Thoughts from the criminology team

Home » Students

Category Archives: Students

Academic and Pedagogical Activism: Lets change what we can change

I feel some personal context should be provided as a preface to this rather long blog post…

…I chose an academic career path with a specific interest in activism (generally) not because ‘traditional’ protest action is defunct. Quite the opposite. As academics we have demonstrated that our passion for maintaining social justice, transparency, fairness, equality and employment rights, has not diminished. We displayed the collective nature of this passion several times in the past year, most recently through the involvement of over 70,000 staff from 150 universities across the country. As with a previous post, I stress that the thoughts contained here should not overshadow the issues we have raised, and will continue to raise, simultaneously through ongoing industrial action.

As a rather ‘average’ student when it came to attainment prior to starting my undergraduate degree, what shaped my passion for Criminology and my future career path was a combination of the interdisciplinary nature of the subject, but also the incredible student experience that I felt distinguished higher education from the boring, mundane, and out-of-touch schooling system in the UK; a system that often placed more emphasis on the reputation of the institution than the mental welfare of their pupils [I hasten to add, with the exception of my second sixth-form, which has a special place in my heart]. My student experience at university was characterised by a transparent, respectful, and crucially non-hierarchical form of learning. You felt like an adult, on the same level as others around you as well as the teaching team, and that there was nothing you were passionate about that you couldn’t reasonably pursue.

Over the years, however, I have become quite disappointed from seeing sheer refusal in some circles to even consider the student experience as playing a part of university life – the attitude of “they are not here to have a good time, they are here to learn”, which often brings back a lot of pent-up trauma from my schooling days; pigeonholing human beings into pre-characterised slots decided only by a handful of people, obsession with the quantification of success rather than provision of engagement, and an unwillingness to acknowledge uniqueness, neurodiversity, or simply that there were differences between individuals, some potentially requiring more attention.

Having since taught in several universities at varying levels, in starkly different spaces, and with students from an array of unique backgrounds, skills, talents and abilities, I have come to the realisation that these traditional schooling principles that previously governed higher education will always fail to gain traction or support in the contemporary world; from students, and from those academics who have thrived in progressive teaching & learning environments, where they would have failed if traditional practices had been employed. I have also reflected deeply on things that we can change as academics; things that are reliant on choice, and that transgress the traditional boundaries of strike action. Academic development is much more than research ‘impact scores’ or quantification of published texts/articles. It is a holistic process. Challenging dominant hegemony and helping to reinforce social justice is simply not possible without shifts at grassroots level; by actively being the change that we want to see. It is a process that requires active participation from all, rather than a dominant minority.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration

While we are, first and foremost, criminologists, we are also more broadly social scientists. Despite some rather outdated beliefs that the discipline should only focus on “studying crime”, criminology is (and always will be) fundamentally an interdisciplinary subject, encompassing fields of sociology, psychology, legal studies, anthropology and philosophy…to name a few. We always ‘study crime’ in some sense, but this does require the level of fixation with denounced theoretical perspectives that have been historically used as a guise for genocide and ethnic cleansing under the banner of racial purity…but a much heavier focus on reframing the theoretical grounding of criminology to debates within the present – the here and now. As a descendant of genocide survivors from both sides of my family, even the thought of teaching students the nuanced intricacies of strategies and tactics that were used to justify murdering people (like my great-grandparents and their relatives) is unconceivable. Of course, it is important to know the past to learn from it, and to avoid a repeat of the atrocities we have seen in human history, but in such detail? What is being presented to the world as the core of criminological theory by elevating these intricate ideas onto the criminology pedestal of fame?

Our approach to knowledge production should therefore be free from isolation solely to our discipline or institution. Our only allegiance is to the production of this knowledge…knowledge that we are profoundly passionate about, irrespective of its spatial dimensions. Institutions should therefore be facilitators of this knowledge; breeding creativity to roam free from isolation beyond the dominant disciplinary interest, allowing all to extend friendly hands for research collaboration with others who may well disagree with our theoretical positions, encouraging learning from others’ experiences that are different from our own. In doing so, we can avoid the suppression of certain academic texts from entering our curricula under a variety of guises; freeing academia from research isolation into being able to engage with researchers or work that may be useful for personal academic or pedagogical development. To ensure that we are able to successfully advance academic knowledge, but also gain the type of research experience that will serve us positively in our future lives with enhanced research portfolios, we need to rethink our own positionalities in relation to collaborating with other academics and institutions that may differ from our own. It is possible that much of these struggles can be unconscious and rooted in understandable past struggles, bad experiences that have led to mistrust or a sense of hopelessness, but there is no better time to latch onto optimism than the present moment. After all, what are we without hope?

As social creatures, we must venture outwards and embrace the flux of knowledge and healthy collaboration. In a contemporary globalised world, we are intertwined with the social, political, economic and cultural negotiations of our own identities as academics, alongside being ongoing students of the social sciences. As such, aside from the issues to which we aim to draw attention through industrial action, we must reflect on whether we truly practice what we preach. Without this, we are doomed to being perceived simply as moaners from beyond, rather than creators of change from within. Speaking from experience of witnessing the long-term effects of this kind of mismatch between what is preached and what is practiced, in many institutions this is commonplace and, unless care is taken, it can often become problematic. It can both confuse students’ understanding of how their lecturing teams position themselves in relation to what they are teaching, but also affect the academic staff that may well have alternative theoretical or pedagogical views to the dominant narrative.

Co-Creation and Student Participation

In the interests of maintaining healthy staff retention within institutions generally, but within social scientific disciplines specifically, proper care must be taken to ensure that suggestions for co-creation are actively encouraged. Calls for genuine co-creation of curricula, of strategies to shape equality, diversity or inclusion (EDI) strategies, and anti-racist pedagogical practices can otherwise end up either sidelined, ignored, or simply dominated by only a few voices claiming to know it all. Care must be taken to ensure that, in the interests of maintaining healthy communication and morale more broadly, decisions are not made by a dominant few in advance of consultation processes for these things. Genuine co-creation requires:

  • Provision of a truly open forum where anything can be discussed without fear or reprisal;
  • Entering the space with a wholly open mind where anything is subject to change;
  • Full acknowledgement of one’s personal unconscious biases;
  • Acceptance of one’s own intersectional privileges that influence their ideas, but that also disadvantage others’ positions;
  • Active participation from all members in the forum;
  • Recognition that decisions cannot be made prior to the forum, but that improvement is an ongoing process, requiring regular collaboration, rather than enactment of decisions made separately.

As an ongoing process, this is merely a starting point, rather than an end point.

Academics and students are an integral part of this co-creative practice; pedagogical knowledge requires, rather than desires, student contribution. That does not mean this process is easy. It can be difficult, particularly if student attendance or engagement with teaching & learning sessions is low. However, there is no conceivable reason to suggest that we cannot promote continuous, critical, self-reflection of teaching & learning practices, which are known to have a largely positive impact on academic development, albeit with a small number of students if so be it. After all, as social scientists we quite rightly regularly and vocally criticise bureaucratic processes that aim to ‘measure’ success of actions and events, or try to ‘quantify’ experiences and social interactions. Therefore, we should dwell less on numbers in attendance or vague interpretations of ‘popularity’ of sessions, and more on the quality of these interactions. It is the quality that builds engagement, paving the stepping stones for positive student and staff experience at university level.

