Professor Anastasia Christou (Middlesex University)

Professor of Sociology and Social Justice; School of Law and Social Sciences; Middlesex University London  

Election address

I am UCU Chair-Equalities and Professor of Sociology & Social Justice, Middlesex University, an experienced caseworker and Editor-in-Chief of UCU's academic Journal of Further and Higher Education. My roles are rooted in my values, shaped by activism and community experience as an academic/activist, trade unionist, feminist, anti-fascist and anti-racist.  

I was first in my family to attend University, whilst growing up in a disadvantaged migration and class context. I have academic, professional and research leadership experience in HEIs & NGOs and activist and academic experience across diverse North American, Nordic and Southern European contexts, I have worked transnationally with NGOs supporting academics in exile and was a founding member of the Free University Brighton which for twelve years offered free community education for the love of co-learning with a number of publics often excluded from mainstream education. 

I am deeply committed to fostering equity, equality, inclusivity and the creation of spaces for all to flourish, with respect for diverse identities. 

Solidarity must be accompanied by empathy, humanity, care and compassion. 

Yet, my lived experience in UK HE is of a sector reeking of bullying, exclusion and nepotism, crumbling in the face of incompetence and mismanagement.  

In post-92 institutions working conditions are rapidly deteriorating, with the post-92 contract under attack, rampant casualisation and recurrent redundancies. 

My vision and my energy will be devoted to collective hard work with a key focus on: 

1.    Protecting TPS pensions, saving and improving the post-92 contract with a national framework on workloads that are pragmatic and enable local agreements and practices to be meaningful to re-claim our universities as public institutions not neoliberal corporations. 

2.    Ending gender, race and intersectional pay gaps, precarity and casualisation. 

3.    Working collectively as a union to lobby government to fix the broken funding model and properly fund post-16 education. 

4.    Educating, organising and building communities of democratic practice and a succession of new generations of trade union activists with fresh ideas and renewed energy. 

5.    Negotiating robust policies that protect our trans and disabled colleagues from being dehumanised in the workplace. 

6.    Safeguarding academic freedom, freedom of expression including teaching and research on social justice themes while eradicating the weaponisation of these to create a chilling effect that seeks to exclude critical and radical ideas. 

I am not distracted by factions, and I am instead unapologetically committed to actions. 

Let's create respectful space for collective action together with non-hierarchical methods of organising, deep dialogue, kindness and authentic consultation. 

Reclaiming UK HE for all requires us to work together to ensure that everyone has a say in what we decide collectively, including those with less privilege, or whose voices are less heard.