(Archived) NEC Elections (2025)
Elections to UCU's National Executive Committee (NEC) are now underway.
Our NEC and it's subcommittees, Higher Education committee (HEC) and Further Education Committee (FEC), are responsible for the execution of policy and the conduct of general business for our Union between meetings of Congress. These committees take critical decisions about our Union's priorities, direction and strategy, including industrial action strategy.
The decisions of NEC, HEC and FEC can make or break our Union and our action.
It is critical that we elect the right candidates to represent us. Voting in NEC elections is every bit as important as voting in industrial action ballots, yet only a tiny fraction of the membership votes - turnout was only around 15% in last year's NEC elections.
We urge you to use your vote, to vote for the candidates below and encourage your colleagues to do the same. Help us build a better union!
UCU Commons Candidates
UCU Commons is standing the following six candidates. All of our candidates subscribe to our UCU Commons values. You can find their election statements below:
- Matthew Barnard (he/him), Manchester Metropolitan University
(North West HE) - Christopher O'Donnell (he/him), University of the West of Scotland
(President of UCU Scotland) - Mark Pendleton (he/him), University of Sheffield
(UK-elected member HE) - Sophia Woodman (she/her), University of Edinburgh
(UK-elected member HE) - Bijan Parsia (he/they), University of Manchester
(Representative of disabled members) - Matilda Fitzmaurice (she/her), Lancaster University
(Representative of LGBT+ members)
Download a flyer with UCU Commons candidates and voting recommendations.
We are delighted that UCU Commoners Caroline Proctor (University of Warwick), Vivek Thuppil (Bangor University), and Ben Pope (University of Manchester) were elected uncontested as representative for Midlands HE, representative of migrant members (non-EU), and representative of casually employed members (HE) respectively.
Other candidates supported by UCU Commons
The following candidates are not members of UCU Commons, however they have our support and we recommend that you vote for them:
- For Vice President (HE): Dyfrig Jones, Bangor University,
- For Honorary Treasurer: Andrew Feeney, Northumbria University
- For South (HE): Jackie Grant, University of Sussex and David Bretherton, University of Southampton.
Election statements
Matthew Barnard
he/him | Manchester Metropolitan University
(North West HE)
I’m a philosophy lecturer from a working class family, a first-generation student, completing my doctorate part time while working, and who recently became a full time permanent lecturer after a decade of casualised contracts. I feel extremely lucky for where I have ended up, and, because of how I got here, no matter how precarious things feel for me during the major crisis the sector finds itself in, I recognise that there are people in much more challenging situations. These perspectives are not often represented in elected roles, which is part of why I wish to stand.
I’ve benefited from the expansion of access to Higher Education for people like me, and after fourteen years of misrule and mismanagement by the Conservatives, their goal of snatching those opportunities back through high fees, no grants and choking universities of resources seems close to fruition, even after their electoral defeat. The new government is cautious when radical reforms are needed. Not only are redundancies occurring and being threatened across the sector, we face the very real possibilities of institutions collapsing. In this context, inflation beating pay rises are the least of our collective worries.
Our focus should be on protecting vulnerable institutions, campaigning for better working conditions and equity. We must recognise that while many members are struggling after a decade of pay cuts, we were not able to win in previous rounds of strike action. And the moment for pushing on that further is not now, when so many members' jobs are at risk.
A trade union should stand for and defend the rights of its workers and strive to improve their conditions. As things stand, our union is too often derailed from this purpose. That is why I am standing for election to the National Education Committee to represent higher education workers in the North West. As the crisis continues to develop, we approach what might be the most challenging fights of UCU’s history and that requires us to bring even more members along with us. I want to represent you with a realist approach towards these challenges and dedicated to working towards an NEC and HEC that is in line with all workers in the sector.
Please also vote for other UCU Commons candidates.
I am supporting Dyfrig Jones for Vice President of UCU and Andrew Feeney for Treasurer
Christopher O'Donnell
he/him | University of the West of Scotland
(President of UCU Scotland)
I am an academic with 20+ years of experience in HE, and I am now a Department Head. I've always been a union activist. I've worked as a caseworker, branch secretary, President, and member of HEC and NEC, and I'm currently a UK-wide pay negotiator.
Please vote for me and those who stand up for us. We will call out bad actors in our union and face up to our employers, locally nationally in Scotland, and across all of the UK. Together, we can halt the vandalism of the ecoculture we have built, maintained and care about.
As a union activist, I know this to be true about you and your lived experiences:
- University staff are a “University”. Valued, respected, and protected staff are authors of the university experience.
- We are stronger as a collective; FE, Pre, and Post 92 HE are protected and enhanced by each other; we will make changes from within that fortress.
- We are brave and honest. We strive to improve our working conditions through collective action. If they come for one, they come for us all.
- We have the solutions to our working, health, and equality challenges. We know the answers are complex and will take time; 20 years of erosion have brought us here.
