater Manchester workforce, a figure that is growing year on year. This is compounded by the fact that the more senior the role, the more white we are with only 6% of roles at grade 7 and above being held by BAME staff. This proportion has not changed over the last five years. At the same time, our student body is becoming more diverse and this leads to additional challenges.

So, clearly we need to do something differently, both to support our current staff and enable them to progress and develop, and to enable a more diverse workforce which reflects our communities and enables better inclusion and supports equality. It is early days but we are, over the next year, intending to take steps which will support more diversity in our teams.

Humanities is one of a number of areas across PSS which will be making some changes in the way we recruit and support staff.  Some of the areas that we are addressing are:

• the mix of internal and external recruitment, so that we can build a more diverse workforce, bringing in broader skills from outside the University;
• better understanding unconscious bias, and having data on protected characteristics early in the recruitment process (there is evidence to suggest that BAME applicants are much less likely to be shortlisted than white ones);
• looking at job descriptions to see whether they are inadvertently off-putting to some people;
• considering where and how we advertise jobs and whether this attracts the best candidates;
• developing better support mechanisms for our current BAME staff.

We know that making this change will take time, and only some of these ideas will work. However, if we are to develop a more equal, diverse and inclusive working environment, it is a change we need to embrace and embed in all we do. This is an area where it won’t ‘just happen’ and we are working across PSS to support the change. I am looking forward to seeing the progress we make and to get ideas from colleagues about what more we might do.

Best wishes

Vikki

Dear colleagues

The 7 August marked a year since I started in post. That year has gone pretty quickly, so what have I learned and what have we achieved in that time?

Well, I’ve got my head round the acronyms and the ways of working. I’ve spent time with staff at all levels to get to know what issues they face and their priorities. I was lucky enough to be on the first Inspiring Leaders Course, and one of the main things I took away from it was the opportunity to learn more about my colleagues. It has helped to really understand what pressures colleagues are under and sometimes why I may not get the response I want. I hope I was also able to share my point of view and my experiences too.

Whatever role we have in the organisation, we are all here for the same reason – to support knowledge and learning that makes a difference. Sometimes in the midst of a meeting where you don’t agree with a decision it is hard to remember that we are all working towards the same goal, even if we have different roles to play in getting there. What can we do to ensure we focus more on solutions rather than being demotivated by the challenges?

As an ‘outsider’ coming in to the University sector I have heard people say ‘yes, but it is different here’ when examples of solutions in other businesses are discussed. And I’ve been surprised at how often I’m told that the size of the University is a barrier to doing some things. Yes, there are differences in the detail and yes it is a large organisation, but neither of those factors should stop us looking at doing things differently to meet our ambitions.

That approach is something we are embracing in Communications and Marketing. We worked with teaching and learning and the school admissions teams this year to host an offer-holder event in London. We turned that around from conception to delivery in four months and it was a true testament to cross team working. The event was a huge success and has resulted in a high percentage of conversions from the students who attended. We are going to do it again in the coming year and even though the event wasn’t perfect, we know it worked and we can keep improving it. We gave it a go and it could have failed. That would have been ok too because we would have learned from it and worked out other things we could try.

We’ve also been trialing a new campaign-led approach to highlight the work which is being delivered across Migration, Women, Ageing and Sustainability. That has increased engagement and interactions in key areas, helped to make new links with stakeholders, and raised our profile in these areas.

In September and October we will all be asked to get involved in looking at the new strategic vision for the University. This is looking to the future and at what the University could be in 30 years’ time. Doing that inevitably leads to highlighting current frustrations and opportunities. However, we don’t have to wait 30 years. What could you do differently now? If we do nothing, things will stay the same; we can all make a difference.

My commitment for the next year?  Be bold and shout loud and proud about the University.

If we can do that by working together across structural boundaries it can only be positive and make more of an impact.

Best wishes

Marianne

Dear colleagues

It is now eight months since I took over as Head of the School of Environment, Education and Development (SEED). It has been a great privilege over that time to get to know the corners of the School that I was less familiar with. At first glance SEED looks like an eclectic combination of departments but the thing that unites us is a commitment to research and teaching that engages with the world outside of academia. As educators, planners, architects, geographers and development specialists, our work engages with and shapes (often literally) the world we live in. These impacts were recognised in the Making a Difference awards in May where SEED picked up six awards for projects ranging from crowd-sourced mapping to support delivery of medical aid in post conflict northern Uganda, through work on the impact of austerity on everyday family life to a national project supporting young people’s mental health.

I think that most of us came to work in universities because of a sense that we were doing something that made the world a better place, and across the Faculty there are countless examples of where this is happening. It is easy to become downbeat about modern university life. Like many walks of life, everything we do is weighed and measured and benchmarked and however well we do there is always the next hurdle to jump. It is obviously important to be reflective and to measure what we do against the best but we should not forget that, even by those measures, we are doing well. In SEED our QS ranked departments are all in the top 50 globally. Three are in the top 20 in the world and across the Faculty excellence abounds. Last month I enjoyed attending the University Distinguished Achievement Awards and it was inspirational to hear about the achievements of colleagues from across the University, and those awards are just the tip of the iceberg of all the great work that colleagues in Manchester are doing.

There is also a danger that our targets culture tends to make us think about our three core activities of research, teaching and social responsibility in silos. As more and more is asked of us we need to identify the synergies that allow us to continue to do great work. This is where I think engagement with the world beyond academia is of real value. By working on the ‘wicked problems’ of the world today, high quality research, research impact (sensu REF) and social responsibility become one and the same activity. By including this work in our teaching, and by engaging our students through placements and visits, teaching also becomes part of the whole.

Lots of us will be taking some well-deserved time off over the summer, time to recharge but also to reflect. So whilst I am out on my bike on holiday this year I will be trying not to worry too much about impending NSS results and A-level results day and instead focus on how we do more of what we do really well in the expectation that, if we get that right, the metrics will follow. If you are taking time off over the summer have a great break whatever you do.

Best wishes
Martin Evans

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing this just before the Bank Holiday weekend and two months before I step aside as Head of the School of Social Sciences, and I feel in reflective mood. It’s been a challenging (often frustrating) but, yet again, ultimately a rewarding year in this role – one I have occupied for the last five years. As Fiona noted last month, the recent industrial action was a significant feature of the academic year, but I can only echo her sentiments on how staff in my School conducted themselves throughout. The period of strike action immediately followed the usual intensive period, from Christmas to Easter, when several weighty items occupy my desk, thoughts and calendar: strategic and operational plans, our budget for the following academic year (and the five years thereafter), promotion cases and the review of staff on probation. Along with the recruitment of staff, probably the most important responsibilities that I have as Head of School.

Sadly, we also had the terribly sad news of the death of two undergraduate students, Amber Lyssis and Charlie Pope; and whilst on an Easter break I was told of the untimely and sudden death of our colleague Mick Moran. In 1994, as incoming Dean, he was on my interview panel. Mick was urbane and humble in equal measure, with a dry sense of humour that undergirded a profound intellect.

This last month, however, has reminded me of the rewards that “come with the job”, and which gave my batteries the re-charge they needed to help see me through to graduation (a ceremony I always enjoy speaking at). We saw a raft of excellent and justly deserved promotions within the School. For the third year in succession the Distinguished Achievement Award went to a colleague in Social Sciences – Kevin Gillan from the Department of Sociology; Tom McCunnie received a Making a Difference Special Award for his sustained work on and commitment to widening participation, and it has been a truly exciting month meeting some truly exceptional and outstanding researchers who had applied to be Presidential Fellows. I hope, by the time this piece reaches publication, we will have made some stunning appointments – all of whom, by the way, made me feel very old and worn out but content that the future looks bright for Social Sciences at Manchester.