Innovative Assessment Strategies

A rather different way that student experience of university study can be improved is by revisiting the appropriateness of ‘traditional’, but largely pedagogically defunct, assessments like exams and in-class tests. If we are to be vocally critical of contemporary school-style practices that do not prepare students for higher education, we cannot in good conscience then replicate the same practices that fixate on teaching students simply how to memorise concepts, ideas or authors for one day of regurgitation. Add to this the stresses associated with preparation, time pressures and performance anxiety on the day, and we are left with an assessment style that no longer matches our developing approaches in tackling mental health in higher education. Exams in contemporary society can only serve as a means of boosting grades at the expense of progressive learning styles. It is an example of pandering to bad pedagogical practice simply to give a perception of success, one that once again relies on quantification as a measure of achievement. In eliminating these types of assessments, we can make room for more innovative and progressive styles that can prepare students for the future of employment (whether physical or digital); communicative, collaborative, and largely reflective tasks that make use of technological advancement and help to build on students’ existing skills and talents.

Innovative assessment styles can be inclusive of developing technologies and increasing student involvement in social media platforms. Why fight the craze of video-based platforms when they can be used to the advantage of academic development and employability? In modules that focus on developing knowledge and understanding of research methods (for instance), we can introduce students to increasingly digital methodologies. This will allow them individual autonomy to adopt methods that may well involve contemporary technological platforms or practices, not only shifting criminology away from the mundaneness of what has already been ‘done to death’ (in the worlds of a former academic supervisor), but can also serve as a physical demonstration that the synergy of ‘theory’ and ‘methodology’ does not have to be outdated or out-of-touch…that it can be applied anywhere and in any context provided it is applied in the correct fashion. It is up to our array of skill and talent as experienced academics to enable and facilitate students to be able to apply innovation to their passions.

Linked closely to this are in approaches of establishing the ethical integrity of written work, particularly large-scale projects like dissertations. While not to go into a debate about the appropriateness of written dissertations at this stage, care must be taken to ensure that research ethics committees do not conflate genuine ethical concerns or considerations with what may be personal methodological preferences relating to knowledge production and research feasibility – though this is something that can be tackled through establishing full transparency of the entire ethics process with students, including their entitlement to know who has commented on their work. Often, these challenges can be alleviated simply by reducing dependence on “in-house” disciplinary ethics committees and allowing students to submit their projects to independent ethics committees instead, ones external to their immediate discipline perhaps. After all, there are parallels across the social sciences when it comes to methodology and employment of innovative research methods. A ‘fresh’ pair of eyes can help to provide more objective commentary and avoid potential overlaps between ethical concerns and methodological preferences.

Student Engagement and Student Experience

Essential to facilitating students’ innovative passions are the relationships that we, as academics, build with them. Whatever our teaching & learning styles, whether we choose to create physical, digital or hybrid learning environments, synchronous or asynchronous content (or a combination of everything), fundamentally we should be building a positive, personable, non-hierarchical and entirely transparent rapport with students that breeds autonomy and individual responsibility for learning & development. This means also avoiding any overlaps between what is clear university policy with what we as academics simply ‘want’ or ‘desire’ when it comes to everyday teaching practices – this can sometimes create confusion. Transparency on what students are entitled to do, and conversely what they are perfectly entitled not to do, should be at the forefront of our relationship with them, but also this transparency needs to apply at all levels.

We also know that non-hierarchical relationships have a direct positive correlation with exercising individual autonomy and responsibility. Of course, some clear boundaries must be set in the academic-student relationship, as are done in all places of employment, within reason and common sense. However, where these boundaries become unnecessary and lack logical purpose are when (as I have seen in some academic institutions) they are used to create and maintain a hierarchy of knowledge or status. This is often evident when it is claimed that the path of the academic has been so riddled with difficulty, that the rite of passage to academic status is determined by the level of “trauma” the academic has suffered throughout the journey. It is a ludicrous presumption and can often breed animosity between a student and their lecturer. Our relationships do not need to be parental; whatever personal views we may have of student maturity, as adults, they simply do not require micromanaging or undermining. Students should be aware of the intricacies of their institutions, and who the people are that make decisions on their futures (i.e. their lecturers). As all adults, they are minimally entitled to this level of transparency and visibility.

Students are no less able or capable of producing knowledge – it may not be the type of knowledge that we may have become ‘accustomed to’ within academia, but…absent any methodological or ethical issues…this does not render the knowledge somehow less worthy than what is created in more (arguably) ‘elite’ academic circles (as is sometimes suggested). Our approach to gaining mutual trust and building a positive rapport with students is a crucial first step to ensuring that there is at least a minimal level of engagement. I find that one of the first things I communicate to students, particularly those who have recently commenced their studies, is ‘realistically-speaking, there is no difference between you and me. We are all humans. We are all academic researchers. We are all here for the same purpose; to learn about criminology. My only job is to facilitate your learning’. Of course, this means that students should demonstrate the depth and breadth of independent research required at this level of study – the common mantra still applies; “you get out of education what you put into it”. Though somewhere along the line, and it is unclear when or where, academics seem to have created for themselves a status of unchallenged godliness, one that can only be earned through mental distress. Being an academic is not a status for privilege. It should not be used as a form of power over student bodies; whether physically, psychologically, or pedagogically. It is simply a stage in a process of knowledge production.

At pedagogical level, the most common sticking point that can obstruct the relationship between students and academic staff, as observed in some places, is one of class. It is not always articulated, but it is clearly visible in interactions (or lack thereof) with students. Class is not merely economic status but a culmination of various capitals; social and cultural capital included. We know, for instance, that many students come from low socio-economic backgrounds; working-class homes, single-parent families and/or other challenging life experiences. As with most in neoliberal nations, many have their own struggles and unique stories, lives that we may never be privy to, that can shape behaviours or characters that we may never truly understand. As an institution and a team, we do well to acknowledge this. We take some steps, and do our best as academics, to try to mitigate some of these struggles wherever possible. However, this is an ongoing process and more can be done at varying levels.

For instance, we are aware that given varying degrees of cultural capital, many students will not engage with certain academic texts. This is not to say that the solution to this is to remove theory from our curricula – criminology is fundamentally a theoretical discipline – but there can be at least an appreciation that some texts require a certain degree of cultural capital that may never have been possible to attain throughout the struggles that students have experienced in their lives…regardless of their performance in, or experience of, prior education. Perhaps a rethink is needed of the elitist and white-centric nature of some texts, and/or the methods through which students are introduced to theoretical material might be useful, without the need to suggest that being a successful student is solely reliant on never leaving a library. This ties in closely with aforementioned innovative strategies to engage students, ways that transgress boundaries imposed by ‘traditional academia’ of talking at students, instead allowing them to be the co-creators of their own academic knowledge.

