Excellent student journalism covering the first day of strike action at the University of Aberdeen. www.gaudie.co.uk/wpress/index...
12.03.2026 15:06
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Excellent student journalism covering the first day of strike action at the University of Aberdeen. www.gaudie.co.uk/wpress/index...
I've been at Aberdeen for almost 10 years.
I think I've been on strike in at least 5 of those years.
This time, the issues are local rather than national - friends and colleagues are under threat.
Its a grim situation - but seeing interdisciplinary unity on picket lines today was very comforting.
Maggie in a black coat stands next to a group of university staff who are wearing pink UCU beanies and holding signs saying "on strike today"
Maggie wearing a black coat is standing with students holding signs that signal solidarity with striking staff. Because staff working conditions are student learning conditions
A group of university staff holding bright pink placards that say "on strike today, UCU and proud", standing at one of the entrances to the Old Aberdeen university campus.
Solidarity with Aberdeen @ucu.org.uk staff on strike!
Pleased to join staff & students on today's picket line. Staff are on strike to oppose job cuts & uni restructuring - changes that could be as devastating as those in the 1980s.
The uni cannot cut its way to growth! It must listen to staff!
Screenshot of a Tweet by @TheChiefNerd inclusing an interview with Sam Altman. The text in the Tweet says: SAM ALTMAN: “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.”
The whole "AI" industry is just based on the hope that they can deskill people fast enough that they'll have to rent back cognitive support systems. Forever.
It's like Uber. Just that they don't try to break existing transportation infrastructures but your brain.
every quantitative measure is actually a stack of qualitative assumptions in a trenchcoat
I should probably use this belated opportunity to say I wrote a book on why there would be a student loan crisis of this kind. It appeared 13 years ago.
www.plutobooks.com/product/the-...
The consultancy Nous takes hundreds of thousands of pounds from universities, leaves the exact same path of destruction everywhere, and keeps trying to avoid transparent contracts.
We’re urgently need control over consultancy spent in #UKHE, @bphillipsonmp.bsky.social
Headline on BBC News reads: "Aberdeen University staff strike in dispute over cuts" picture of a person in a pink hat protesting, holding up a sign that reads: "students support the strikes"
I support the strikers. The union have called for negotiations to avoid compulsorily redundancies. Management need to recognise that staff are integral to the university's future.
”We are not only fighting for our jobs, we are fighting for each other”: hear from me and other staff and students who joined picket lines at Uni of Aberdeen today 🪧✊🏻 www.gaudie.co.uk/wpress/index...
crucial coverage from The Guardian that features our collaborative, movement-building website
against-a-i.com
I was cheered up no end in a staff meeting today to hear from a colleague that the University of Aberdeen was founded, according to its charter, ‘that the North East of Scotland not be barbaric.’
www.timeshighereducation.com/uk-universit...
Times Higher has not always been a friend of universities given the league tables, rankings, etc. But it might be worth completing this survey to help publicise the widespread redundancies and terrible standards of management and leadership in UK HE.
Solidarity with UCU members and staff at Aberdeen. Compulsory redundancies and management intransigence undermine the very fabric of the university community. Resilience to the @maggiechapman.bsky.social and the trades unions on the ground.
Headline on BBC news reads: Aberdeen University strike dates announced in row over cuts.
Disappointing to see it reach this stage - strikes now planned on 12, 13, 17 and 18 March.
I'll be sharing solidarity with those forced to strike to improve conditions @ucu.org.uk
In an interview with The Herald, Aberdeen University principal Peter Edwards said he could not rule out compulsory redundancies.
Days later, plans to make £12m in savings over the next two years were unveiled.
www.heraldscotland.com/news/2589208...
Goodwin lol more like Matt Badloss
Leaving the point that Humanities are good to have to one side, I genuinely don't get the medium-to-long-term maths of this pervasive model. Take increasing central charge from 'cheap' & 'cheaper' to teach programmes & shrink them, & you also shrink your internal subsidy for more expensive subjects.
*Marx making a shocked face.jpg“
Headline in The Herald reads: Fears as job losses amid Aberdeen University restructuring bid. The article has a picture of students in graduation outfits which are black with blue and yellow hoods.
The manner in which staff report being treated is abysmal. Higher education staff work incredibly hard, in increasingly difficult situations. They need to be valued, treated with respect and deserve a transparent process going forward.
"Treating access to financial data as an exclusive management right, rather than part of a university’s shared deliberate processes, deprives academic staff of the sense of competence that enables meaningful participation."
isrf.org/blog/the-uni...
For our special issue we are honored to feature Michel-Rolph Trouillot's previously unpublished manuscript "Banana Wars: The Sweetness of Commodities," edited by Ryan Cecil Jobson.
Sad news, Dr Bolles published important and groundbreaking scholarship in anthropology of work and labor, including women's work, globalization/neoliberal restructuring, and organized labor in the Caribbean.
Recommended listen:
I'm begging people to read one (1) E.P. Thompson-influenced work pleeeeease
Devastatingly sad.
Every Labour MP should be forced to read this. In fact, every MP, who rushed back to Parliament to vote to save one steel mill, whilst hastening the collapse of dozens of universities - and harming the students, staff, communities and economies universities sustain and support
Header image from @culanth showing ‘Vol. 40 No. 4 (2025) – Articles’ and the article title in large text: ‘Marine Inequality, Borderization, and the Radical Potential of Kinship.’
Fiona McCormack’s essay, “Marine Inequality, Borderization, and the Radical Potential of Kinship,” engages with climate, capitalism, and decolonial critique, examining how marine spaces materialize global inequalities through regimes of extraction, governance, and labor.
Cultural anthropology latest Hot Spots Series, “Where have all the workers gone?” is both "an empirical question that ethnographers often encounter in the field" and "an epistemological reflection on where anthropologists today locate labor, work(ers), and their struggles"
I am really disappointed that the new version of EThOS at the British Library (the service for getting PhD theses) will be metadata-only. I really think we should use such resources, even if they are not books. They are still contributions to knowledge.
www.timeshighereducation.com/news/give-ph...
A reminder: as happy as I am to see adverts for jobs; no role is 'permanent' in UK HE and hasn't been for some time. 'Open-ended' is what we call it: it's important to remember we are actually all precarious to some extent, especially at the moment.