And, on this last note, I cannot sign-off without referencing the discussions that are taking place which will determine, one way or another, the future relationship between the Schools of Law and Social Sciences – I wonder what Mick would have said? Keith and I started a discussion in January about this, prompted by my thoughts about what “Social Sciences at Manchester” meant, and his thoughts about the organisation of Schools within the current University structure. So, we were coming at this from slightly different places.  He also had corresponding discussions with Toby Seddon (Head of Law). These proved stimulating (although somewhat abstract) and, in early March, it then seemed natural to draw in a small number of other senior colleagues from both Schools to gauge feelings and decide if and how to take anything forward for wider and deeper staff consultation and engagement: which is where we are now. Personally, as I have made clear, I have a very positive disposition to the principle of what is being proposed. But, of course, even with that starting point there are obstacles and challenges to face - and we can all, no doubt, make a long list of those. This is where the engagement with staff is important and we are beginning that now. All I have asked of my staff is that during the next few months we all try to see beyond the process of change itself and open up to the possibility that Social Sciences, with Law, at Manchester could become even more successful.

With best wishes
Chris Orme

Dear colleagues, 

Every academic year is different even though the cycle of activities is similar. We are now close to the end of teaching, about to enter the examination period and then graduation is upon us. In this particular year, I am working very closely with the AMBS School Director of Teaching and Learning and her team to minimise the impact of the recent strike on the student experience. Since the industrial action ended, we have been impressed by the extent to which colleagues have provided alternative learning support including updated lecture slides, podcasts, additional office hours and so forth. They have done so because they care about students and certainly do not want them to be disadvantaged in their studies. It is still a difficult time however, as more than 1,000 students have joined a class action to claim compensation for teaching that was missed during the strike. We will all be watching to see what happens here I am sure. 

Over the next month, I will be sitting on interview panels with School and Faculty colleagues as we seek to appoint Presidential Fellows in International and Comparative Business, Accounting and Finance, including FinTech, Data Sciences and Industry 4.0. Not a day goes by without a story in the press about developments in these areas. To some extent, academia has to play 'catch up’ with rapid change in the world of business and management (although I am wary of some of the technological determinism that accompanies accounts of disruption and innovation). It is pleasing that we have the opportunity to make these appointments at Manchester. I imagine they will foster even more interdisciplinarity between the Schools of the Faculty of Humanities as well as other Schools in the Faculties of Biology, Medicine and Health and Science and Engineering. We are playing to a key strength of The University of Manchester.  

The beginning of July will see the opening of our Executive Education Centre and the adjoining 4* Crown Plaza and Staybridge Suites hotels. As a full service business school, it is very important for the reputation of AMBS that we provide high quality continuing professional development (CPD) to leaders and managers across the private and public sectors. We are now in the position to offer a superb learning environment. Moreover, delegates can enjoy the ease of staying at very comfortable hotels as will our Global MBA students who have the option to take workshops at Manchester as part of a blended learning programme. Some of our Global MBA students only visit the University campus once to enjoy the delights of graduating in Whitworth Hall. The hotels are there for them and open to all so please recommend them to your students and their families for the upcoming graduations too. The booking site is now live and for group bookings of six rooms of more, please contact Tracy Moreland at hotel@manchester.ac.uk.  

Finally, I notice that I pick up a book recommendation or two from these eNews messages so I thought it was time I made a couple of suggestions for work and play! First, I highly recommend Amy Goldstein’s Janesville: An American Story which won the FT/McKinsey and Company business book of the year in 2017. It is a very thoughtful account of the closure of General Motors car plant in a town in Wisconsin. It is a moving story of working-class distress and resilience. Second, I derived a huge amount of pleasure from reading George Saunder’s Lincoln in the Bardo which was the winner of the Man Booker Prize last year. Against the backdrop of the American civil war, it is about Abraham Lincoln’s grief following the death of his young son William. The cast of characters and the style of writing is truly extraordinary. It was a joy to read.  Maybe you will think so too?    

Best wishes

Fiona

A number of years ago I had a turning point in my career where I changed my thinking about planning. I was at the whakaaro (Māori for ‘to think, plan, consider or decide’)of the Royal New Zealand Navy – an organisation where I’d just been asked to write them “a plan that meant something”. The whakaaro was where people junior and senior, military and non-military, and of all sorts of different trades came together to decide what we wanted for our organisation.

Throughout the two days the MC (a naval officer who also played dwarfs in Hobbit films on the side!) returned time and again to talking about passion, and in particular to the idea that if we weren’t passionate about the future of our Navy then there was little point in us even starting to have these conversations. Whilst listening to a number people talk about how lucky they felt to be dedicating decades of their life to an organisation with such values and heritage I came to a point of realisation - I absolutely love my job. I was, am and will always be utterly excited about the potential to support people to realise their ambitions for their organisation.

My views aren’t by any means those of every strategic planner out there. But actually I have always believed that strategic planning isn’t about setting goals so generic that they could belong to any similar organisation, giving endless dashboards to meetings or putting colour ratings on things.  Some of those things have an important place, but they are not what strategy is about.

Planning in its simplest and most pure form is about considering your current position and making choices to ensure that at a point in time in the future – whether near or more distant - the day that your team spends doing their role is better than today. 

What do we have to do to make that happen?  Think about what our purpose is, how we stand out and what our direction of travel should be. Look at the aims of the parts of the University that we influence and seek out the things that we do both small and large that could be smoother, better, have more impact, help someone else out. Look for ways that people can work together to make teams work better. When done on a grand scale that is the stuff that really makes the difference between a good organisation and a world-class one.

My job is to support people to look at the thoughts, the information, sometimes the symptoms and often the ideas that come out in organisations, and to try and gauge where we are and what we could achieve together. After listening at those two days in the Navy I came out of the corporate-pen-pusher-closet (Head of Planning isn’t always a job that comes with street cred!) and realised that I’m really lucky to do my job. You spend an awfully long time in work, and very few people want their parting thought at the end of their career to be that they spent many, many years ticking along. Especially people who are drawn to a career working for one of the country’s best universities.

I’m very excited to have joined an organisation whose purpose is all about challenging the way that things are done, changing the world that we live in for the better and producing generations of people who will really make a difference. My experience of The University of Manchester prior to the last month was being lucky enough to work alongside some of its graduates in defence and health, and I’ve been endlessly impressed with their intelligence, spirit, curiosity and commitment to making things better for others. My aim both within the Faculty of Humanities and the wider University of Manchester is to support you in achieving the ambitions that we set for ourselves, for our institution and for those that we influence.

If you have ideas about that call me – no matter what role you’re in or where you work.  If you want to talk about the future of humanities at Manchester I’m interested.

Dear colleagues

Over the last few weeks, we have been through an intense period of planning across the Schools and Faculty Office. This hasn’t been just a paper exercise, the plans have all been subject to a scrutiny panel to ensure they are co-ordinated and can be delivered.    

We haven’t been solely focused on the year ahead, we’ve also been looking at the next five years. This includes thinking about things that we can do that will make our subject areas even better, and what potential barriers are stopping us. Our professional support services, whether they are situated at School, Faculty or University level, are there to ensure that we enable our Schools to achieve their best, in terms of research, student experience and the myriad areas and responsibilities they cover. So we’re starting a conversation with our Schools about what those barriers are, and how we all work together to try and overcome them. If we in PSS aren’t clear about what the academic priorities are, we can’t support, advise and work together to improve things for students and staff. Nor can we have the discussions that we sometimes need with our colleagues in central PSS about how we can simplify, standardise and streamline what we do to try and spend our time making a difference.

One of the questions that we are often asked by our President is ‘What can we stop doing?’ Like many of you, I imagine, there is a raft of seemingly too complex bureaucratic requirements which get in the way of our ability to focus on what’s important. The University has identified a number of critical projects which are going to help us stop doing things, but as is often the case the combination of ‘catchy’ titles plus project jargon sometimes stops us from really understanding what’s going on. So here’s a hopefully straightforward guide to some of the main areas:

Student Lifecycle: Will deliver a new way of dealing with significant aspects of student and programme administration through more streamlined processes (eg a single application form; automated mitigating circumstances), better systems support and a new digital interface for students and staff so that we can all look in one place to see what’s happening with a student.

Research Support Review: Looking at how we support research grant and contract administration ‘cradle to grave’ to improve the service and ensure that we are following the funding rules. 

IT Modernisation: Developing and delivering a number of projects to improve IT services across the University, including enhancements to end-user computing (how we access and use our desktop and laptop PCs), better management information and support for research computing needs.

Employee Lifecycle:  Considering how we enhance and automate more HR services – including recruitment of staff, expenses, and management of changes to contract, probation etc.

