Message from the Vice-President and Dean

06 Sep 2024

This week Fiona reflects on student admissions, celebrates research successes and looks forward to the new academic year.

Dear All

Welcome back to the start of a new academic year. I hope you all had the opportunity of a break over the summer. I enjoyed a super holiday in Spain where I genuinely switched off from work for the first time in what seems like years. That said, I took away a big academic book to read as I like to do in my spare time. This year's read was How Migration Really Works by Hein de Haas. It was an apt choice against the background of civic unrest in the UK in August.

The beginning of a new academic year is always exciting. I am still excited even though it is now my 30th year at the UoM! It is great to see our campus come alive again with lots of new students finding their way around and returning students reconnecting with their friends for another year of work and play. I am filled with anticipation for the great things we will achieve together in the coming year. Thank you to those colleagues who worked tirelessly through the summer to prepare us for a smooth start. It is much appreciated.

Despite the sector's challenges, I am very pleased to say that the University continues to hold its own with undergraduate home and international student recruitment. In the Faculty of Humanities, the numbers across our Schools are very much in line with our expectations. This is a testament to our collective efforts of which we can all be proud. I wish to thank all those who worked tirelessly leading up to A-level results day and beyond. It was great to see our new President and Vice-Chancellor, Duncan Ivison, taking calls from prospective students with colleagues during Clearing.

We are now waiting to see if our postgraduate taught recruitment is also successful. This is more challenging territory and we will only how we have got on when home and international students actually arrive and register with us in mid-September. I am confident our Admissions teams have done everything they can to attract students to both established and new Master’s programmes across the Schools. There will be further updates on recruitment in the near future.

This week, I attended the Universities UK annual conference at the University of Reading. It was good to hear from the government’s Minister for Skills, The Rt Hon Baroness Smith of Malvern, Jacqui Smith, on the new government’s approach to supporting higher education. Sessions on designing universities that are fit for the future and how we can learn from one another and from other sectors during turbulent times were very useful and thought-provoking. I look forward to sharing what I have learned with colleagues in due course.

Events to celebrate our bicentenary continue and, looking ahead to next month, the University hosting the THE World Academic Summit is a highlight. This is a significant opportunity for us to showcase our achievements and contribute to the global academic community. More than 500 delegates will convene to focus on social responsibility and how higher education, industry and policymakers can work together to ensure that universities can act as drivers of positive change within local, national and international communities.

Duncan has asked me to facilitate the President’s Forum pre-summit event at the Manchester Museum for HE leaders arriving from around the globe. The focus of our workshop will be on Leading Universities in an Age of Inequalities. There will be roundtable discussions on student access and participation, workforce diversity and university relationships with local communities and especially disadvantaged communities.

I am pleased to see continued success in research funding for projects across the Faculty. Congratulations to three colleagues who have secured two Leverhulme Trust Research Project Grants for their work. From SoSS, Professor Rose Broad and Dr Nick Turnbull have been awarded £325,912 for their project ‘Interpreting the governance of human trafficking; explaining policy practice’. This project began with a John Rylands Research Institute pilot grant award, so it is pleasing to see this develop into a further major funding success.

Dr Abi Stone (SEED) has also been awarded £372,356 by the Trust for her ‘Paleoenvironmental context of the Palaeolithic Archaeology of the Namib Sea’ project. Well done to Professor Rob Thomas (SoSS) on securing £108,000 from the Nuffield Foundation for his ‘SEND complaints and the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman’ project. Congratulations to Dr Matt Johnson (AMBS) for the renewal of his UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship for a further three years.

I am pleased that colleagues across the Faculty have been receiving awards from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Acceleration Accounts (IAA) scheme. These are strategic awards providing funding to institutions to use creatively for a wide range of impact activities. Our most recent success includes Dr Sophie Everest and Dr Andy Hardman in SALC.

If you are a fan of research podcasts, I would recommend listening to Head of the School of Social Sciences, Professor Claire Alexander, discussing her book ‘The Asian Gang Revisited’ on the Surviving Society podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or SoundCloud. It is one of a series on race and ethnicity in Great Britain, and part of a partnership between Surviving Society, a teaching and learning resource for anti-racist political education, and the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE).

This time of year is when many academic colleagues begin new roles with us. I would like to welcome new starters to our Faculty, Schools and Departments/Divisions and those who have taken up new positions. Now entering my second year as Vice-President and Dean, I am looking forward to another year of great team working and much collegiality. I continue to love the balance of challenge and enjoyment that I derive from my role. I wish you a smooth start to the academic year and hope to see you in person soon.

Regards Fiona

Professor Fiona Devine, CBE FAcSS FRSA, Vice-President and Dean