Last month, when the University of Nottingham sent out 2,700 letters to staff warning them that they were at risk of redundancy, one languages lecturer was doubly impacted.
The partner of Ewa Szypula, an assistant professor in French studies who has been at the university for 12 years, had also been served notice of possible redundancy.
“I’m trying to not let our child see how stressful it is,” Szypula told Times Higher Education. “It’s difficult to see redundancies as anything other than the end of this particular career.”
Szypula was one of hundreds of Nottingham staff who joined a rally at the university last month, calling for management to rethink its plans for 608 job cuts, which come on top of 350 professional service staff cuts that took place last year.
Staff have now begun a two-month long strike and marking and assessment boycott, which threatens to derail many students’ hopes of graduating.
