New: Alienation in Academia and a World Without Experts

A new blog post from our UK-wide NEC seat candidate, Matt Barnard.

Dear subscribers,

Hopefully you will already know that we have a candidate in the race for the UK-wide casual vacancy on UCU NEC: Matt Barnard.

Today, you can hear more from Matt: he’s written an excellent blog post. Drawing on his own experience as a philosophy lecturer in UK Higher Education in 2025 as well as previous jobs in other sectors, he writes compellingly about the specific way in which academics experience alienation at work. It’s well worth a read and it can be found here.

If you still haven’t voted in the NEC casual vacancy, please cast your vote as soon as possible. Please vote for Matt Barnard for the UK-elected seat, and if you have a vote in the North East contest (which includes the Northern and Yorkshire and Humberside regions), please vote for Adam Hansen. You can read a collective endorsement of Adam by UCU Commons NEC members here.

Please remember this is a postal ballot, so in order to participate, you must complete a physical ballot paper and return it by post. The postage is pre-paid so if you return it in good time, there’s no need to buy a stamp.

In solidarity,

UCU Commons