Newsletter May 2022

This month we have three items of news:

1. Further to my email last month, I’m delighted to confirm that Joanie Willett from the University of Exeter has agreed to come on board as co-convenor of the specialist group. Welcome Joanie and thanks for joining us! 
2. Many of you will have heard about the potential redundancies that a number of UK universities have announced over the last fortnight. This is not only concerning for UK academia in general, but also the threats to jobs at De Montfort University in Leicester has particular implications for our sub-field of local politics and governance. The futures of DMU’s renowned Local Government Research Centre and Centre for Urban Research on Austerity are in question, and 58 staff are at risk of compulsory redundancy, many of whom you may well know personally. A recent DMU graduate has set up an online petition to oppose the redundancies – click here if you would like to sign and share it:https://www.change.org/p/save-58-jobs-and-support-dmu-s-teaching-and-research-staff
3. One thing that came out of our meeting in York was the idea that we should do more to share our research interests and activities, with a view to facilitating more collaboration. With that in mind, we’d like you to send in a line on what you are currently working on, which we can feed into a Google doc to share around the group. Please could you email this to psalocalpolitics@gmail.com? 

All the best,

Dr Peter Eckersley

Senior Research Fellow in Public Policy and Management

Nottingham Trent University

Managing Editor, Local Government Studies