There’s also work being done on better finance reporting, and more effective use of suppliers to get better deals (and thereby save money that can be spent elsewhere).

Many of you will have been asked to fill in a PSS service effectiveness survey towards the end of last year, and the results of this have confirmed that the areas above are the ones where colleagues have the most concern and are the right ones to address.

Over and above all this, to show we can also do our bit in the Faculty, we’ve been looking at management committee structures to ensure they are fit-for-purpose and focusing on the right things. From next academic year we are adopting a new approach with a single Faculty Executive, comprising the Dean, Vice-Deans, Heads of School, Faculty Heads of Finance, HR, and Communications and Marketing, plus myself. This replaces the Dean’s Advisory Group, Senior Management Team, Change Management Group and the Humanities Policy and Resources Committee. We believe this more inclusive approach will lead to better decision-making and support engagement across the Faculty, and we are encouraging Heads of School to consider a similar approach where this does not already exist.

I am looking forward to seeing how this will help us to improve still further the achievements of our Faculty.

Best wishes

Vikki 

In this message Alessandro talks about the importance of the new University project, Creative Manchester, which will progress our ambitious strategic vision in the arts, cultural and creative industries locally, nationally and internationally. It will help to develop more partnerships and collaborations with business and cultural organisations to support growth in the creative sector. It will enable us to create new and imaginative courses, recruit additional academic staff and enhance our facilities.

Dear colleagues, 

'Looking forward 15 or 20 years to what our future economy could be like, in every scenario the Creative Industries are of central importance to the UK’s productivity and global success.' This is how Sir Peter Bazalgette chose to open his 2017 independent review on the Creative Economy, part of a broader discussion about the industrial future of the UK as articulated in the 'Building our Industrial Strategy' green paper.

The case Sir Peter makes for the UK in general is even more compelling for Manchester and its region, the second largest concentration of creative industries in the country, and a key driver in its growth and appeal.

'Creative Manchester', a major strategic project led by the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC) that has just received substantial University funding, represents a unique opportunity for a step-change in this area. Building on the strength of prestigious existing activities, the project aims to position our University as a leading player in this sector at local, national and international level, and at the forefront in the public discourse about the role of Arts and Humanities.

The moment is right. Manchester has just been named UNESCO City of Literature - the bid was led by SALC’s own Jerome de Groot; we have an impressive track-record as an anchor-institution in this area, thanks to the Centre for New Writing, the Institute for Cultural Practice, the John Rylands Research Institute, Multilingual Manchester, NOVARS, the Whitworth and Manchester Museums and numerous collaborations in the Heritage sector - the new MA Heritage Studies will launch in September. Jodrell Bank is a stunning success of what an intense dialogue between arts and sciences can achieve.

We can now do much more. We plan to invest more in these and other areas, such as Digital Humanities. Joining forces with Business, Economics, Law, policy@Manchester and Sociology will harness and enhance current links to become the market leader and provide distinctive, research-led education, and training and skills development for the creative and cultural sector. Existing initiatives, including international collaborations, will be strengthened, expanded and integrated in the broader context of this shared strategic project.

'Creative Manchester' is fully aligned with the University’s main strategic objectives: it will promote substantial gains in research capability in cutting-edge areas, innovative changes to the curriculum at all levels with a strong employability focus, and a dynamic presence in the cultural sector that will mark our commitment to social responsibility.

SALC is also strengthening its links with the Manchester cultural scene. Maxine Peake has been named Honorary Professor of Literature and Performance, and we are hoping to confirm shortly the appointment of more leading personalities from the Arts sector.

'Creative Manchester', to be sure, is about much more than economic impact. Creativity is a theme that runs through the University, in all fields, it is the common denominator of our mission and our work. We want to build bridges across disciplinary divides both in research, thanks to our common pursuit of creative endeavours, and also in teaching and learning, where exciting opportunities exist for exploring innovative forms of instruction which go beyond the current structure. 'Creativity' can indeed become a beacon for a refreshed and proud vision of a strong research university. An exciting journey has begun.

Best wishes, 

Alessandro

Dear colleagues,

It seems inconceivable that four months have already passed since I commenced my appointment as the Faculty’s Vice Dean for Research! My predecessor Colette Fagan has left behind enormous shoes to fill and I feel truly humbled and privileged, accompanied by a deep sense of responsibility, to have been entrusted with this important and complex role. 

I have spent much of the past four months working with the Faculty’s Heads of School, School Research Directors, and the Heads of our research institutes, in order to deepen my understanding of the many achievements we have to celebrate, as well as the varied and complex challenges we are facing at this time. By way of background, having started my career as a fixed-term contract researcher at the University of Manchester (Manchester Business School) in the mid-1980s, I re-joined the University as one of two Deputy Heads of Alliance Manchester Business School 18 months ago. Above all else, what attracted me to return to this great institution was the clear sense of purposive determination, shared widely, to ensure that it realises its ultimate ambition to become a world-leading research intensive university, renowned for its own distinctive brand of research and scholarship, which not only shapes the various academic literatures but also has a major impact on the economy and society at large. Having had numerous conversations over the past four months, I sense the five strategic priorities immediately ahead are as follows:

1. Continue to ramp up preparations for REF 2021. Now that the rules are clearer, we will need to increase the pace of our preparations in all respects.
2. As we enter the next and arguably the most critical phase of the REF cycle, I want to encourage more colleagues to exceed the University’s current (minimum) expectations of publishing four outputs at the 3* level, with a view to increasing the number of truly world-leading outputs. Similarly, I want us to develop mechanisms to help colleagues currently performing primarily at the 2* level to reach 3* levels of performance. In practice, this is going to require targeted resources being deployed in selected key areas, to enable a step-change in our approach to staff development in the areas thus selected.
3. Accelerate progression toward attaining our increased research income target. Given the growing competition and diminishing resources among the research councils, I want us to try and find ways of further diversifying the portfolio of income sources, in such a way that, wherever possible, we meet this goal without compromising the independence and academic quality of our work.
4. Increase academic involvement in business engagement activities, where appropriate to do so. I see business engagement (broadly conceived) as an important vehicle that, when suitably aligned, can support all of the main strands of our research strategy, from enabling research access and knowledge co-production, to the development of high quality impact cases. Business engagement is also a potential means of access to research income.
5. In relation to PGR I want to initiate a strategic conversation about how we position the Faculty to increase its emphasis on quality, with clear pathways to publishable outputs and wider career development opportunities, in readiness for our research students pursuing successful careers, whether in academia or beyond. Inevitably, this means considering carefully whether our target numbers are commensurate with these ambitions and striving to maintain the appropriate balance of academic excellence across the constituent units within the Faculty.

It is clear that there are no panaceas for addressing these challenges. We have a diminishing resource base for funding through the research councils (in spite of the welcome uplift from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund and the broader Global Challenges Research Fund). The challenges we are facing are compounded by the uncertainties of Brexit, amid unprecedented competition to publish in world-leading and internationally excellent journals and other distinguished outlets. Set against the growing importance of the impact agenda and the introduction of the TEF, our success demands more than ever a coordinated and strategic approach to all aspects of our work, underpinned by a compelling vision that motivates us to strive for excellence.

To sustain the passion for excellence and engagement that is ultimately required for the Faculty to succeed (notwithstanding the importance of the REF and its associated metrics), our strategic vision for research must be born of a broader and more fundamental purpose; namely, to make a real difference to the world by deepening understanding of the human condition and enabling, through the knowledge we create, humanity to flourish in these challenging times: ‘engaged scholarship’ par excellence. The sheer scale and (inter)disciplinary diversity of the Faculty of Humanities surely equips us to be world leaders in this endeavour?

The University’s embodiment of this fundamental vision, which has been developed over many years, is evident through its many successes, which have been recognised through the award of numerous Nobel prizes and other distinguished accolades. As I noted earlier, it is precisely this continuing shared sense of purpose that drew me back to Manchester, the city in which I grew up, and I am looking forward to playing my part in helping us to maintain the unity of purpose and excellence we all desire.

Gerard

It has been four months since I joined the team at the University, and my first Faculty Leadership Conference last week gave me time to reflect on the important role which we all play in the day to day running of the University.

Much of what we achieve is because we do it together.