Academic Anti-Racism & Intersectionality

Tied to this are some issues surrounding social (in)justice. There needs to be an adequate level of acknowledgement of the requirement of truly anti-racist pedagogical practices and content. As a critical criminologist and anti-racist activist, it is no surprise that these practices are, and will always, be at the forefront of everyday decisions I make – not least because I was employed on the basis of my research and pedagogical interests in anti-racism. I often make the point that certain buzz words like ‘anti-racism’ and ‘decolonising the curriculum’ are banded about without adequate understanding of what these involve. Whilst we may all potentially agree that this is the case (or perhaps not, this is down to every individual), there is still a gap in knowledge and understanding even on the part of those who do agree with this statement…hence there being a decisive unwillingness to engage in any practices that carry the label of ‘anti-racism’ or ‘decolonising’ across universities. What is being missed is the purpose of these practices. Far from simply being non-racist, anti-racism is an everyday tool that can and must be exercised in all aspects of daily work life within academic institutions.

Much of the challenges of understanding what anti-racism really means, or how it can be utilised to improve teaching & learning, stems from a reluctance to acknowledge our own unconscious biases. Where, as social scientists, we often teach about intersectional struggles and the presence of global social injustice, we tend to overlook the fact that our everyday choices can contribute towards those exact injustices. Ongoing reflection on what texts are introduced to students can help alleviate some of these. Texts should prove to be more inclusive, demonstrate our commitment to shift away from white-centric understandings of crime and criminality, and demonstrate best practice when it comes to the use of appropriate discourse when it comes to ‘race’, so that students do not regularly replicate questionable racial terminology in assessments, and potentially also in later life. Yes, deeply ingrained structural racism across society (and in academia in general) means that many of the “legitimised” academic texts tend to be produced in, or relate to, the US and other Western nations. However, care must be taken to ensure that we are not inadvertently engaging in academic nationalism by restricting students to utilise texts that only refer to England & Wales, for instance.

Changing what we can change

So…given the challenges that have led to unified industrial action in universities across the country, where can we as individual academics start, or how can we contribute towards this? Well, it is important to note that there is nothing that we are required to do as academics that actually makes any of this less possible. It is simply a case of substituting existing practices with others that make more sense and breed positivity; a shift of expectations and priorities, rather than additions to pre-existing ones. It is easy to agree with many of these challenges, but to then find a variety of reasons for why changes cannot be enacted in the way that they should. We know there are unique differences across institutions, and there will be challenges associated with some spaces that are not found in others. But there cannot be a refusal to even try, or to allow others to try, in learning from good practice from institutions which have actually succeeded in bringing positive changes into fruition.

As is evident from student engagement, hierarchical practices of imposition can fail if it is not passionately supported by everyone in the room, particularly where these cannot be questioned. As academics, we quite rightly expect respect for individual autonomy, a dissolution of micromanagerialism across academia, and non-hierarchical forms of leadership. These are good starting points in ensuring that there is healthy staff retention and morale at all levels, so that this positivity can then be reflected in our relationships with students. The only imposition can be the imposition of consistent care and respect for one another. We are all human beings with aforementioned unique diversity of skills, talents, experiences, cultural sensitivities, all of which form our distinctive intersectional identities. Maintaining an optimum level of student engagement & experience, and successful staff retention, requires celebrating these differences in ways that allow them to shine in our everyday working practices. It is in the interests all within our institution that we offer this kind of diversity in our ranks. This is not always found in other walks of life.

This is what sets us apart, and this is what gives us ‘status’.

“Over-policed and under-protected”- School children and policing: some criminological discussions

During the first week of Semester 2, the Criminology team put on a number of small sessions designed around topic areas to encourage some ‘radical’ discussion. Topic areas were designed to deliberately encourage debate and critical consideration. Due to the increasing use of police in schools, and relatively recent (within the past few years) issues around police stop and search in schools, disproportionately being used in schools with a majority Black and Brown cohort, often framed as ‘urban’ schools: it is an area of great interest for both Stephanie and myself. We were expecting some lively discussions around whether the Police should be in schools, and if so, in what capacity: and whilst the students did not disappoint in relation to this matter, they also raised some excellent points around the policing of school children and the control the school forces upon them. It is this area of the discussions that I would like to share with you.

Policing as a form of social control, exerted by schools, not necessarily the Police force, is rife within schools: something the students were quick to draw attention to. This was raised in relation to the policing of Black children’s hair. They are told to alter their appearances based on white standards, have been sent home for not conforming to the school dress code, sent to the back of classrooms for having distracting hair: in both primary and secondary school settings. This power over Black children’s hair, stands in contrast to the idea that children have no say over their hair, and are held to white westernised standards, yet can be held criminally responsible and subject to the force of the law as they are recognised as mature enough to understand crime and its consequences.

This baffling, controlling narrative is also evident in the use of school uniforms. Students raised the inappropriateness of some of the school uniforms in relation to the length of skirts, banning trainers, and piercings, which was a method of control which removed all sense of individuality and identity. It was recognised that children are encouraged to ‘grow up’ and ‘mature’ and ‘figure out’ what they want to do, but they had the methods of exploring this, especially in relation to their identity, restricted and policed. The limited autonomy over hair, clothes, piercings and children’s bodies stands in stark contrast to the legal discourse of children being criminally responsible at the age of 10years old in England and Wales. This was baffling to us!

A further way of policing students in school was through the surveillance the schools exerted over children. The use of CCTV, fingerprints as a method of purchasing lunch was originally considered as a form of security: the all seeing eye of big brother, oops sorry the school, and the attempt to reduce bullying by removing the carrying of cash was originally framed as a way of protecting children. However, the students were very critical of whether this surveillance was intended as protection, or rather as control. The idea of being deterred from delinquency through the use of CCTV, and preventing bullying by removing the possibility of money was considered, but again this refers back to the controlling of children’s behaviour.

There isn’t enough space to include all areas of the 2 hour discussion, and the time flew by quickly as the students and staff lost themselves in considering the role police play in schools, and the role schools play in policing children. The session concluded with us considering the school as an institution and whether its primary role was that of education, or of the creation of obedient bodies. I won’t tell you where we settled, but it is worth a ponder…

With thanks to all those who attended and stimulated the critical discussions around over-policed and under-protected: school children and policing: Gloria, Lucy, Kayode, Uche, Christivie, Joseph, Rosemary, Katya, Kayleigh, Chrissy, Diamante, Shola-Renee, Ellie, Sarah, Zoe, Stephanie and Jessica.

Don’t know what to do with your Criminology degree….meet Demi King

A very warm welcome to all of you wonderful Criminology students! My name is Demi King, your dedicated Careers Consultant here at UON. You will hear my name and be sick of the sight of me in no time! But, within good reason as I am here to help you help yourself. That’s right, I’m not here to do it for you but I will give you 100% in supporting you throughout your time here at UON and for life!! You heard it… for life!! Crazy right??? Nope… Here at UON we promise life long careers support. How awesome is that! Especially if you complete the Employability Plus Award whilst you’re here as if it comes to it we will find you a paid internship 12 months after you’ve left if you’re struggling. One to bear in mind!

