QMUL management is planning to drastically cut into our educational offering, based on a framework provided by the Australian consultancy Nous. The newly-formed School of the Arts is particularly affected, as 295 have been slated to be cut. Some of the affected modules are the modules that make QMUL a research-led university and include: 

  • Race and Racism in Performance 
  • Performing Illness and Disability 
  • Performance and Visual Culture in South Asia
  • Queer Borderlands
  • Iraqi Literature in English / English Translation 
  • Transgender Perspectives and Interventions 
  • Refugee Writing 
  • Indian Cinema 
  • Slavery, Colonialism and Postcolonialism 
  • Language and Ethnicity
  • Multilingualism and Bilingualism 
  • Cinema and Disability 
  • Intersectional Feminist Writing 
  • Reading South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh 

The cuts would completely overturn QMUL’s character, blandify teaching through generic modules, and further remove academics and students from the core of university, as well as put the jobs of many a colleague at risk. Nous is or has been active in at least Cardiff, Plymouth, Edinburgh, Coventry, and QMUL. The materials that get bought for hundreds of thousands of pounds are laughable and often seemingly copy-pasted, but what managers buy from them is unaccountability (as they can claim external, ‘specialised’ input) and obfuscation (as this becomes ‘commercial data’ which cannot be shared with staff for commercial reasons, and therefore staff cannot argue back on decisions).  

Management has been doing this without meaningful input from students and academic on the ground. Students are only finding out because the modules they had been interested in don’t turn up on the module selection for next year.

What can we do?

  • Students from across QMUL are signing the open letter here.
  • Students in the School of the Arts can join an open meeting on 15 April at 1pm in Rehearsal Room 2 in ArtsOne or on MS Teams.