I’m in the process of working with my team, the Faculty, Schools and Institutes to develop a communications and marketing strategy. This will reflect our priority areas of work and how they interact, focusing on staff, students and research. Our communications and marketing across those areas can’t be seen in isolation, they all have an impact on each other. The strategy will give a clear direction to our work, and look at ways to group together the diverse activity in the Faculty to have more impact and to better tell our story. As an example, we recently ran a pilot campaign month around migration. This enabled us to pull together 17 events, media stories and online content from across the Faculty into weekly themes to highlight clear and consistent messages. It meant we were able to produce communications which were relevant to all schools in one campaign.  

My first few months have been about getting to know the University and what it wants to achieve and how it feels to work here. At a Faculty and School level I’m working with managers at all levels to look at how we engage with staff and what we do to make them feel valued. This month, that has been through conversations I had at the Faculty Leadership Conference following a presentation from Alice Webb from the BBC. She oversaw the move of the BBC from London to Salford, while keeping staff engaged as she went. Vikki Goddard and I also had a conversation at the Faculty open meeting for PSS staff and next week we will have an interactive session with senior managers and leaders at the Dean’s Core Brief.

It’s great that we are talking about this, but none of the changes we need to make are easy. Some of them are cultural and about our ways of working and that takes time, understanding and buy in.  And most of all it needs you. It is the people on the ground that makes the University what it is. From my point of view I want to know what you are doing so that we can celebrate this and share it with colleagues and the wider world. By doing that we can help to improve collaboration across the University, show the impact of our research and attract the best students and colleagues. I met with Philippa Walker and Rachel Gibson from the Cathie Marsh Institute on Wednesday and I can already see how we can help them with internal communications to tell academics across the University about how they can help support their research. My team can also support them in getting access to policy makers, as the data analysis they do could improve Government policy and budgeting. I’m sure we’d all like our taxes to be targeted where they’ll have most impact!

I am trying to get out and about as much as I can but if there is something you are involved in that my team and I should know about while I’m writing the strategy let me know. I love seeing things actually happening – after a meeting with Hannah Barker I’m trying to get to see the special collection at John Rylands.

Pop into my office (I’m in Crawford House), drop me a line or give me a call if you have research or teaching activity where a communications input might help improve the impact. If your work is unique, a first, the biggest of its kind or has a human interest angle we can help to raise its profile in academic, policy and public circles. By doing that we not only support your work now but we enhance the reputation of the University which helps us to attract the best students and staff going forward, while sharing best practice and knowledge along the way.

Best wishes

Marianne

Dear colleagues,

Staff Survey 2017

As reported back in June the staff survey results both at the University and Faculty level were positive, particularly for overall job satisfaction and for staff identifying with University goals and values. We know the results would have been less favourable had we run the survey later than normal, after the announcement about the M2020 projects.

The University Senior Leadership Team has identified the themes of dignity at work and change management as requiring attention, in the light of the overall University survey results. At Faculty level, we have additionally identified the following themes:

• Communication
• Workload and work/life balance
• The need to value teaching staff 

We have started to look at some measures for addressing these findings which are included in the initial iteration of our action plan.  But we want to go further, by taking a different approach to staff engagement.  

The Faculty Senior Management Team recognises that we need to engage with, and get support from, colleagues much more effectively. Notwithstanding the overall positive headlines, our sense is that too many colleagues view the action planning process as little more than a bureaucratic box-ticking exercise-or, worse still, simply don’t notice it all!  So, this time we aim to try a different tack. Working across the schools and faculty we will develop and implement an engagement strategy which involves a much wider pool of colleagues in identifying, developing and owning actions more effectively. As part of this approach, the action plan will still provide a means of setting out measures taken under each heading and as a reference point for evaluating the impact after the next survey.  However, the Faculty aims to communicate more effectively the actions identified, how and why they were developed and their impact in addressing areas requiring improvement. We will communicate our plans for engaging with staff shortly as part of our commitment to identifying and improving any issues of morale, satisfaction and engagement. We want this engagement and the resultant actions to then become more important and visible than the mechanics of the action planning process, though the latter will still capture for reporting purposes the measures we have taken.

Equality and diversity

I mentioned in my last eNews message in February that we are committed to obtaining School level Athena SWAN Bronze awards at the earliest opportunity. This follows the Equality Challenge Unit’s expansion of the Athena SWAN Charter to recognise gender equality work undertaken in arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law (AHSSBL). Indeed, this commitment is formalised in our operational priorities. Social Sciences and Law gained Bronze awards in April and we hope to see AMBS, SALC and SEED gain similar recognition in 2018.

Athena SWAN accreditation is important for the recognition it provides, but the associated actions are what make the real difference in supporting progress towards our equality and diversity targets.

The Faculty’s Equality and Diversity Working Group oversees progress towards these targets and is always seeking to identify and develop novel measures to this end.  See details of the group’s remit and work to date.

Feedback

Do feel free to contact me with any comments or questions relating to any HR matters.  I would particularly welcome thoughts on how we seek to improve staff engagement as well as your ideas on how we might speed up progress towards our equality and diversity targets.

Best wishes,

Andrew 

Dear colleagues,

As we come to the end of week four, it seems like the summer was a long time ago. We have settled back into the routine of the new semester. It is easy to forget how our experience of the semester differs from that of our students. For our first-year students, of course, there is still much that is new. At this time of the year, they are completing their first assessment tasks and getting to grips with what is required from them at university. Some students will find the transition to university easier than others. I always try to remember what it was like to be a new undergraduate student all those years ago.

Last week, I attended the University’s Foundation Day celebrations. As ever, those who were awarded honorary degrees had a range of impressive achievements but, for me, the most memorable part of the day was the Foundation Day lecture given by, Gulwali Passarlay, a 2016 graduate from the School of Social Sciences. Gulwali described his year-long journey from Afghanistan to Britain as a 12 year-old. Amongst many of his hardships, he recounted a 50-hour sea crossing, a motorway journey clinging to a hot engine, and hiding inside a refrigeration compartment. In search of his brother, he eventually arrived in Manchester where he was fostered. At a day out to Jodrell Bank, Gulwali came across a leaflet about the Manchester Access Programme that led him to a degree in Politics. In describing his degree, Gulwali talked with enthusiasm about the opportunities presented to him in Manchester and within the School of Social Sciences. Like many of our first-year students, he conveyed a real sense of excitement about learning and about becoming a part of our community.

The notion of the University as a learning community is something that is at the heart of what we do. First year is the time when our students become part of our community as we nurture our relationship with them, encouraging them to become independent learners and to embrace the opportunities to ask questions, to be challenged and to challenge. This was reflected in the National Student Survey this year with a new section added to ask students about their experience of ‘learning community’ at the University.

During Welcome Week, all first-year students across the university were invited to take part in the Sustainability Challenge as part of Stellify. I had the privilege of being one of a number of plenary speakers at the end of the event. It was heartening to see students across the campus come into the lecture theatre enthused by their experience of the event and having made new friends. The challenge itself requires students to think about issues of sustainability, to work in teams, to solve problems and find potential solutions. In many ways, the Sustainability Challenge ‘throws’ students into their learning journey not least because it happens on their second day at university! One job application form I saw a number of years ago asked me to reflect on a situation when I had been thrown in at the deep end and had to work in a context that was unfamiliar to me. The Sustainability Challenge provides just such an opportunity, as will the remaining Ethical Grand Challenge activities, including the Social Justice challenge that was launched earlier this week.

These kinds of activities are among the things that make our students distinctive and it was great to see the University ranked third for employment in the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey when it was published earlier in the summer. This is a significant achievement given that we now sit ahead of many of the London universities in terms of the employment of our graduates. Within Humanities too, we have made significant progress in employability in recent years thanks to the work of colleagues across the Schools and within the Faculty.

There is much to be optimistic about at this time of the year. Of course, that is not to say that we are not in a period of significant change within higher education. In teaching and learning terms, the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) has become the Teaching Excellence and Student Outcomes Framework (TESOF). DLHE is being phased out after the next data collection point and new measures of employability are being developed, including the use of benchmarked earnings data from the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO) dataset. The impact of these changes will not be clear for some time, but we should not let this distract us from our core activities in research and teaching. Our students want to be part of a learning community that embraces the synergies across research and teaching and that provides them with the skills and opportunities they need to succeed in whatever they decide to do.