Anyway, where were we… Ah yes! So as a fellow Criminology graduate myself, I know the feeling…. You could see me as your fairy god mother, who is here to put you in the right direction which I most certainly wish I had throughout my Uni experience.

I’m not here to scare you or anything but when you come to University, your careers starts then, not in final year when its all panic stations! If you stick with me, you’ll be sweet! I aim to raise your aspirations and uncover your skills/talents/interests by landing you that job you’ve always wanted or help you understand what job you even want to do! There is so much I can help you with, such as getting that CV looking sharp, applying for jobs, the hidden job market, where to look for volunteering & internships.. the list really does go on!

No goal or ambition is too big, and you will be incredibly surprised what you can really do with your degree. I mean look at me! Again, it’s fine if you don’t have a clue right now either but please don’t leave it until the last moment as you will miss out on some fantastic opportunities.

See you around guys, come say hello, book an appointment with me! Don’t be shy. You didn’t pay all this money to not use me! You can contact me demi.king@northampton.ac.uk or book an appointment with me here

Avoiding challenge: A strategy for organisational change

Have you ever wondered as a manager or worker what the best way is to avoid having your ideas challenged?  Tired of trying to make organisational changes and having those changes called into question. Fed up with trying to instigate something only for someone else to be less than keen.  Had enough of trying to do things that will promote your ambitions only to be thwarted by others that just have to add their two pennorth in?  Annoyed at extra work being created for you because of a lack of acceptance of your ideas?  Are you fed up with the ‘nay sayers’?  The answer is simple… don’t communicate anything, just make the changes, and wait for yet another calamity. 

The above of course is somewhat tongue in cheek and I am reminded of working with some consultants several years ago (you know the ones; steal your watch to tell you the time).  I jest, as they had some sage advice on change management. Two things that come to mind: If you think you have communicated enough about change, you haven’t; communicate more.  And find the person or group that needs convincing and work with them, it’s the ‘nay sayers’ that need to be convinced, not the ‘yay sayers’.  They are far more valuable to your organisation than those that say ‘yes’.

What we were talking about was major organisational change, but even small changes can have a major impact on a workforce. In our own organisation a recent staff survey suggested that ‘Over 50% of respondents considered that consultation about change at work is poor’.  That of course relates to previous iterations of change and a new management team would hope to address the issues.  However, in doing so there is a need for organisational change.

I’ve had recent experience of being told that something was happening because someone, in agreement with someone else, thought it was a good idea.  It promotes their department, showing them in a good light; they took the idea to a meeting and lo and behold, it is agreed.  No consultation with those that need to implement the idea, which may be good or bad, who knows.  The point being that it is not just change brought about by managers without consultation that causes annoyance, anxiety and stress, it is those daily working practices of people in the organisation that fear challenge of their ideas.  Changes are often made with the best of intentions.  Sometimes those intentions are to alleviate burgeoning workloads within a department, sometimes to promote the organisation or individuals or to lighten the burden on students, for example.  Often, there is consultation, but it is consultation with the wrong people, consultation with the ‘yay sayers’ and those that have little idea about the impact of the change (for the best will in the world, managers can’t know every detail of the work carried out by their staff).  Such consultation avoids scrutiny but provides a thin veneer of respectability.  Time and again we see staff queuing up to join consultative groups, but how many of these do so with a view to providing a real critique?  Take the idea to a management meeting, get it agreed and there you are, its done.  If asked about consultation, then the answer is ‘yes of course we did’. The problem is nobody asks the question ‘who exactly did you consult with’?

It will take a huge shift in organisational culture to get the ‘nay sayers’ to volunteer for consultative exercises.  They need convincing that their voice is valued and yet they are a valuable asset.   Challenge and scrutiny are healthy and help to mitigate unwanted and unintended consequences.

There is nothing worse than having it done to you when it could so easily have been a case of having it done with you.  Next time you think about changing something, don’t assume you know best, by doing so you demonstrate how little you value others.  

ASUU vs The Federal Government

It will be 8 months in October since University Lecturers in Nigeria have embarked on a nationwide strike without adequate intervention from the government. It is quite shocking that a government will sit in power and cease to reasonably address a serious dispute such as this at such a crucial time in the country.

As we have seen over the years, strike actions in Nigerian Universities constitute an age-long problem and its recurring nature unmasks, quite simply, how the political class has refused to prioritise the knowledge-based economy.

In February 2022, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) leadership
(which is the national union body that represents Nigerian University Lecturers during disputes) issued a 4-week warning strike to the Nigerian government due to issues of funding of the public Universities. Currently, the striking University Lecturers are accusing the government of failing to revitalise the dilapidated state of Nigerian Universities, they claim that the government has refused to implement an accountability system called UTAS and that representatives of the government have continued to backtrack on their agreement to adequately fund the Universities.

The government on the other hand is claiming that they have tried their best in negotiating with the striking lecturers – but that the lecturers are simply being unnecessarily difficult. Since 2017, several committees have been established to scrutinize the demands and negotiate with ASUU, but the inability of these committees to resolve these issues has led to this 8-month-long closure of Nigerian Universities. While this strike has generated multiple reactions from different quarters, the question to be asked is – who is to be blamed? Should the striking lecturers be blamed for demanding a viable environment for the students or should we be blaming the government for the failure of efforts to resolve this national embarrassment?

Of course, we can all understand that one of the reasons why the political class is often slow to react to these strike actions is because their children and families do not attend these schools. You either find them in private Universities in Nigeria or Universities abroad – just the same way they end up traveling abroad for medical check-ups.  In fact, the problems being faced in the educational sector are quite similar to those found within the Nigerian health sector – where many doctors are already emigrating from the country to countries that appreciate the importance of medical practitioners and practice. So, what we find invariably is a situation where the children of the rich continue to enjoy uninterrupted education, while the children of the underprivileged end up spending 7 years on a full-time 4-year program, due to the failure of efforts to preserve the educational standards of Nigerian institutions.

In times like these, I remember the popular saying that when two elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers. The elephants in this context are both the federal government and the striking lecturers, while those suffering the consequences of the power contest are the students. The striking lecturers have not been paid their salaries for more than 5 months, and they are refusing to back down. On the other hand, the government seems to be suggesting that when they are “tired”, they will call off the strike. I am not sure that strike actions of the UK UCU will last this long before some sort of agreement would have been arranged. Again, my heart goes out to the Nigerian students during these hard times – because it is just unimaginable what they will be going through during these moments of idleness. And we must never forget that if care is not taken, the idle hand will eventually become the devil’s workshop!

