Message from Claire Alexander and Alison Wilson, School of Social Sciences
15 Nov 2024
This week, Head of School Claire, and Alison, Director of School Operations, reflect on President and Vice-Chancellor Duncan Ivison’s visit to the School, report on preparations for academic promotions, and celebrate teaching and learning and research success.
Now that the clocks have gone back, the nights are drawing in, the leaves are falling and we have had some fireworks, our run up to the Christmas (break) has begun. The semester is halfway through, our new and returning students are settled and ‘SEAt-ed’, and the first tranche of mid-semester marking has landed on colleagues’ desks.
At this point in the academic cycle, we are looking backwards and forwards. Last week saw the Faculty Annual Performance Review, the first with our new President and Vice-Chancellor, Duncan Ivison, where we looked back at our performance last year, but also forward not only to the next academic year but to Manchester 2035. In SoSS, we were also pleased to welcome Duncan to the School on Halloween (the timing of which we are reading nothing into), and to get more of a sense of how radical some of this re-visioning may be. The discussion highlighted how important it is that we are all part of reshaping our University as we face a difficult, but also exciting, new era for the higher education sector.
On a more ‘business as usual’ front, we are entering the student number planning and budgeting cycle, which in such challenging times – inside and outside the sector – is a little more unpredictable than usual, particularly for PGT numbers. Luckily, we are able to draw on the experience of Amanda Grimshaw and Emma Rose, and their team, in helping us navigate this uncertain terrain, and the firm guiding hand of Lizzie Langton, our Finance partner.
We also welcomed Fiona Devine, Fiona Smyth and Emma Rose to our School Senior Leadership Team meeting to discuss progress on the Teaching Sustainability project and plans for phase 2. Phase 1 saw a lot of ‘housekeeping’ with the closure of eight undergraduate and 26 postgraduate taught legacy programmes in SoSS to date (those which have not recruited any students across a six-year period or which have been closed for some time but have not been deactivated on Campus Solutions), and an additional nine undergraduate and two postgraduate taught programmes where there has been an average of fewer than five students recruited across the same period. To date 195 undergraduate course units and 95 postgraduate course units have been closed. So our portfolio ‘cupboards’ are looking a lot clearer, although there is still work to be done. We are grateful to our Director of Teaching and Learning, Mario Pezzino, who has been our representative on the Teaching Sustainability taskforce.
In SoSS we are also in the midst of our first promotions committee preparations. We do an initial review of promotions applications in mid-November. This process was initiated by a former Head of School, Chris Orme, and Alison a decade ago as a way of supporting colleagues – particularly women and Global Majority colleagues who were under-represented in promotion statistics – so they can obtain feedback from the School Promotions Committee (SPC) to enable them to strengthen their applications ahead of the formal process in February. Thank you, in advance, to all the Heads of Department and members of SPC for their work in supporting colleagues in these applications.
Last week, we attended the Humanities Outstanding Staff Awards, which celebrated the achievements of academic and PS colleagues across the Faculty for their work on teaching, learning and student experience. Congratulations to everyone who was nominated, highly commended and won these important awards. We were particularly proud, of course, to celebrate SoSS success, including winners Verdine Etoria (Sociology, Outstanding UG Dissertation Supervisor), Ashley Collar (Sociology, Outstanding Teaching), Annie Griffin-Carter (Outstanding PS Staff) and Jordi Caum Julio (Economics, PGT Dissertation Supervisor of the Year).
We were also pleased to learn that our multiple-award winning Justice Hub recently won the Greater Manchester Pro Bono Award for student group of the year. This was for the amazing work done as part of the Manchester Innocence Project. Congratulations to the students involved, and to Claire McGourlay and Suzanne Gower for their hard work and guidance.
On the research front, SoSS is excited to be co-hosting, with AMBS, the new University Strategic Investment Reserve Fund (SIRF)-supported initiative in AI trust and security, in the Centre of Digital Trust and Society, under the leadership of Professor Nick Lord. We were also delighted to receive confirmation of a new ESRC/UKRI funded Centre for Joined Up Sustainability Transformation (JUST). This is a five-year, £8m grant to fund an innovative interdisciplinary Centre exploring how to build a green future through equitable low carbon living. Led by Professor Sherilyn MacGregor (Politics) and the Sustainable Consumption Institute, this is a multi-institutional Centre, involving the universities of Leeds, Liverpool, Lancaster and Newcastle alongside Manchester, and also includes colleagues from SEED and FSE. Congratulations to Sherilyn and her colleagues, and thanks to Chloe Jeffries and the SoSS Research Office for their support of this application.
Running a School is a team effort, and we are both grateful for all of the hard work and support from colleagues across the School, including Heads of Department and the School Leadership Team, and all our academic and PS colleagues. We are grateful too for the ongoing support of our Faculty colleagues, fellow Heads of School and Directors of School Operations.
On a personal note, as Head of School, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Alison for everything she has done for the School, the Faculty and the University. Some of you will know that Alison will be stepping down as Director of School Operations in SoSS from the end of the year, and retiring in March. She has worked for the University in a range of roles for over 20 years, and for 10 years in the School of Social Sciences. During the past decade she has been a constant support for three Heads of School, overseen the merger with Law, the effective functioning of the School through the Covid pandemic and the transition to SEP. She has been an exemplary leader and mentor, and her experience, good sense and inexhaustible patience and care will be much missed by myself and all our colleagues in SoSS. We wish her well in her retirement.
Best wishes,
Claire and Alison