- When the time comes to stand up and tell the truth, I'll be there. Our union is under attack from within, those who carry out and endorse bullying & harassment yet claim that they are "changing culture" whilst refusing to do that, call out or stand up to those who attack, and vote with them for personal gain.
As President, I can lead by using the platform to stop attacks and rebuild our environments. You've told me what you need they are:
- A new direction on pay, a multi-year deal, with a reformed pay spine, thus improving our collective rewards.
- A national framework on workloads that makes local agreements and practises meaningful.
- Security on the TPS pensions in FE & Post 92 institutions.
- We need 'fair pay for fair days' work', ending gender and race pay gaps, precarious work and zero-hours contracts.
- Reducing the regulatory burden; we know that the TEF, REF and NSS achieve little except make us sick.
To be clear, we can achieve these outcomes and improve our universities if you vote for those activists who will do the work required to achieve our goals. Please vote for those who want to do the hard work. I support Anne Gow as Scottish Honorary Secretary, Dyfrig Jones as Vice President, and Andrew Feeney as Treasurer. I am a member of UCU Commons.
Mark Pendleton
he/him | Uiversity of Sheffield
(UK-elected member HE)
This election I had planned to build on years of service to the union by running for a lay officer role. Instead, like many of you, I’m working with colleagues in my department to fight for our jobs. We taught several hundred international PGT students each year for the last five years in my department, but a single year drop in recruitment has seen us threatened with “significant” cuts and gutting of specialist teaching.
Our union has not developed an effective response to this crisis across HE. This is a failure of elected leadership, primarily the UCU Left dominated Higher Education Committee, which has stumbled from calamitous ballot to calamitous action, despite members ever more loudly asking for change.
That many members have now disengaged is a serious problem. I begged the UCU Left dominated HEC to work to address this, only for my proposals to be voted down, along with other proposals to consult you. Who would oppose understanding what members experience on the ground and responding to what you are seeing and fighting?
If members continue to disengage, the union will drift further.
Please support those who have tried, despite being often in minority, to turn the UCU ship around. My fellow UCU Commons members have argued for a focus on uneven student distribution across HE for years and have been the only reps to propose a campaign strategy paper. That discussion has been deprioritised by the HEC majority on three occasions. Who would oppose an urgent conversation about a strategy to save jobs?
Look too for reps from branches where trusted, independent leadership have seen local wins or staved off compulsory redundancies.
While on our National Executive, I have regularly worked across political differences to foster the widest possible support. We are better able to win as a union when we are pulling in the same direction, as we showed with USS and across many local disputes. But that requires good faith from elected reps, which is not always forthcoming.
At Sheffield, where I am (for now) a Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies, I have also been branch secretary, treasurer and equalities officer, helped fight off ‘fire and rehire’ tactics during the pandemic and negotiated local policy in key areas, including migrant staff visa fee reimbursements.
I don’t know if I personally have a future in higher education, but for the sake of our profession and sector I urge you to support UCU Commons candidates and independents in this election as the best people to take our membership forward together and rebuild a union that can save post-16 education. I support Dyfrig Jones for Vice-President and Andrew Feeney for Honorary Treasurer.
Sophia Woodman
she/her | University of Edinburgh
(UK-elected member HE)
UK higher education is a binfire: the differential impacts of marketisation are driving a race to the bottom in working conditions. The fight to reclaim HE from the bean counters who are wrecking it has to be fought at multiple scales and sites.
Given the funding crisis in HE, and in education more generally, national action is essential. We have to be able to move governments as well as employers, including governments of devolved nations, to address sector finances. We need UK-wide action to have input into the regulatory frameworks for the sector, such as reinstating caps on recruitment to spread students more equitably across the sector.
I’m in my second year as branch president at UCU Edinburgh (first year as co-president). Our local joint unions workload campaign (launched summer 2024) is simultaneously a way of re-engaging members, working with other campus unions, demonstrating that unions work for all staff and local bargaining to improve our members’ working conditions. UCU’s training programme and workload campaign materials have been invaluable for us.
If elected, I will advocate for more support for local organizing and member engagement. Since 2023, in my branch we send motions to all members to vote on via e-survey if the GM in which the motion has been debated agrees. This is supported by most members, as it means everyone can have input on key branch decisions, even if they can’t come to a meeting. If elected, I would push for a revision of the branch model rules and national meeting arrangements to facilitate engagement using some of these methods.
UCU Edinburgh works closely with our student union and activist student groups to develop shared understandings of how marketized HE exploits both staff and students. I’ve campaigned with hourly-paid casualized colleagues to be paid for all their work and receive paid training. I’ve been a strong advocate for international students, who are often treated as cash cows and subjected to casual racism. I’ve been involved in campaigning against Prevent and the hostile environment.
I am a senior lecturer in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, and, among other things, I write on how the forces of securitization and marketization threaten academic freedom in China and the UK. Asserting academic freedom as self-governance and the right to criticize the institution in which one works must be central in what UCU does. I am proud of UCU’s record of standing for trans inclusion and Palestine solidarity, and would insist this continues.