Having said this, Nigerian Universities must learn from this event and adopt approaches through which they can generate their income. I am not inferring that they do not, but they just need to do more. This could be through ensuring large-scale investment programs, testing local/peculiar practices at the international level, tapping into research grant schemes, remodeling the system of tuition fees, and demonstrating a stronger presence within the African markets. As a general principle, any institution that wishes to reap the dividends of the knowledge-based economy must ensure that self-generated revenues should be higher than the government’s grants – and not the other way. So, Universities in Nigeria must strive to be autonomous in their engagements and their organisational structure – while maintaining an apolitical stance at all times.

While I agree that all of these can be difficult to achieve (considering the socio-political dynamics of Nigeria), Universities must remember that the continuous dependence on the government for funds will only continue to subject them to such embarrassments rather than being seen as respected intellectuals in the society. Again, Nigerian Universities need a total disruption; there is a need for a total overhaul of the system and a complete reform of the organisational structure and policies.

Just some more meaningless populism…

Photograph by Jonathan Hordle/ITV/Rex/Shutterstock in The Guardian

As we follow the recent American-style media circus posing as the Conservative Party leadership contest set to determine the interim Prime Minister until the next General Election, we are reminded that both ‘finalists’, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss are pretty much showing us their real faces fairly early in the show, while they pander to their own, in a frenzy to be seen as the modern-day version of Thatcher. Truss’ emulation of the ‘Iron Lady’ through evident vocal coaching to sound more ‘masculine’ and ‘assertive’ has helped her come across even more awkward and inept than before; perhaps the ‘Wooden Spoon’ may be a more appropriate title. Nevertheless, with promises to cut taxes…despite having announced 15 tax rises in just over 2 years…‘restore trust’ in politics…despite having been directly complicit in keeping the outgoing clown Prime Minister (Boris Johnson) in power for so long given his track record for lying…and continue with an illegal migration policy that will see refugees and asylum seekers deported to Rwanda, we are reminded that it is not the British public that will get a say in who will represent our country on the global stage, but a comparatively handful of Conservative Party members.

Lest we forget that the Conservative Party membership is dominated by middle-aged white men, many with nationalist and strongly-held religious views, seeking to preserve traditions that go back (sometimes) centuries. It seems inevitable then that the next leader will not be a racially minoritised candidate, despite being the elite private-school multi-millionaire type that Conservative voters have grown to love since the 2010’s, paving the way for Liz Truss to put her very important ideas surrounding growing British apples and setting up pork markets in Bejing to the forefront of the current populist political model we have unfortunately allowed to flourish in the UK. Truss may find meeting the Queen during her term as quite awkward given her openly anti-monarchist history. She also seems, despite having voted to remain in the European Union in the 2016 Referendum, to have jumped on the bigoted Brexit bandwagon that is slowly eroding the last remaining remnants of democracy in this country. We know that every crumb of functioning public sector life has been crushed over the past 12 years:

…and there are many other examples. Without getting into yet another Brexit debate, there is no doubt that the very act of voting to leave the EU in 2016, and its subsequent consequences, has had a long-lasting impact in these services, one which we cannot hope to treat for many years. Let us not be in any illusion that either of these candidates will swoop in and majestically heal the UK from the deep wounds this Party has inflicted for 12 years, nor that there will be some miraculous light at the end of the tunnel of tyranny. Perhaps this is a rather pessimistic outlook on the years leading up to the next General Election, but unless in the unlikely event the soon-to-be PM decides to call a snap election to allow the public to finally boot out the last of this government and pave the way to some change, the situation seems rather hopeless…at least for the time being.

The silenced hybrid voices in lecturing teams

Rightly so, there has been a lot of discussion in recent months about the struggles of full-time academic staff in higher education institutions in our previous posts: Higher education, students, the strikes and me*, The strikes and me: never going back! and Industrial action, knowledge, and blurred lines. For the sake of clarity, this post is not designed to distract from some of the very real problems they face. Instead, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the silent voices in lecturing teams: PhD Students who are also Visiting Lecturers (VL’s) or Associate Lecturers (AL’s). Having been both an AL and VL in the past for various higher education institutions, and simultaneously a self-funded PhD student, the experience of those who have very kindly offered to share with me their stories, struggles and often deteriorating coping mechanisms resonate with my own. I am grateful for the unexpected avalanche of responses I received from VL/AL’s from various universities on this very issue, including current and former colleagues. I should stress that this is neither targeted at any one individual university, nor do I claim that these are universal experiences for those in similar positions.

These students are hybrid beings, often stuck in a limbo of loyalty to their respective graduate schools, their fellow lecturing colleagues and the students they teach. Despite this, or perhaps more appropriately because of this, many VL/AL’s are not fully trained or integrated into the roles they are expected to play within the university sector. Firstly, adequate training is almost non-existent in most universities for new starters, who are often expected to simply jump into the deep end without adequate experience. What is available to VL/AL’s in helping with building knowledge and experience in higher education teaching is the offer for them to take ‘independent initiative’ in signing up to undertaking a Postgraduate Certificate of Higher Education (PGCert/PGCHE) which leads to a subsequent Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA). The experience of taking this course and securing the Fellowship was highly positive amongst those who contacted me prior to the writing of this post, though of course this may vary depending on the institution. The problem is, the course is rarely, if ever, offered before VL/AL’s begin teaching and is often treated as a simple tick box exercise to boost departmental or institutional reputation through an increased number of Associate or full Fellowships within their ranks. Secondly, integration into their roles is often stifled by various reasons, including somewhat critical outlooks within their teams on emerging pedagogical research focused on student experience, misguided assumptions that they are ‘more students than lecturers’ and/or the belief by others that they are not likely to remain as permanent members of the teaching team. These issues relating to hybridity lead to VL/AL’s often feeling as though they do not carry the same “worthy status” by colleagues or the department of being co-creators of the curriculum, being included in important communication relating to decision-making which will affect their ability to carry out their teaching and learning sessions, or in generally expressing discontent for various issues which they are facing in their roles.

One of these issues related to low wages, which is a rather common issue affecting employees across most sectors, especially in the current cost of living crisis. It may seem rather trivial to those in higher education institutions tasked solely with ensuring maximum profit by quantifying the experience of teaching, but the struggles faced by those VL/AL’s on 0-hour contracts are widespread and damaging. Though there are distinct differences across institutions in how these contracts are managed, or how their staff are paid, many practices seem to be commonplace, such as for instance paying solely for hours spent actually teaching. In circumstances where academic staff may spend hours on end preparing for teaching and learning sessions, engaging in a subsequent wind-down of emotions potentially triggered from the sessions, and then engage in copious amounts of marking (sometimes as many as 100 scripts at the same time due to the bunching of deadlines), being paid only on the basis of having taught a 1 or 2 hour session, even at what may seem a reasonable hourly wage in other sectors equates to less than minimum-wage if the maths is done correctly. There are nuanced differences of course between those VL/AL staff who are self-funded and those on studentships or scholarships, the latter receiving a flat-rate annual “salary” alongside a tuition fee waiver. Having said that, those on scholarships or studentships tended to face other challenges throughout the payment process, including lack of automatic payments, breakdown of communication with those organising these manually, and the general slowness in being ‘set up’ for all the admin-related tasks expected of them (including email accounts, e-learning, lack of training etc.).

