Broadcast: News items

Adam Tickell

Today the Vice Chancellor, Adam Tickell, wrote to all staff. You can read the email in full below:

Dear colleague,

For me, today started with an email from the British Academy to let me know that Professors Andrew Hadfield and Ben Highmore, both in the School of Media, Arts and Humanities, have been elected as Fellows. Fellowship of the national academies is voted on by peer members and is an exceptional recognition of academic distinction. I’d like to give my public congratulations to them both and am sure that everyone in the University will feel the same. 

A year and a half into the pandemic, this has been an odd week. On the one hand, cases of Covid-19 continue to spread rapidly and our city is one of the UK’s hotspots. On the other hand, though, most legal restrictions on behaviour have been lifted, recognising – at least in part – that the vaccination programme has made a real difference to the harms from coronavirus. However, there is clearly not a free for all and, as I’ve been out and about – both at the University and within the city – I’ve been really pleased to see most people are continuing to wear masks and socially distancing in enclosed spaces. Choosing to behave like this, of course, isn’t about protecting yourself – it is about ensuring that if you are infectious that you protect others.

At our University Executive Group meeting on Monday, we discussed in detail what measures should remain in place across the site. Legally, we can remove them all now but, instinctively, this does not feel right at this moment. We’re most interested in what you think and will be reviewing and acting upon the results of the questionnaire we sent out earlier in the week.  The questionnaire is very short and we’d really appreciate your thoughts.

Ensuring that everyone who uses our campus feels reassured and confident really matters to me. Full health and safety assessments have been carried out on all the spaces on campus and, with the success of the vaccination programme, we are in a very different place to this time last year. But this is about how people feel and it is very clear that not everyone is in the same place on this. How people feel right now has been shaped by their experiences over the past 15 months and the last thing we want to do is make things harder for people.

I strongly believe that returning to campus is a vital part of our recovery, collectively and as individuals, and, if keeping some of our measures in place helps with that transition, we should absolutely be looking to do that.

We will also vigorously promote the vaccination programme to new and returning students.  We don’t have the right to require staff or students to be vaccinated and we need to remember that a small number cannot be, but from results week onwards we will be communicating with all students to remind them of the advantages to them, and the community, of having a jab.  If you haven’t already had one, please do so: the known side effects are very mild and the benefits enormous.

One activity that often goes under the radar, yet is vital for the health of UK research, is academic peer review. There is something of an unspoken crisis: funding bodies are increasingly struggling to get qualified reviewers. The head of one of the research councils told me recently that they typically have to write to nine or ten academics to get three reviews back. This creates really long delays and risks having less appropriate referees making judgements. I know that peer review isn’t glamorous (either of grants or papers), but it is essential.  I’m really grateful to everyone across the University who engages in these processes and, today, wanted to make special mention of Enrico Scalas in Maths who is an EPSRC ‘super-reviewer’ – being in the top 6% of all their community. 

Finally, Kevin Hylton, our interim Pro-Vice Chancellor for Culture, Equality and Inclusion has reflected this week on his first fortnight in the job, which coincided with the end of Euro 2020 and the racist incidents that followed. I strongly encourage you to read his piece, if you haven’t already. There is much for us all to do and Kevin’s expertise is going to be invaluable.
 
With best wishes,

Adam