Best wishes for the semester ahead.

Fiona

Fiona Smyth

Deputy Dean and Vice-Dean for Teaching, Learning and Students

Dear colleagues,

As the students disappear for the summer, work on the campus estate and major projects continues at a pace. It has been a hectic but really productive year. We are now five years into the University’s Campus Masterplan, our once in a generation opportunity to realise the institution’s long-held ambition to create a single campus for students, staff and visitors.

We are creating world-class facilities to help our University to compete on the global stage and become one of the top 25 research-led universities in the world by 2020. That involves uniting our University onto one site with exceptional spaces that encourage ground-breaking research, interdisciplinary work and an outstanding student experience.

Samuel Alexander

The end of this summer sees three years of investment and commitment to the remodelling and refurbishing of the Samuel Alexander Building come to fruition. The project has been unique in terms of the impact on staff residing within the building, the strong relationships built with the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC) and the changing landscape for SALC during the duration of the project. The end result will be a building fit for the future, remodelled and re-shaped to suit the needs of the School, boasting excellent facilities and building communities for students in each division within the building. The final phase will see us head towards a key milestone for Humanities as colleagues from Oddfellows Hall prepare to join staff within Sam Alexander Building to create a co-located University Language Centre.

The dust will have barely settled when the contractors will move in at the end of September and take over the Oddfellows site relinquished by the University Language Centre. And while much of the building will be demolished to make room for the Manchester Engineering Campus Development (MECD), the beautiful listed façade will be incorporated into the new development. Meanwhile, MECD continues to develop and change each week with the basement floors being constructed at present and the advancement of the project visible from the University webcam for those who are interested at taking a peek.

Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS)

It has been a productive year for AMBS with additional staff moves from Harold Hankins to Denmark Road and the hotel and refurbishment ploughing on steadily. The main scheme is expected to achieve completion on time at the end of September 2018. While the Executive Education Centre will be completed in autumn this year, it currently has a target opening/operational date of February 2018.

Students Union

Also impacting on Humanities is the refurbishment of the Students Union Building. This is a major remodelling of the Steve Biko building, next to Samuel Alexander, to provide updated and additional space for the Students Union. The project is progressing well and, again, is scheduled to be completed by September 2018. This area of campus has seen its fair share of construction related activity but we are heading into the final phase and with the completion of the work to Sam Alex we will start to see a visible tidying up of the campus.

Brunswick Park

In addition to this, you may have seen the beginnings of the new landscaping development along Brunswick Street. It is still early days and the work is expected to take roughly 12 months to complete, but what will be delivered is another beautiful park and event space for the campus on the east side of  Oxford Road. The closure of Brunswick Street to traffic has allowed the University to reclaim some land to deliver a spacious green area for staff, students and visitors to enjoy. Brunswick Park will consist of a formal civic square, informal seating and meeting spaces, as well as lawns, planting and a future event space.

Other Humanities projects

The summer months will see us bringing to a conclusion a vital investment which takes place across many of the common/public spaces in our buildings. A number of washroom facilities, foyers, lobbies and corridors are set to undergo refurbishment in readiness for the new semester.

As well as the many projects in progress at present, the last year has also seen us add two beautiful spaces to the ‘Humanities’ part of campus; the beautiful Confucius Institute in Waterloo Place, as well as a brand new facility for Philosophy within the School of Social Sciences (SoSS).

Looking to the autumn, we aim to deliver a design for a high-spec Media Lab in Humanities Bridgeford Street as part of a joint initiative with SoSS and SALC, with delivery of the facility later next year. We are also expecting the Coupland 3 and Library projects, which had been put on hold last year, to be brought back to the table for reconsideration. Meanwhile the works to make Coupland 3 safe and watertight are progressing as planned.

All in all, another busy, bustling year. I hope everyone agrees that the campus is now, in parts, looking really smart and, with another year under our belt, many of the remaining hoardings will be gone and we can start to really enjoy some of the spaces. Thank you to all the staff who continue to be so patient and supportive during the construction works and who can already see the benefits outweighing the disruption. Your patience is very much appreciated.

Best wishes

Michelle

Head of Faculty Estates

Dear colleagues

Increasingly, we seem to have to do lots of things at the same time. It’s not just that we teach, research, run things and internationalise, all the while promoting responsibility, it is also that within each area we have to both think far ahead and react quickly. 

The future: long-term and immediate

To attract talented new postgraduate researchers, we have to be able to offer studentships. Therefore, securing external PhD funding is crucial. Typically, we have to apply years before any students actually arrive. Right now, we are putting together our bid for the second round of doctoral training partnerships (DTPs) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), to start in September 2019. This is a complex process involving seven universities led by Manchester plus a number of cultural partners. Although the bid won’t be submitted until October, I have just provided comments on the first draft. 

At the same time, we also suddenly have some new studentships for 2017/18. The research councils awarded us some additional funding last month with only two weeks to apply. This is because in March the government announced the creation of an additional 1,000 funded PhD places in areas aligned with the Industrial Strategy. Both the ESRC Northwest Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership (NWSSDTP) and the AHRC Northwest Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership (NWCDTP) are now running a competition to recruit under this scheme. Applicants and colleagues running the process have to move very quickly because the students have to start their programme in four months’ time.

PGR training and research

The funding landscape and the requirements imposed on us by the research councils have become more complex over the last few years. We are constantly working to make sure we are ready to capitalise on new opportunities. We need to have effective doctoral training, outstanding research achievements aligned with the supervision we propose to do as well as excellent professional support. This is challenging but we are doing well. In addition to the DTPs, we are part of several specialised centres for doctoral training. Within all of these arrangements we get a large share of the studentships.

In the ESRC supported areas colleagues have been working hard to get ready for the September launch of the two CDTs Manchester is involved in, the Soc-B Centre of Doctoral Training in Biosocial Research  and the Data Analytics and Society CDT.  There have been some hurdles in enabling the sort of programme and cross-institutional collaboration that the CDTs aspire to, but we have been able to recruit some impressive candidates. The NWSSDTP also enters a new funding phase from next academic year and we have enhanced our training provision to get ready for this.

One of our strengths is our expertise in and enthusiasm for methods. The recent Manchester Methods Exchanges Conference, which attracted around 100 participants, kicked off MethodsX, a new initiative designed to bring together postgraduate researchers from across the NWSSDTP institutions so they can exchange ideas with others using similar methods and learn from academics working at the cutting edge of methodological developments.  

All change

And it is all change for me also. After five years as Associate Dean, I will be handing over to my successor, Stuart Jones at the beginning of September. He will be supported by the new Deputy Associate Dean, Jon Shute, as his predecessor, Judith Aldridge, takes up her Visiting Professorship at the Central European University. Stuart’s current role as NWCDTP Director will be taken on by Erica Baffelli. So it is all change in the academic leadership for PGR in the Faculty.

When I started in this role, I didn’t entirely know what I was getting myself into. But I have learned an enormous amount, not just about how to do research and train new researchers, but also, for example, about how to work with and accept support from others. I have been delighted to work in and promote such an important area of what universities do. At times, it has felt like being on a roller coaster ride: the speed, the exhilaration and, occasionally, the terror. Having been around the track a few times, it is time to move on. I have very much enjoyed serving in the role but equally I now look forward to spending more time on other aspects of the academic portfolio, not least – in the immediate future - my own research.

Best wishes
Maja

Dear colleagues

I’m writing this as I reflect on my first month in post as Director of Faculty Operations (DoFO).  It has been a very busy time, and a fascinating introduction to the life and work of the Faculty. There are things that, having spent all my career working in HE management, are very familiar to me, whilst I’m also learning that inevitably, things are done differently here as they are in every University.

I know I have a lot to learn about the Faculty and the University, and I look forward to meeting colleagues and students over the coming weeks and months, and learning more about everything that we do here.  