The challenges of 0-hour contracts, although they are not described as such within the contracts themselves, also include a looming sense of dread for VL/AL academics approaching the summer months, when they know that they will be left penniless by their universities. If on a full-time status, those who are self-funded and undertaking a PhD are also barred from claiming any kind of benefit entitlements due to the receipt of a postgraduate student loan from Student Finance England. It is important to note that the maximum entitlement for this loan is £25,000 over the course of what is, on average, a 3-5 year research project. The average tuition fee for research degrees is over £5,000 per year. At the most ambitious end of the PhD completion scale, undertaking a 3-year research project with a £25,000 loan, leaves a £10,000 remainint total which is expected to help the student survive for 3 years. Of course, most PhDs exceed the 3-year mark and, combined with the challenges of not being paid by their universities over the summer months, this takes a serious toll on mental health which paradoxically affects their ability to dedicate full focus on their research projects. It inevitably leads to VL/AL staff scrambling to “take on” additional modules of teaching in an attempt to save enough to make ends meet throughout the summer, which again leaves them with little time or mental strength to focus on their PhD research.

Mental health is an issue which spans across a variety of challenges faced by VL/AL’s undertaking a PhD. There are intersectional elements which are not taken into consideration by higher education institutions that take a serious toll on their ability to juggle between their roles as facilitators of teaching and learning, students undertaking a PhD, but also human beings with a variety of other important identities in need of comfort, reassurance and support. Many universities fail to recognise nuanced issues arising from increasingly consumer-focused, neoliberal and bureaucratic practices adopted, which leave those who already struggle due to their class status, race, gender, or parenthood, with even less support than one individual characteristic that higher education assumes can be tick boxed away through a single counselling session. Some of the responses I received drew attention to the intersectional nature of class and race, others class and gender, and some even a combination of all three with an inclusion of motherhood or parenthood in general. It seems that experiences have been similar in that many higher education institutions still fail to take into consideration how the challenges associated with each individual identity are exacerbated when combined. These include a lack of acknowledgement that (1) money is a real issue, (2) there are racial, cultural and religious barriers which often mean an increased requirement of attention on family and social life beyond work, (3) certain departments and faculties are still male-centric, (4) motherhood and parenting requires serious review of pay and workload, and (5) many subject or course leaders are failing to recognise their curriculum content and teaching/learning practices are essentially colonising their own colleagues. A former colleague even encompassed all of these identities: an ethnically minoritised working-class mother of two children. One cannot begin to imagine the mental health struggles someone in this position faces during summer months in an ever-failing welfare system.

Academics who have not been through similar intersectional struggles seem to be unable or unwilling to acknowledge even the existence of them and the genuine impact that they have for their colleagues who spend a large proportion of their day-to-day work life trying (on top of everything else) to resist barriers to gender identities, dispel unconscious racial biases within their teams, or simply to provide their children with the level of care, love and support that they deserve. It can lead to a continuous interplay of unconscious gaslighting by one’s own full-time colleagues – some quotes provided to me by respondents were: “I teach more modules than you do, so you’ll be okay”, “yes but we all had the same amount of marking”, “can’t you do it over the weekend?” and “you need to work on your time management skills”. Despite many of us spending years drawing attention to stigma, oppression, marginalisation and social inequality, deconstructing and reconstructing by-gone theories that reproduce hegemony, we seem to allow it to flourish so easily under our noses and within our own institutions. This can perhaps serve as a reminder for all academics within higher education institutions, but also those focused on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, to step up their game by adopting principles of co-creation and genuine participatory change. After all, while the ultimate goal may be the same, the journey must be mapped out by those who have already experienced, and continue to experience, the inclines.

Industrial action, knowledge, and blurred lines

Another week has flown by, where has the time gone?  Every day I diligently fill out a time sheet, every week I work over my contracted hours and at the end of every week I reflect on the things that have not been done, thinking well when I get time, I’ll have a look at that. 

In conversations around the university, I hear students complaining about the current industrial action, one such conversation suggested it was disgusting that lecturers had been on strike.  Another overheard student conversation thought it was disgusting that students didn’t turn up for lectures and if they were the lecturer they wouldn’t allow them back in class, after all don’t they know how long it must have taken that lecturer to prepare for the class.  Juxtapose this with a workload model that only allows an hour for preparation and marking for every hour spent in the classroom and we have an interesting mosaic of what can only be described as blissful ignorance of what a lecturer’s job entails.

Now I can’t talk about other subject areas but I’m sure that many of the lecturers in those areas will have the same issues that we have in criminology or that I have regarding what we do.   There are some subjects within the criminology discipline that are pretty much the staple diet and as such don’t really change much, after all Bentham’s ideas for instance were formed a couple of centuries ago and teaching a class about Bentham’s ideas won’t really change much over time. That is of course until someone, probably far brighter than me, discovers something about Bentham or produces a different take on Bentham’s writings.  But generally, I suppose I might be inclined to suggest that preparation time for a lecture and seminar around the topic of Bentham’s ideas would not be too lengthy.  But then what is too lengthy? How long would it take to prepare a lecture and a seminar task? That would depend on how much research was required, how many books and papers were read and probably importantly, well it is for me, how prepared the lecturer wants to be for the session.  Do we as lecturers prepare for the lowest common denominator, the student that rarely reads anything and perhaps hardly turns up or do we prepare for the student that is an avid reader and will have read more than what they can find on Wikipedia. How long is a piece of string when it comes to preparation time.

Those of you that might have read my first blog about the industrial action will recall how I described that having been signed off ill with work related stress, I was told that I was burnt out. One of the questions in conversation was whether I ever turned off, the answer of course was no. And it is still difficult to do that, Criminology is one of those disciplines that is all consuming. I watch the news, or I read about something, and I immediately think of criminological aspects.  I must admit most of the time I have the Metropolitan Police to thank for that.  There doesn’t seem to be much delineation, certainly in terms of cerebral activity, between being at work and being off.  I want to make my lectures, seminars or workshops (call them what you will) interesting and current.  By exploring current issues in society, I end up researching both the current and historic, I end up making links between reality and theory and I produce what I hope is thought provoking and interesting subject matter for consumption in class. I have recently prepared a workshop which required me to read two IPCC reports and a three hundred word plus transcript of a civil case, all highly relevant to the topic of failed investigations.  The civil case took me to 10 other stated cases.  I can’t tell you exactly how long it took me, but it was longer than a day.  Most of it in my own time because the topic is of interest to me.  Lecturing, the acquisition of knowledge and at times the production of knowledge takes time, often the lines are blurred as to whose time is being used.  My seeds of ideas and basic research are often in my time not my employer’s time.  To have students turn up unprepared for my workshops, to turn up late (frequently) to fail to engage and then to have the gall to bemoan industrial action is soul destroying.  To have a workload model that allows a pitiful time for preparation of lectures is simply ignorance and quite frankly, crass.  We are in higher education not a sausage factory. 

