representing, promoting and informing historians working in higher education
HUK will be running a one-day workshop for school and university teachers at Leeds Beckett University on Friday 11th May 2018.
The event is designed to support an exchange of information between history teachers in schools and universities in order to enhance understanding about issues in transition between these two educational phases.
For more information and to sign up, follow this link.
Statement from the HUK executive in relation to the current strike action:
History UK is an independent national body promoting and monitoring History in UK Higher Education. We originated in the 1980s when two parallel organisations developed: the History at the Universities Defence Group (HUDG) (for universities) and the Campaign for Public Sector History (PUSH) (for polytechnics, colleges and institutes of higher education) were formed to defend the history profession against proposed cuts. The groups merged and became History UK in 2005. In this spirit we would like to state our support for academics involved in the current industrial action. Whilst we cannot directly take sides in the current strike action, we understand this is an issue of utmost importance to our members and to the future of Higher Education.
History UK believes universities should try to maintain the conditions of employment under which academics were originally employed. That includes pensions. Academics often face significant insecurity as the beginning of their professional life, many academics forgo better salaries and conditions outside academia because of their commitment to teaching and research, postgraduate and early career academics are now facing a sector which is increasingly characterised by precarity. The undermining of the USS pensions significantly adds to this insecurity. We hope that the dispute will be speedily resolved and we are encouraged to see that ACAS have started conciliation talks between UCU and the Universities UK group.
Dr Simon Peplow is the new ECR representative on the History UK Steering Committee. He is currently Lecturer in History (Education and Scholarship) at the University of Exeter, and tweets as @simpep.
In this blog post, Simon sets out his views on how he sees this role and his plans for the coming year.
As another teaching term begins, I return to my busy calendar having actually been able to have some ‘downtime’ over the Christmas break, away from the usual teaching/marking/research pressures – albeit this being enforced downtime, due to developing a particularly nasty cold. Debate has raged (on Twitter, as it often does) over the hours that academics work, and whether you are ‘failing’ at academia if you either work on evenings/weekends or maintain a strict 9–5 working week. However, the point I wish to make here is simply that the ability to take some time off, safe in the knowledge that a job (and salary!) awaits our return, is for many of us not something we are able to enjoy during the summer months.
Having completed my History PhD at the University of Exeter in 2015, I have since remained here on short-term teaching contracts. While I have been, in many ways, fortunate that such opportunities were available, the pressures (both financial and psychological) of fractional temporary contracts and the inability to plan further than the short-term is something with which I have battled. An increasing amount of my time has been spent on job applications, chasing potential funding opportunities, and being unsure what the next academic year will look like until just weeks (or even days) before it begins.
Prior to commencing my PhD, the one issue that I was repeatedly warned about was that it was a lonely existence; that the duration of my PhD years would be spent alone in empty libraries or dusty archives, only occasionally seeing others when we periodically emerged blinking into the light for a monthly research seminar or supervision meeting. Fortunately for me personally, the PhD experience was far from that, being a generally enjoyable period – with the usual intellectual/other challenges – and I consider many of those whom I met during those years to be among my closest friends.
However, I am aware that my positive PhD experience is not necessarily the case for others. I was reminded of my privileged position in this sense when reading Laura Sefton’s recent excellent comments on mental health and academic structures, demonstrating the often unacknowledged pressures of PhD study and the need for academia to become a more ‘accessible, inclusionary, and caring space’. Unfortunately, in my experience, many of the same pressures exist when transitioning into a more precarious ‘floating’ ECR position, when you might even have lost access to some of the support systems that previously existed.
The History UK plenary and AGM in November 2017 focused on collaboration, and that is very much the spirit in which I see this ECR representative role. As I have previously noted in discussion of the ‘Academic Boot Camp’ event, it is all too easy to see academia as a competition against peers in the race to obtain a permanent job, and to consider yourself a ‘failure’ if one is not forthcoming. However, it is of vital importance that PhDs/ECRs/academics of all levels support each other where possible, and it is often through bodies such as History UK that such support can really make a difference. Indeed, in the last year, History UK has organised another instalment of the Academic Boot Camp to help equip PhDs/ECRs for the job market, further New to Teaching events have provided invaluable advice and support for those beginning or developing a university teaching profile, and other events and activities have supported historians at all stages of their careers.
It is in this vein that I hope to use my role to provide helpful advice and support for history PhDs/ECRs in the coming year. This will involve writing blogs and encouraging friends and colleagues to contribute posts and advice on a range of topics, such as balancing teaching and research, finishing the PhD, creating and obtaining a position on postdoc projects, the benefits of engaging with the public through research, and the many options available outside of academia. This is, of course, in addition to acting as a voice for PhDs/ECRs in History UK meetings and discussions – and I please encourage anyone to get in contact with any thoughts or suggestions. Due to a variety of factors, the pressures on academics at all levels are arguably higher than ever before – but, as always, the best way to get through them is with the help of support networks that can be provided by bodies such as this one.
The co-conveners of History UK, Lucinda Matthews-Jones and Heather Shore, have put together the following summary of HUK activities in the last year (2016 – 2017). History UK is the independent national body promoting and monitoring History in UK Higher Education. It is funded by history departments or their equivalents and campaigns on issues of concern to academic historians and the broader history community, particularly in the following areas:
For example, some of the events that we have organised in the last year include our Plenary and AGM last November, which brought together Professors’ Margot Finn and Rick Trainor reflecting on the role of the Research Exercise Framework; and Geoff Stoakes of the HEA who revealed his insights into the Teaching Excellence Framework; in March, our co-convenor Dr. Lucie Matthews-Jones worked on an event with the British Library Labs, to explore the BL’s digital collections; in May we ran our second academic job bootcamp, inviting both PhD students and ECR historians to take part; in September, our education officer, Peter D’Sena ran the second ‘New to Teaching Event’, exploring themes including digital history, small group teaching, curriculum design and career development. We also canvassed HUK members on the consultation on Stern, and submitted a response to the HEFCE.
Our plenary and AGM this November focused on collaboration, particularly touching on the areas of public engagement and impact. Speakers included Professor Pamela Cox (Essex) who spoke about the importance of working with government and other organisations; Dr. Angela McShane (Wellcome) and Professor Chris Whitehead (Newcastle), who discussed collaboration with heritage organisations; and Dr. Sara Wolfson (Canterbury Christchurch, and HUK member) who talked about collaborating with external organisations in teaching, and the work which led to her THES Innovative Teacher of the Year Award in 2016.
These are just a taster of the sort of events that our executive officers and steering committee have been involved with. Our twitter feed (@history_uk) and website (http://www.history-uk.ac.uk) both publicise these events, but also act as a forum for members to feedback and even blog on their experiences of our events or on other important HE issues.
We have also continued to develop close working ties with a number of organisations. For example, we have run combined events with the Royal Historical Society, History Lab and History Lab Plus, and HUK representatives attend meetings of these bodies. Through our education officer, and other steering committee members, we have close links with the HEA and Historical Association. We are also members of the Arts and Humanities Alliance.
We hope this goes some way to demonstrating what your support of History UK enables us to do. Ultimately we work for our members, and you have a say through your representative on the steering committee, or (if you do not currently have a representative) by directly contacting the co-convenors, Dr. Lucie Matthews- Jones or Professor Heather Shore.
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