Student Lifecycle Project

One of the key developments across the University is the Student Lifecycle Project which is starting to move at pace. The project, as its name suggests, is looking across all aspects of how we support our students and how we can improve the experience for both students and staff. In common with most (if not all) Universities, we have systems and processes that have grown organically over a long period of time and work in a variety of different ways. As a result there is a high level of complexity and it’s not straightforward for students or staff. When you add into this mix the expectations our students have around digital communications (and what they experience in other aspects of their lives), it’s clear that we need to ensure a more seamless and straightforward way of giving and receiving information. 

The Student Lifecycle Project will undertake this work by looking across our systems and processes. We have just embarked on the discovery and design phase, and are currently identifying colleagues from across PSS in the Faculty to work on this initial stage of the project. The project will provide some great opportunities for colleagues to get involved with, in partnership across the University, to shape our new way of doing things. It will also provide some challenges for us – we are being pushed to work in a new way, at pace, and with cross-functional teams working in ‘sprints’ (short time periods of a week to a month) to define and deliver new processes across the student lifecycle – from enquiry management, through admissions and registration, to timetabling, assessment and graduation. You will see colleagues in Faculty and School teams spending time in the project office, and this may cause some local, short-term disruption, but this is a critical area of improvement for us that will bring many long-term benefits.

M2020

As part of the University’s M2020 programme, there are projects to support achievement of our ambitions underway across the Faculty. These are challenging for all of us and we need to ensure that colleagues are aware of what is happening. M2020 Programme-level questions are available on the dedicated M2020 programme StaffNet pages, whilst those relating specifically to the projects within our Faculty are on the M2020 Programme pages of HumNet. Support for staff potentially affected is available from their manager, HR Partner and from our wellbeing and counselling services, as well as in the form of specially commissioned training sessions. Regular meetings and communications are also being organised in the Schools.

Staff Survey 2017

The headline University-level results of the staff survey will be shared next week, followed by the Faculty and School-level results over the following two weeks. We will be undertaking some initial analysis within the Faculty senior team to identify the key messages ahead of developing action plans. Our staff surveys are a critical way in which the Faculty can get a good idea of what’s great about working at the University, and those areas where we need to improve.

Meeting the Teams

The staff survey is one way of getting feedback but I’m keen to engage more with staff across the Faculty. I met many of my colleagues in our Faculty Office PSS teams at an open meeting last week, was asked some interesting questions and started a discussion about how we communicate and engage across the Faculty. Over the next few months we will be looking at staff communication and engagement, and I would be interested to hear whether people have views on the current channels, such as CoreMunicate for PSS staff and these kind of messages in eNews. I am very keen to get out and about to meet with staff and look forward to hearing about your ideas and concerns.

Best wishes

Vikki

Part of our social responsibility agenda is about understanding and responding to the changing relationship between universities and society. At an operational level this involves grasping the impact of our employment and procurement practices on our local communities. However, more fundamentally, its about the impact of our core research and teaching on the lives of people in the communities that adjoin our campus and similarly the potential impact of those communities to transform our teaching and research. This part of our SR agenda isn’t new, it was part of our founding purpose. As one of the the first civic universities in England, we were set up by, and for, the people of Manchester.

Inspiring Communities

At the start of this academic year we launched Inspiring Communities, our blueprint for engaging with our local neighborhoods. The plan is a recognition not only that what we do inspires communities, but also that we are inspired by our communities, their histories, capacities and cultures and we want “to collaborate on new ways of discovering and sharing knowledge.” The terrorist attack on the Manchester Arena and the cities response, has only served to underline the resilience and magnanimity of our communities and the importance of working collaboratively.

Community Festival

We will be rounding off this year’s focus on our communities with a Community Festival on Saturday, 17 June 2017, from 11am-3pm. Most of the activities will take place in the Alan Turing Building, University Place, Manchester Museum, The Confucius Institute and Martin Harris Centre. Our Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) will be engaging people in everyday experiences of racism through graphic art. Multilingual Manchester will be exploring Manchester’s linguistic diversity, with language taster sessions. If you come along, you will also get the chance to make Graphene, pilot a plane and drive a 3ft wooden glacier!

The aim of the Festival is to get our most immediate neighbours onto the campus. Of course we want people to get their faces painted and have fun, but there is a serious purpose to this. We want to develop and enhance relationships that will ultimately impact how we teach and do research.

Making an impact

I had the opportunity recently to visit two initiatives where researchers and educators are collaborating with their local communities to substantively impact not only those communities but also students. The University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Centre is Penn’s main platform for “bringing to bear the broad range of human knowledge needed to solve the complex, comprehensive, and interconnected problems of the American city.” Similarly, Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Colab, which is based in their department of Urban Studies and Planning, “supports the development and use of knowledge from excluded communities to deepen civic engagement, improve community practice, inform policy, mobilize community assets, and generate shared wealth.” It is based on a belief that “community knowledge can drive powerful innovation and can help make markets an arena for supporting social justice.” There is no inconsistency between these kinds of SR initiatives and our aspirations to be a world leading university, as MIT’s position, at the top of the world University Rankings, clearly shows.  

Making A Difference Awards.

Our annual Making A Difference Awards earlier this month celebrated the many ways colleagues and students from across the University inspire, involve and impact communities both in Greater Manchester and all over the world. For example, Dr Joanne Jordan’s work on the lived experience of climate change in Dhaka was a joint winner of the Outstanding Public Engagement award. Neil Allen from our School of Law won the Inspiring Communities award for his work with the Dementia Law Clinic, while Chijioke Anosike won the Student Inspiring Communities award for his work on homelessness and setting up the Big Change Society.

Changing Role but not Perspective

My time as Vice Dean for Social Responsibility will end in August when I become Director of Research at Alliance Manchester Business School. Being part of the team defining and driving forward our third goal has been a huge privilege. I’m now even more convinced than when I started, that a sense of social responsibility runs to the core of what Manchester and The University of Manchester is about. I’m also certain that our SR agenda enables us to respond to a changing HE sector and the shifting relationship between universities and society that it represents.

Best wishes

Ken

Dear colleagues, 

It’s almost a year since I moved to Manchester to take up my post as Head of the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, and it is fair to say that these have been an exhilarating nine months. What I found is pretty much what I expected, only better: an outstanding cohort of impressive colleagues in a broad variety of subjects; a lively, diverse and international student body; a deeply committed Professional Support Staff. And the weather is not that bad, either. These impressions (bar the last, perhaps) are borne out by hard figures, first and foremost the steady increase in NSS and PTES results as well as a remarkable string of prestigious grants.

Cross-disciplinary working 

SALC is proud of its very varied disciplinary spectrum. Flexible honours, which allows students to combine different disciplines, is gaining momentum, evidently responding to an increased demand for breadth and flexibility. We also plan to increase the number of ‘halves’ and modules available to all students irrespective of their specific degree, and to launch programmes which draw upon the School’s rich expertise across different fields. Colleagues have been hard at work on different projects, ranging from Comparative Literature to Liberal Arts and Humanities or again from Heritage Studies to Digital Humanities. We certainly want to do more in the Creative Economies sector, leveraging our existing initiatives in the context of the Northern Powerhouse project, which will guarantee further expansion of the city’s already formidable cultural offering. As a School, for instance, we are heavily invested in landmark events such as the Manchester International Festival, the Manchester Literature Festival and the Manchester Histories Festival, to name just a few. Not many cities in the world can boast such a concentration of first-class international events. There is a lot we can contribute to the creative sector, from a variety of angles, and not just in the School. One of the attractive features of the Manchester set-up, as I looked at it from the outside, was the inclusion of SALC in a Faculty of Humanities where Arts and Social sciences interact. In practice, as I had hoped, this means that there are abundant possibilities for thinking across and beyond disciplinary boundaries, and some very promising conversations are under way across the Faculty and even elsewhere about Creative Economies and related projects. 

Reacting to Brexit 

As I write this Message, Brexit has been put on a formal footing, with the Prime Minister’s letter being handed over in Brussels just hours ago. Over the next two years much thought will have to be given to how our University plans to respond to these momentous events. The number of EU students applications is already down, and a further decrease is more than likely. It is essential that while the diplomatic process runs its course we think creatively, and actively, about what we can do to preserve openness and inclusiveness. No easy task, to be sure, but there is much we can do, for instance, in strengthening bilateral relationships or in forging new ones with top universities across the Union. We could consider an expansion of courses and programmes that require a more limited presence in the UK but can still give students from other countries a taste of the strength and breadth of our academic provision. Universities were created on the premise of the free movement of people well before anything resembling the EU, or indeed many nation-states, appeared on the horizon. We can continue to be true to that spirit no matter what the circumstances.

