Dr J. Michelle Coghlan (University of Manchester)

Dr J. Michelle Coghlan (University of Manchester) 

Election address 

Background 

I am a Senior Lecturer in American Studies at the University of Manchester, where I have worked since moving to the UK in 2013. I joined UCU immediately upon arriving and have stood on the picket line every year we have taken strike action. My oldest child joined me there in 2018 at six weeks old and proudly marched with us at a joint UCU-NEU rally in February 2023. I firmly believe in our collective power and in what strike action can achieve. But strikes cannot be our only strategy, and they must be accompanied by a clear set of demands, a coordinated media and NUS campaign, and the full backing of our membership. Members who do not feel heard will not join us on the picket line. As an NEC member, I would be committed to ensuring we involve members in our decisions and are transparent about the choices we make and ask them to take. 

As a migrant academic, I have worked to counter the UK's hostile environment through my involvement with the International and Broke network. 

As an academic with young children, I co-led a successful campaign for better pay and conditions at my university's privatized nursery and organized events to highlight the spiralling costs of childcare and the pandemic's disproportionate impact on working parents. 

I am unaffiliated with any faction, but my values align with those of UCU Commons (https://ucucommons.org/our-values/). I support Dyfrig Jones for Vice-President.  

What Motivates Me to Run 

Marx's famous suggestion that "all that is solid melts into air" has lived with me particularly vividly since May 2017, when my employer announced plans to make 171 staff members voluntarily redundant in the name of progress, ambition, and future profitability. As the first red-brick university to justify cuts on projected—not actual—financial difficulty, the then-unthinkable move shocked colleagues nationwide. While my department was ultimately spared, 141 staff took severance. The loss of their expertise, institutional knowledge, and camaraderie has been incalculable, and the hit to morale ripples on.  

Seven years later, we face a full-scale crisis, with nearly half the providers in our sector facing restructures. Each week brings word of new redundancies, and more colleagues forced to divert energy better spent on teaching or research into trying to convince someone, somewhere, not to axe their programmes. The toll on colleagues, students, and the future of higher education in this country is beyond measure. We urgently need a sector-wide plan to counter the narrative that the humanities do not matter. And as a union, we must launch a compelling campaign for a sustainable long-term funding model for UK higher education, one which starts with the reinstatement of capped student admissions.    

X: @JMCoghlan