It is easy then, to see on reflection, where my time has gone each week.  Given the work entailed in lecturing and the myriad of other requirements, it is hardly a surprise that there is a successful mandate for continued industrial action.  I’m working more hours than is stated in my contract, cheating a bit on ASOS because it feels impossible not to, and I still can’t get anywhere near to fulfilling my workload.  When I fill out my time sheet, I don’t include all of my own time as I’ve described above.

I won’t stop formulating my ideas. I wont stop using my own time to further my knowledge so that I can pass it on to students that are interested.  But I would like some acknowledgement that the current system employed for gauging my workload is out of kilter with reality.  And for those students that put the effort in and by doing so make my classes enjoyable, I am extremely grateful. As for the rest, well I suppose ignorance is bliss.

Meet the Team: Helen Trinder, Associate Lecturer in Criminology

My Academic Journey

Two weeks ago, I attended a university reunion. My cohort are now in our late 40s or early 50s but it is remarkable how little we had all changed. Being back in the place where we all studied together put me in reflective mood and that (combined with some timely prompting from Paula) inspired me to share my academic journey.

I was one of those annoying kids who did well at school and knew exactly what they wanted to do. As a small child, I wanted to be a nurse but I later developed an aversion to bodily fluids which made that career choice untenable. I briefly flirted with the idea of being an English teacher, but both of my parents were in education and strenuously tried to dissuade me. So, at the age of about 14, I decided that I wanted to be a prison psychologist. I was in a careers lesson at school, and we had a big green plastic box filled with cards on which were written descriptions of different jobs. I announced that I wanted to be a psychiatrist (I think I was just being provocative) but I couldn’t find “psychiatrist” in the box, so I picked the closest one that I could find: “psychologist”. I read the card and it sounded really interesting, so I decided to find out more about psychology. The more I read, the more interesting I found it, and when I looked into the sorts of settings where I could work as a psychologist, prisons called out to me.

I was very lucky to secure a place to read Experimental Psychology at University College, Oxford in 1990. People have an image of ancient universities as being elitist, but what struck me was the huge diversity of people who were there. They were all clever and had studied hard to achieve their places, but beyond that they came from an enormous range of backgrounds – a far greater variety than I had encountered in my Shropshire comprehensive school. Our tutors worked us extremely hard. We had weekly tutorials, either in pairs or one-to-one, in two modules every term and we had to prepare an essay for each tutorial (two essays a week). In tutorials, we read out, discussed and analysed our essays and the reading on which they were based. There were lectures and practical classes on top of that and we had exams at the beginning of each term to make sure that we hadn’t forgotten anything over the vacations! That’s why I’m sometimes not very sympathetic to students who struggle to read one paper in preparation for a seminar!

At the end of my undergraduate studies, I still wanted to work in prisons but I knew very little about them. My degree had given me an excellent grounding in psychology but I knew little about the study of crime. So I applied to do an M.Phil. at the Institute of Criminology in Cambridge. This gave me an extra year as a full-time student and I thoroughly enjoyed it! I was privileged to be taught by such eminent criminologists as Loraine Gelsthorpe, Alison Liebling and David Farrington. I particularly enjoyed the penology seminars with Nigel West, which I attended just out of interest – I wasn’t taking the assessment in that module! The assessments were all coursework (extended essays and a dissertation) and had to be submitted at the start of each term, so I studied hard in the vacations, and I attended my seminars in term time, but there was also plenty of time for sport and socialising and making the most of my last year as a student!

At that time, HM Prison Service recruited new psychologists once a year through a national assessment centre. I applied in 1994, just after I had submitted my M.Phil. dissertation but I was unsuccessful. I got a job instead at the University of Wales, Swansea, as a research assistant in the Department of Social Policy and Applied Social Studies. I was involved in an evaluation of drug and alcohol treatment centres, funded by the Welsh Office, which employed both quantitative measures and participant observation. When that contract ended, I obtained another contract with Swansea City Council to compile a community profile of a “problem” estate. This required knocking on doors to interview residents, and participant observation in community settings such as the youth club, old people’s bingo sessions and the local pub. It was considered a rather intimidating environment to drop a well-educated 24-year-old English girl into, but I found the residents to be remarkably warm and welcoming and it was a highly rewarding piece of work.

By the time I finished the community profile, I had re-applied to the Prison Service and passed the assessment centre – the interpersonal skills I had developed through my action research had served me well. I had, however, joined the Prison Service at an unfortunate time. There was a recruitment ban in force which meant that although I had passed the psychologist assessment centre, I couldn’t actually secure a job. I was eventually given a temporary contract to collect data at HMP Littlehey for a large-scale research project analysing effective prison regimes.  After 10 months of doing this, the recruitment ban was lifted and I was taken on as a prison psychologist, sharing my time between HMP Littlehey and HMP Wellingborough. The Prison Service used to fund a part-time M.Sc. at Birkbeck University, which all newly recruited psychologists undertook. Obtaining a suitably accredited M.Sc., along with completing a satisfactory period of supervised practice, is an essential requirement of becoming a fully qualified “Chartered” psychologist. In another piece of unfortunate timing, the Birkbeck M.Sc. ceased to run just as I joined the service. At first, there was nothing to take its place. However, other universities soon noticed the gap in the market. I, and others in my prison psychology cohort, were relieved when the University of Leicester set up an M.Sc. in Forensic and Legal Psychology by Distance Learning. The Prison Service agreed to pay my fees and my manager allowed a small amount of study leave when assignments were due. Completing a post-graduate degree while working full-time in a demanding job was hard work and I vowed I would never do it again!

I moved to HMP Woodhill in 1998, completed my M.Sc. in 1999 and became a Chartered Psychologist in 2001. At some point after that, I remember receiving a phone call at work from someone called “@manosdaskalou” at, what was then, University College Northampton! I don’t know where he got my number from, but he wanted someone to talk to his third year Forensic Psychology students about the work that psychologists do in prisons. My parents had not completely succeeded in knocking a desire to teach out of me (in fact I probably inherited my urge to educate from them), and my Dad had taught at Northampton when it was Nene College, so I was keen to fulfil the request. The talk became a regular fixture and, after a few years (by which time I was Head of Psychology at HMP Woodhill), we extended it from a single guest lecture to a series of four, to allow me to cover topics such as risk assessment and offending behaviour interventions in more detail.

My son was born in 2008 and I took 12 months maternity leave from the Prison Service. At the end of that time, I didn’t feel ready to go back, so I negotiated a further 12 months career break. I wasn’t ready to return to the full intensity of managing a team in a high security prison, but I did want to keep my brain active. I asked Manos if there were any opportunities to expand my teaching commitments. The University was in the process of setting up a foundation degree in Offender Management, which was aimed primarily at custodial officers at HMP Rye Hill but was also delivered to a small cohort of full-time students. They were short of lecturers to deliver the modules and my offer to help out was eagerly accepted. The terms of my career break meant that I couldn’t earn money from another employer, but a couple of hours a week teaching suited me very well, so I gave my services for free and taught a module on Professional Practice alongside a lecturer with a background in probation, from another university, called Keith Davies.