Best wishes, 

Alessandro

Dear colleague

This week we completed the annual round of strategic planning and budget setting for the Faculty and our five Schools. This has prompted me to reflect on the changes over the last 12 months in the political and funding environment for our research and research strategy. 

The Stern Review and proposed changes to the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) for REF2021
The Independent Review of the Research Excellence Framework(REF), chaired by Lord Nicholas Stern, made a series of recommendations for the detail of the UK’s second REF. Many of the proposed reforms are intended to reduce the administrative burden and have been widely endorsed by the sector. The proposals which have attracted the most debate are that all academic staff with research in their contract should automatically be included, that the number of outputs submitted should be an aggregate average for the unit rather a specified number per individual, and whether or not outputs should be ‘portable’ if an academic moves institution. Following discussion with School Research Directors, their school research committees, and their wider consultation within Schools, The University of Manchester’s response has been submitted to the Funding Councils’ consultation. 

The changing funding environment for research
There are several changes rolling out in the funding environment. In 2016 the government launched the Global Challenges Research Fund, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary, internationally collaborative and challenge-focussed research as part of the UK’s official development assistance (ODA) to support the global development agenda. Another recent development is the Newton Fund, which, like the GCRF provides substantial opportunity for ODA compliant research through international partnerships. Colleagues in Humanities rose nimbly to respond to both new funding streams, have already secured some early funding successes, and are preparing for future funding calls. We have scope to do much more. Further information about both the Global Challenge Research Fund and the Newton Fund, and the workshops and other activities we are running to support teams to build research agendas in relation to this opportunity are detailed in an accompanying Humanities eNews feature article by Elaine Edwards, the Faculty Research Support Manager responsible for large strategic projects.

We anticipate further funding environment changes in the wake of the Nurse Review which replaces the Research Council UK (RCUK) with the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The detail of the terms of reference for UKRI, including the degree of autonomy of UKRI and its constituent funding councils, is still being negotiated as part of the progression of the Higher Education and Research Bill through the Houses of Parliament. However, what is known is that the funding landscape is moving towards an emphasis on greater interdisciplinarity and collaborative team working. The newly appointed Chief Executive for UKRI, Professor Sir Mark Walport has affirmed the important role which social sciences and arts research has to play in the UK’s research and development base through his ‘from STEM to STEAM’ vision, but we still have much work to do as a social science and arts (humanities) community to ensure that the academic quality and impact of AHRC and ESRC funded research – whether disciplinary or interdisciplinary - is visible and resourced as UKRI sets out its agenda and budget allocations. We face similar issues in relation to the current consultation on the government’s new Industrial Strategy, which focuses on the research and development contribution which STEM subjects can make for the economic prosperity of the UK; in our response to the consultation we are highlighting some of the contributions which Humanities research can make to this strategy. 

….and Brexit
Brexit is also fundamentally reshaping the uncertainty and challenges of our external funding opportunities, our research collaborations, networks and partnerships in Europe and the career futures and geographical mobilities of individual academics. This will continue to shape the environment for our research, but also our research agendas. One such indication of the latter is that the ESRC has recently supplemented our Impact Acceleration Account to support the research investigating the implications of Brexit which is already underway by a growing number of colleagues across the Faculty. Colleagues are also studying the implications of the election of Donald Trump. Such research can make a vital contribution to both academic and policy debates. 

So what are our research priorities against this backdrop?
Last year I outlined the Faculty’s three strategic priorities for research and how these provide the focal point for delivering our ambition for our research, and to implement the University Research Strategy and Statement of Research Expectations.

Following discussion and review with School Research Directors and their committees, we have agreed that our headline strategic priorities remain the same:

• To enhance research quality and academic impact in preparation for the next Research Excellence Framework (REF)
• To grow external research funding
• To improve research-based knowledge exchange and impact

Some of the detail will have to adapt, for example according to the precise rules to be announced for the next REF, or the changing funding opportunities which will roll out with UKRI. But regardless of the shifting environment we must enable our academics to produce excellent research, to secure research funding to enable them to do so, to work and collaborate internationally, and to ensure our research secures wide exposure, recognition, debate and impact.

Best wishes

Colette

Vice Dean for Research and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Humanities 

Dear colleagues,

Staff Survey 2017

Next month sees the launch of the biennial staff survey.  This gives colleagues the opportunity to tell us how they are feeling about the University as a place of work.  It is an essential tool for us in gauging engagement and satisfaction, so that we can respond to feedback appropriately. It is only through being engaged and well-motivated that we are collectively going to meet the Manchester 2020 goals.  So, do take time to complete the survey and voice your opinion. 

You are likely to already have seen publicity about the forthcoming survey, but I would also encourage you to review the measures taken at Faculty level to address findings from the 2015 surveyrelating to the way we manage change, workload and work/life balance, communication and the way we value teaching staff. 

Look out for an email on Monday, 6 March 2017 when the survey opens.  For those of you who have joined the University in the last two years, it takes around 15 minutes to complete, and all the information you supply will be anonymous and treated in strictest confidence. If I haven’t already convinced you of the merits of participating, everyone who completes the survey will be in with a chance of winning a mini break!  And two people each week will be chosen at random to win a £250 voucher towards a mini break of their choice.  Further details will follow when the survey launches. 

You will also be able to choose a charity to receive a donation from the University on your behalf – something that supports our third goal of social responsibility.

International colleagues

It has been an unsettling time for international colleagues following the referendum outcome last June and recent shifts in the geopolitical landscape. At the same time, it has been heartening to see colleagues unite to ensure that the University remains a welcoming community for staff and students from across the world. 

Following the referendum result, the University formed the EU Working Group, which is chaired by the President and Vice-Chancellor. The Group’s remit is to consider and determine priorities and actions as a result of the decision for the UK to leave the EU. 

The issue of implications of Brexit for non-UK EU staff remains a standing item on the agenda for meetings of the Working Group. Following discussion of an options paper I submitted to the Working Group, HR was tasked with setting up advice sessions for international staff (both non-UK EU and non-EU) and building up capacity and capability to provide immigration and residency advice and support to prospective and current international staff.  

In November, a total of just under 300 staff attended two large meetings held for non-UK EU staff at which Simon Kenny, an immigration expert from Eversheds, set out details of the main considerations and processes associated with applications for UK residency and citizenship. A large part of the session was also devoted to questions and answers. Around 140 attended a similar meeting for non-EU staff. Six follow up advice clinics for non-UK EU staff were attended by a total of just under 200 staff. 

Film recordings of one of the two EU staff meetings and of the session for non-EU staff were placed on StaffNet as well as a comprehensive set of FAQs developed following the sessions.  

The University continues to lobby through Universities UK and the Russell Group in attempting to secure early certainty about the rights of EU staff to remain in the UK post-Brexit (i.e. those who aren’t eligible or decide not to apply for residency or citizenship) and in arguing for current freedom of movement arrangements to be maintained. 

We will continue to monitor and respond to developments, and do all in our power to ensure that the University remains a welcoming place of work and study for current and prospective international colleagues and students. 

Equality and diversity

The Equality and Challenge Unit’s Athena SWAN Charter was originally established in 2005 to encourage and recognise commitment to advancing the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) employment in higher education and research. In May 2015, the Charter was expanded to recognise work undertaken in arts, humanities, social sciences, business and law (AHSSBL), and in professional and support roles. As a result the Faculty committed to obtaining Athena SWAN Bronze awards at the earliest opportunity. This commitment is formalised in our operational priorities. 

School Self-Assessment Teams (SATs) have been busy in devising measures necessary to prepare applications. Social Sciences and Law submitted their applications in November 2016 and should hear the outcome any day. SATs in AMBS, SALC and SEED are preparing applications for submission in April.  

What is important about Athena SWAN accreditation is not just the recognition it provides, but the associated measures devised that support progress towards our equality and diversity targets.

