Sarah Brown (Anglia Ruskin University)

woman

Election address

I have worked in HE and was previously a member of both AUT and NATFHE.  Since 2006 I have worked at Anglia Ruskin University where I am a Professor of English Literature.  

I have been an active member of our UCU branch committee since 2010. I am currently Membership Secretary, and have also served as Branch Secretary, as a member of our branch negotiating team, as a member of the Eastern Regional Committee and as an active caseworker. As the UCU rep on steering groups dealing with health and wellbeing, teaching review, and appraisal I have worked to promote the interests of our members in relation to the workplace issues they face day to day. I have experience of fighting on the workload, equality and casualisation issues which are at the centre of UCU's current work.

I was an NEC member for London and East from 2014-16 and was involved in the work of the Higher Education and Strategy and Finance Committees, and the International Working Group.I was also a member of UCU's Congress Business Committee which works independently of NEC to oversee the material and business dealt with at our Congress and sector conferences, thus supporting the democratic and campaigning work of our union.

While the threats facing both HE and FE remain acute - casualization, marketization, redundancies and pay inequality -  these problems, in particular attacks on the pre-92 USS pension scheme, have also created opportunities for our union through increased UCU member involvement, awareness, and resolve. In order to capitalise on these gains, it is important that union members and elected representatives work together collegially, focussing on our shared interests and problems rather than sectarian politics. I seek to work with all UCU colleagues, building on what unites us to win substantive progress for members.

I am a trustee of the charity Children of Peace, which supports friendship and reconciliation projects between communities in Israel and Palestine. I am not a member of any political party.  

If elected to the NEC I will continue to make the concerns of members my priority, and to support the best strategies to promote them. In order to be effective, strikes should be used alongside other tactics, combining activist strength with considered strategy and aims to win identifiable gains. 

As well as voting for me please support Janet Farrar for Vice President.