I am a member of UCU Commons. Please vote for our slate.
I’m endorsing Dyfrig Jones for VP, and for UCU Scotland, Chris O’Donnell for President and Ann Gow for Secretary.
Bijan Parsia
he/they | University of Manchester
(Representative of disabled members)
I am a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. I am on NEC as the Disabled Members Rep for HE, working closely with the current Disabled Members Rep for FE, Pat Roche, and the Disabled Members Standing Committee.
I have lifelong social anxiety and developed arthritis and major depression during my PhD. I fortunately won the career lottery after a lot of precarity, though that did involve switching fields (philosophy to computer science) and countries (US to UK).
This will be my third consecutive run for NEC and second for Disabled Member rep. Here’s deep dive on my activities this term: https://tinyurl.com/BPucuRecord23-24
I wrote a white paper for NEC and UCU staff trying to produce a common understanding of accessibility: https://tinyurl.com/ucuAccess4all
I am hopeful that this coming Congress will be the first hybrid one enabling more people to participate in the fundamental policy setting event of UCU.
I was denied participation in Congress 2024 due to being within the quarantine period of COVID. While it was right for me not to attend in person for the prevention of COVID transmission, it was not right that I was denied my representative function. Similarly, it is not right that others with disabilities, or caring responsibilities, or job conflicts, or any of a range of factors be denied the ability to participate.
Hybrid is not perfect nor is it the only alternative, but it is the compromise position we have reached and even that is being resisted.
HE is on fire with the prior Government’s long term engineered crisis of funding coming to fruition while the current Government fails to even properly acknowledge the problem. Employers cannot fix this themselves — and not just due to their abundant lack of strategic or managerial skill. We need systematic reform for a systematic problem. With projections of 10,000 jobs to be lost to redundancy in the coming year, we need the Government to act and we need the public to understand our value. Our campaigns need to be political as much as industrial.
I have pushed for alternative strategies and will continue to do so: https://tinyurl.com/ucuNewStrategy
We see in FE, prison education, etc., that many employers do not have clear policies with respect to disability and reasonable adjustments. Having a policy is a foundation for getting adjustments and for effective legal action. I hope to help enable branches to negotiate such policies.
I’m a founding member of UCU Commons, please vote for our slate.
I endorse Dyfrig Jones for Vice President and Andrew Feeney for Honorary Treasurer.
Find me on Bluesky @bparsia.bsky.social
Matilda Fitzmaurice
she/her | Lancaster University
(Representative of LGBT+ members)
I have long struggled with internalised misogyny and biphobia, and it took a lot for me to stand for union office as an out, proud bisexual woman. These experiences galvanised me in expressing and practising my unconditional solidarity with trans and non-binary people. Since joining UCU I have passionately defended trans rights, healthcare, dignity and inclusion and opposed cynical attempts to weaponise the concept of ‘academic freedom’ against LGBTQ+ people. I have done this as a member of the women members’ standing committee (2020-2022), the LGBTQ+ standing committee (2021-present) and in my current capacity on NEC (2023-2025). In 2024, I brought a motion to Congress (then NEC) committing the union to opposing the politically motivated and cruel Cass Report. When this passed overwhelmingly, I moved the same motion on behalf of the UCU delegation at the TUC LGBT+ conference, where it carried unanimously. I am immensely proud to have played a role in ensuring the trade union movement stands unequivocally with queer and trans communities, especially when we face political and institutional hostility.
There is nothing single-issue about the LGBTQ+ struggle. Casualisation and precarity are ruining lives. Having had three different jobs since I joined NEC in summer 2023, and currently that of Senior Teaching Associate in Environmental Politics at Lancaster University, I know that keeping so many people in a state of constant uncertainty is both intolerable for those it affects and unsustainable for the sector. I am now HE rep for casualised members on the NEC (2023-2025), and active on the anti-casualisation committee. A major priority has been facilitating dialogue between the union’s anti-casualisation and equalities strands: which I addressed directly by organising a workshop on LGBTQ+ issues and casualisation in February 2024.
Compassion, care and non-hierarchical methods of organising are central to my politics. I stand for union organising that is grounded in inclusive, broad and deep member consultation and that draws on the diverse research subject-specific expertise of our membership. I am an unapologetic defender of academic scholarship, and I oppose all attempts to turn UK HE into a two-tier sector that restricts some academic pursuits to the already privileged. On NEC, I have pushed to address student number distribution which reinforces this divide, and now threatens to bring down the entire sector.
Finally, my opponent and I have a long record of working productively together and I know we will continue to do so, regardless of the election outcome. Whoever is elected, LGBTQ+ equality in our union will be in safe hands.
I am a proud member of UCU Commons and I endorse all UCU Commons candidates. See https://ucucommons.org/nec25 for more information. I endorse Dyfrig Jones for UCU Vice President.