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There have been a series of high-profile bullying scandals in astronomy in recent years. These include : These scandals have affected European & American universities. What about the UK? The Royal Astronomical Society has just carried out a survey of bullying and harassment. There were 661 respondents, working in the Read more…

There is a need for more statistics on bullying, discrimination, harassment & victimisation in academia. Existing surveys are either restricted to certain subject areas (eg astronomy & geophysics) and/or curiously unavailable (eg EPSRC’s Report on “Understanding the status of underrepresented groups in the Information and Communication Technologies” which examined computer Read more…

If you raise a formal allegation of bullying or misconduct, your University will have to investigate. Studies show that bullying is endemic in Universities. A few examples among many will suffice. In one of the largest studies (14,677 participants), carried out in 2014 by University and College Union (UCU), almost Read more…

The London School of Economics (LSE) have just provided another classic example of failure to deal with harassment. The outcome has been — predictably enough — the demoralization of the victims and the exoneration of the aggressor, who is now free to exact revenge. The story is a familiar one, Read more…

Michelle Donelan, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, made false allegations about two academics. Donelan wrote to the Prof Ottoline Leyser, the chief executive of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to “express, in the most serious terms, my disgust and outrage at Research England’s appointment of individuals Read more…

The Billionaire University has been found guilty of exploiting its staff at an Employment Tribunal. Rebecca Abrams and Alice Jolly taught Creative Writing at Oxford University for 15 years. They were employed on fixed-term “personal services” contracts. At an employment tribunal this week, a judge ruled that these contracts were Read more…

This is a very upsetting story. It concerns the death of an undergraduate student. Natasha Abrahart was in the second year of a physics degree at Bristol University. She sadly took her life in 2018 — worried about an oral presentation in front of all the tutors & students.  The Read more…

There is a human cost to bullying. The people running UK Universities don’t seem to care much about that. They are primarily interested in running the University like a business. So here, we will just look at the financial cost, the bottom line. This calculation should be done properly through Read more…

Here we complement the previous posting with a study of the 10 worst performing Non-Russell Group Universities. Again, we give total number of complaints to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), as well as complaints per 1000 staff (using publicly available estimates of the total number of employees). These statistics are Read more…

Open universities uphold the right to speak and to know — in order to support involvement in governance and accountability of management. The Freedom of Information Act (2000) provides access to information held by your University. This might include grievance data, use of non-disclosure agreements, sexual harassment statistics, retention numbers, Read more…