After a year of this arrangement, HMP Woodhill were unwilling to have me back part-time, so I resigned from the Prison Service and joined the Parole Board as a part-time psychologist member. This allowed me to work much more flexibly and, with a toddler in the family, it suited me well. It also meant that I could have a proper contract with the University of Northampton and I became an associate lecturer in September 2010. Keith had moved to a different job but I continued to teach Professional Practice on the Offender Management degree. There was also a module in Offender Management on “The Psychology of Crime and Criminal Behaviour”. The person who taught this left after a couple of years and I took it over. Returning to basic psychology and teaching it every week was daunting at first, but I really enjoyed going back to what I had learned as an undergraduate and re-discovering how relevant it was to real-life criminal justice.

The arrangement with HMP Rye Hill had never really taken off and the Offender Management degree only ever attracted small numbers of full-time students, so in 2014 the course closed. Manos was keen, however, to incorporate more psychology into the B.A. Criminology course, so we adapted “The Psychology of Crime and Criminal Behaviour” into a first-year criminology module and I’ve been teaching it ever since! I’ve also taught a module on violence and I’ve covered maternity leave and sickness absence in other modules too. My students will have heard me banging on about forensic psychologists being “scientist-practitioners” and I feel that teaching at the University of Northampton has allowed me to fulfil this role. As a practitioner, I have lots of interesting real-life examples to use to illustrate points to my students, but teaching also keeps me up-to-date with research and theory which I can use to inform my practice.

My academic journey continues to take me to new places. My position on the Parole Board was a public appointment with a fixed tenure that came to an end in September 2020. I decided at that point to start a part-time Ph.D. with the University of Birmingham. I had not wanted to go into research straight from my M.Phil. because I felt that, in order to understand people who committed offences, I really needed some direct experience of working with them, but after 24 years as a practitioner, the time seemed right. I am now 18 months into a 6-year part-time degree. I am exploring the role of empathy deficits in violent and sexual offending. Trying to undertake research (which ideally requires access to prisoners) has not been easy during a pandemic and I have faced a number of obstacles but nothing insurmountable yet.

I am still keen to maintain a scientist-practitioner balance, and I need to pay my university fees and make a contribution to the family income, so in February of last year I started working as a Forensic Psychologist at St Andrew’s hospital. I am primarily based on a medium-secure ward for men with learning disabilities. Forensic mental health is a new area of practice for me and, although I have plenty of transferable skills from my previous roles, I have had to adapt to a different approach to the people we work with and a completely new set of jargon.

Reflecting on my academic journey, it is the people that stand out. I think that the most profound learning has taken place when I have been able to engage with experts who have shared their enthusiasm. In this respect, my undergraduate tutorials and M.Phil. seminars contrast with my distance learning M.Sc., which was a means of obtaining a qualification rather than an immersive learning experience. I hope that, as a practitioner who also teaches, I have been able to share some of my enthusiasm for forensic psychology with my own students. In order to benefit from this, however, students need to take up the opportunity to engage fully with teaching and not just see their university experience as a means to a qualification. Of course, COVID has not helped this, and the university’s penchant for remote learning placed it in a good position to maintain teaching when the pandemic struck. But it is very difficult to engage students when they are just names on a screen. I hope that, as we return to more face-to-face teaching, I can once again inspire my students, not just to pass their exams but to develop a life-long fascination for understanding criminal behaviour and the people that perpetrate it.

Helen Trinder, M.A., M.Phil., M.Sc., C.Psychol.

Forensic Psychologist and Associate Lecturer

The strikes and me: never going back!

I woke up this morning, at 4am to be precise, with a jumble of thoughts going through my mind.  In my bleary eyed, docile state I wondered whether the cats’ body clocks had gone awry, and they thought it was breakfast time (I don’t need an alarm clock) or whether it was an age thing and I shouldn’t have had that cup of tea at 10 o’clock last night (I hate getting old), but no, it’s strike day again and it weighs heavy on my mind.  

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not wavering, far from it, but I do reflect on the impact, and it bothers me, and I know it bothers my colleagues. It bothers me that the students are caught up in this and I have been at pains to explain to my classes why we are on strike and to try to mitigate some of the impact, but I know I cannot mitigate all of it.  The business we are in is education and that education relies on lecturers, surprisingly enough, take away the lecturers and there is no education.  I know that every day I’m on strike, there are topics that I’m not covering in class and there is no one else to cover them; no I’m not irreplaceable but I do add real value.

I struggle with the concept of ASOS and once again I am not alone. ASOS has meant that things are just not getting done, even though I’m still working at least a couple of hours a week over my contracted hours.  Not strictly ASOS I know, but it’s difficult to stick to the rules when doing so would cause everything to grind to a halt. I still have to do my teaching and marking and second marking and look at draft dissertations and have meetings with dissertation students and spend what seems like an interminable amount of time on emails (which by diktat have to be answered in two days).  I still have to prepare for my classes as I’m not a performing seal and do have to think about it before hand.  I still have to communicate with my colleagues and with the less experienced provide a guiding hand and I’m sure there are a myriad of other things I do that I haven’t mentioned. 

But I have not wavered and nor will I.  When I hear management talking about the cost of fuel going up, the state of the sector’s finances, the value of student fees compared to a few years ago, woe is me, when I see how management can treat their workers (P&O Ferries comes to mind alongside some of the other horror stories affecting both higher and further education), it simply reminds me of two things; they are out of touch and they don’t care. Insulated from the real world, their response to our very real concerns about workloads and our ever-diminishing pay, is that they’ll look into it.  Looking into it isn’t doing anything about it. Looking into it doesn’t fix my workload and, in the meantime, I’m still dealing with the aftermath of new IT systems that don’t work properly and cause significant extra work (maybe someone should have looked into that before foisting it upon the unsuspecting student and lecturer body).  I knew there was something I’d left out in the above paragraph.

One thing ASOS has taught me, there is too much to do nearly every week. I look at the things that are not done and I lament when I see that it has impacted on students.  My PDR means nothing if I haven’t the time to achieve the objectives, the mandatory training (so important that’s it’s done by eLearning; that’s another story), sits waiting to be done when I have time; and I’m constantly playing catchup.  I work in a system that thrives on making me feel guilty for not achieving. My reality though is so far removed from the workload plan that the plan has no meaning, other than to serve as a tool to beat me up with.

I am angry.  I am angry that I have been forced to go on strike. I am angry about the way that I have been treated in the past and I am angry that there has been little progress made.  I am angry about the impact that all of this is having on my students.  ASOS though has taught me one thing, there is such a thing as work/life balance and when the strikes are over, I am never going back to working the way I did before.  I have a contract and I’m sticking to it. None of this is my fault, I didn’t invent this system and I’m not the one out of touch with reality. I’m not wavering in my resolve, regardless of any future ballot, the principles of ASOS are here to stay.

%d bloggers like this: