Dr Loes Veldpaus (Newcastle University)

Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Urban Planning, School of Architecture Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University

Election address

Together you win!

Thank you if you recently voted for me to be elected on to NEC (summer 2025). I am now indeed on NEC, and would like to remain there. The by-election only covered a brief period, and for a full term, I am asking you to vote for me again!

I came to the UK for a job at Newcastle University in 2016. After various precarious contracts, I am now a permanently employed Senior Lecturer there. I have been a branch activist in the Newcastle University UCU branch since the 2018 strikes when I became a Rep for my School. After finally obtaining a permanent contract, I stood to become the branch Equalities Officer on the branch committee, and after doing that for two years, I am now Branch Secretary. Fighting for equality and social justice has been, and will remain, incredibly important in everything I do. As a member of the Regional Committee since 2023, I am also well aware of the challenges we are facing in the wider region, both in HE and FE. I am also a board member of Food & Solidarity, a Newcastle-based member-led organisation fighting food poverty and housing inequality.

I am proud of my branch, our members have been consistently amazing, whether it's in standing up for Palestinian Solidarity, Trans Rights, Migrant member rights, reducing casualisation, or fighting for our jobs. We actively supported the student Gaza Solidarity Encampment, have set up a local migrant members working group, and established an equality working group in the last few years. It is through organising and action that we continue to build a strong and committed branch, region, and national union.

Our most recent local fight, as you may know, was against compulsory redundancies at Newcastle University. I had the privilege of representing the branch in weekly meetings with the university's executive board, as one of the negotiators. Our victory of stopping compulsory redundancies, and having further plans for 'workforce re-sizing' taken off the table, is a massive win for our branch and the wider Union! Together we can win, and I send solidarity to all branches fighting very similar fights.

We can see an unprecedented crisis in higher education unfolding. I am standing for NEC because we need to fight this together. We need to stand in solidarity with each other, and we need a national strategy, now more so than ever, to fight off the attacks on Higher Education. Solidarity is hard work, and it needs to be practised again and again. Together, you make hope possible, you make another world possible

Free Palestine