Redundancy and Restructure

The History department has taken a significant hit in this round of redundancies. Having been warned any of the staff could lose jobs in October 2021 last year,  in April 2022 a total of 20 members of staff were informed that they were being made redundant, with nine staff (five full-time equivalent posts) in academic roles in the Department of English and Creative Writing and Department of History and 11 professional services staff (11 full-time equivalent posts) across the College.

Even now the immediate storm has passed, staff are still dealing with the fallout of the decision.

Justin Bengry, Director of Goldsmiths’ Centre for Queer History, explains the direct impact of the redundancies has not yet been felt, as the university is in exam term.

"We are now in the process of navigating how this will impact the department. So we’re still emotionally recovering from the announcement.

"Those of us who remain in employment and certainly those who have been made redundant are grappling with the implications lives and careers."

At particular risk is the integrated degree, which offers a route for non-traditional students into education, including mature, those with pasts including incarceration, drugs use, single parenthood and other disruptions to a traditional educational trajectory.

Led by Dr. Rosie Kennedy and Dr. Cheryl Deedman, the department believe it to be the only one of its kind on London, a contemporary fulfilment of the Victorian vision for the institution which allowed students to go on to postgraduate work and PhDs who might not otherwise have found a place at university.

Now all the staff involved have been made redundant, including Deedman, its future hangs in the balance.

The redundancies represent not only a loss of academic potential, but also a loss of community, says Bengry.

'There is not only the loss of intellectual life, but also of social mobility potential as well and access into academia and education [...] so we are a much smaller, much less vibrant, much less intellectually diverse department than we were just a couple years ago."

In areas such as Queer History, cultural history, and Black British History, and gender history, the importance of community is of particular political and emotional importance, Bengry adds.

"Those areas often draw together different kinds of people who want to engage with each other differently, who find a real need for their programmes, and their studies and research and their intellectual endeavours to build more than just research work, but actually to build community as well. I think some sub disciplines within history do attract people that are looking for a shared community of values of interests , of activism and of support."

All of this work done, we must stress, with fewer and fewer professional services colleagues who are also often the targets of restructures. https://t.co/lwPzy9DMW3

— cfryar (@seefryar) May 18, 2022

This sense of solidarity has extended a mutual support between staff and students throughout the period. Students have been, according to Bengry, very engaged and overwhelmingly supportive; on social media, many have shared support for striking lecturers, and disdain towards senior management.