HR Support

HR colleagues manage a range of day-to-day HR enquiries and activities through HR Services, which is based on the second floor of the Simon Building. I would encourage you to make use of askHR, our online knowledge base, for answers to initial queries. askHR is a very comprehensive resource, and provides answers to all manner of employment questions.  General contact details for HR Services and askHR can be found on the HR StaffNet pages.

Each School/function area also has a designated HR Partner to provide strategic and high- level advisory support. Details of your School’s / area’s HR Partner can be found on StaffNet.

Do also feel free to contact me with any comments or questions.

Best wishes

Andrew Mullen
Deputy HR Director and Head of HR for Humanities

Dear colleagues, 

As I am now two months into the role of Associate Dean for Internationalisation, I wanted to take the opportunity to share news of recent activity and future plans for the Faculty’s Internationalisation agenda. There has been a good deal of activity in this area across the Faculty in recent years, including a particular focus on, China and the USA, as covered in previous editions of eNews.

Over the course of my three-year term, I will be working to implement and review the Faculty’s Internationalisation strategy, which ultimately looks to play its part in meeting the University’s three core goals by supporting world-leading research, ensuring a truly international teaching and learning experience for staff and students, and supporting the University’s social responsibility agenda.

My own research in International Relations means that I am regularly overseas giving talks and visiting different institutions, or carrying out research. My work on different aspects of international conflict and ongoing peace processes takes me all over the world, recently taking me from the UN in New York to universities including Brazil, Korea, Norway, and Colombia, and others. This regular travel provides me with an excellent opportunity to engage with researchers and policymakers from some of the world’s leading institutions and organisations. It is clear that Manchester’s reputation carries enormous weight and there is much interest in building cooperative partnerships with those across the Faculty, and my partners never fail to be impressed with Manchester’s role in building the modern world. During my term as Associate Dean I am seeking to consolidate our existing relationships but also to expand their range through a series of new partnerships.

Building Global Partnerships

Europe

With the recent referendum vote for the UK to leave EU, it is crucial that the Faculty look to ensure that we build and strengthen our European ties to take us through the uncertainty of the next few years. We were pleased to welcome a total of 450 UG, PGT and PGR students from EU countries as new entrants in September.  In autumn 2015, Keith Brown, the Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, led a delegation to visit the University of Amsterdam, as part of a move to add to a selected number of European partners. This was followed by a visit to the University of Copenhagen last month. As part of this visit, the delegation met with the deans for the various faculties, as well as staff from the University’s top research centres. This was a highly productive visit, and we will now identify ways in which the Faculty can begin to work closely with colleagues at Copenhagen, as we look to build partnerships across Northern Europe.

Melbourne

Following the announcement of the University-wide Manchester-Melbourne fund, the School of Arts, Language and Cultures ran their own funding call with the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne. The successful applications have recently been announced; further details of their projects were covered in eNewslast month. This fund is set to produce some very interesting projects developing from the collaboration, and further solidifies the University’s ten-year research partnership with Melbourne.

North America

My predecessor in this role, Ian Scott, visited Indiana University in March to begin looking at ways in which we can begin building a collaborative partnership between our two institutions. This was following AMBS’ announcement of the new Global MBA with Indiana University’s Kelley Business School, which successfully welcomed its first cohort of 13 students in July. Over the summer, we hosted an inbound visit from their Associate Vice-President for International Affairs, and have since launched a PGR exchange between the John Rylands Research Institute and Indiana’s Lilly Library. This is the first step towards establishing a number of Faculty wide-partnerships that will be a focus for the coming year.

In addition to Indiana University, we will begin to scope out other opportunities for our North America strategy, including further institutional partnerships and government bodies. We were also delighted to welcome the US Ambassador to the UK, Matthew Barzun, who visited Manchester on the 16th November to deliver a Vital Topic Lecture. Following the recent US Election, this was a very interesting session, and was also attended by our guests from the North America Strategy Group along with the 2016 Fulbright, Marshall and NAFUM (North American Foundation for the University of Manchester) Scholars.

Confucius Institute Celebrations

In addition to our focus on building institutional partnerships, there are also a number of other activities taking place across campus. We marked the 10^th Anniversary of the foundation of the Confucius Institute earlier this month, as well as celebrating its recent move to a more central location on Oxford Road. The event included an ‘In Conversation’ session with Michael Wood, Professor of Public History, and Rana Mitter, Professor of Chinese Politics and History at the University of Oxford, as well as music and a showcase of student work. This is an exceptional example of the strength between the University and its various partners across China.

Future Plans

The strategic plan for the next few years will include ways in which members from across the whole Faculty (including Schools and Research Institutes) can be better involved in informing the Internationalisation agenda. Alongside this, we will look to build comprehensive partnerships with world-leading institutions, and to identify further opportunities for involvement in global research projects.

I welcome input from those who are keen to be involved in any element of internationalisation as future plans take shape. If you would like to discuss further, please do not hesitate to contact me at oliver.richmond@manchester.ac.uk. 

Dear colleagues, 

The new semester began for me with a pre-registration field course to the Lake District, accompanying 180 newly arrived first-year geographers. This year, I was particularly struck by the engagement of the students.  They were a very capable group, all arriving with high A-Level grades and an infectious enthusiasm for their subject.  This was a good demonstration for me of how we will all benefit from teaching high-ability students capable of achieving the highest levels of degree attainment, in line with our strategy to increase intake quality.

Later in Welcome Week, I gave one of the plenary sessions at the Sustainability Challenge.  My impression of the students there was very similar.  They arrived back in the lecture theatre with newly acquired friends at the end of what will clearly be a memorable event for them.  In all, five thousand students participated in the challenge in what the press described as the ‘largest classroom in the world’.  Those students took their first step towards achieving the Manchester Leadership Award, something that, alongside their degree, will make them highly employable and socially responsible graduates further down the line.   

Alongside the excitement of the start of the new term, I know that a number of colleagues have been facing challenges from the disruption to My Manchester. I am assured that there is a thorough investigation taking place to identify the cause of the problems, and thank you all for your patience.

I am sure that many of us are still digesting last year’s National Student Survey satisfaction results.  The field course to the Lakes reminded me of how much my colleagues want students to have a very positive experience, which requires a team effort.  Some areas across the Faculty performed extremely well in both the NSS and PTES, the Postgraduate Taught Experience Survey.  Not everything has been perfect, but students recognise the commitment of colleagues and are very forgiving of inevitable ‘mishaps’.   Where students are less forgiving is where colleagues are more reticent in offering them time and support.  As last year, a significant body of students across the Faculty commented on some issues around assessment and feedback.  For many, the issue was about the usefulness or lack of personalisation of the feedback provided. Of particular concern were the perceptions of ‘unfairness’ in the marking process that was apparent in the NSS open comments.  We will be looking to address these concerns this year with the introduction of a policy on moderation, along with a number of other measures around assessment.  Moderation will ensure that our processes check for consistency of marking within course units, but also across course units within a degree course.  Students need to be reassured that degree attainment reflects their academic performance, and not simply their choice of course units.   In PTES, the issues raised are similar, but the key priority for PTES is to increase response rates so that we can get a clearer picture of the postgraduate taught student experience. 

The NSS will include some new questions next year, which will inevitably pose some challenges.  There is a new section on ‘Learning Community’ (for example: I feel part of a community of staff and students) and another section on the ‘Student Voice’ (for example: Staff value students’ views and opinions about the course).

Last week, HEFCE published the new guidelines for the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF).   We now know that our first submission to TEF is likely to take place during the current academic year.  This submission will be at an institutional level, but pilots at discipline level will follow next year, with PGT expected to be included the following year.  TEF will ‘measure’ success in three core areas: ‘Teaching Quality’, ‘Learning Environment’ and ‘Student Outcomes and Learning Gain’.  As we had expected, TEF will rely heavily on existing metrics for teaching and learning, which inevitably means that NSS will feature heavily (especially questions 1-12), as will the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education(DLHE) survey and HEFCE figures on non-continuation.   Further measures of ‘Learning Gain’ are currently being developed, and are likely to be included in TEF in the future.

As in previous years, we start the year with much to think about in terms of teaching and learning.  As always, this time of year seems to be particularly busy, but I hope that you all have a good few months ahead, and that you can build on the excitement and enthusiasm students feel for their courses at the start of the semester over the year to come.

Kind regards,

Fiona