Print This PostMy blogs for Dementia Researcher have chronicled my journey from being a postdoctoral researcher to obtaining my first permanent academic position as a lecturer in biomedical science. This journey continues as I now face being made redundant from my job.
I’ve technically been made redundant before. After my second postdoc position my contract ended and my PI didn’t have any additional funding to keep me on, and my contract had been too short for me to work towards a competitive fellowship application. I did submit one, despite only being in the lab 16 months, but it failed. Luckily, I planned ahead, applying for other postdoctoral positions, and making arrangements to uproot my life to yet another city. I was only unemployed for a month before starting my next position at the University of Glasgow. This time it’s different. I’m not on a temporary contract, approaching an end date that’s been in the diary for a while. Instead, I’m in a permanent contract which doesn’t have an end date, but simultaneously does, as it can be terminated at any point at the behest of senior management.
In my blogs I’ve written a lot about job insecurity in academia and the precarity that early career researchers (ECRs) have to deal with. As an ECR, you either stick out the temporary contracts and tolerate the insecurity until you hopefully land a permanent position as a lecturer or research fellow, or you enter the non-academic job market in the search of greater stability. I remember the feeling of relief when I was offered my lectureship. It no longer felt like there was a ticking clock, and I could now properly settle in a single place. But I’ve come to learn that permanency is a myth in academia, at least in places like the UK where a permanent contract doesn’t provide the same degree of security that tenure might in other places. It feels like we’re sold a false dream, one which promises permanency and security, but in reality, can be taken away at any point.
So how have I ended up in this situation? To understand this, let me first explain a little bit about how universities operate in the UK, or more specifically, in England. Students are charged a tuition fee when studying at university, with the amount dependent on whether they are considered a ‘home’ or ‘international’ student. International students pay significantly higher tuition fees and are therefore a major source of income for universities.
In 2023, the UK government brought in new restrictions to student visa routes in an attempt to cut net migration. International students would no longer be allowed to bring family members with them unless the student was registered on a postgraduate research course. This had a detrimental effect on the number of postgraduate students in my department, many of whom were overseas mature students, who could only study in the UK if able to bring their children and spouse for support with living. Since this visa change, many have decided to study in other countries without such restrictions, leading to plummeting student numbers here, and significant financial pressures. This, along with other challenges, has led to many universities seeking what they call ‘efficiencies’. This includes making staff redundant.
Sector leaders expected more than 100 of the UK’s 140-odd universities to be making redundancies by the end of 2024-25, in what has been described as a “cataclysmic” situation where “everything is on the table”.
This year, my university has had two rounds of voluntary severance. This is where there’s an open call for staff to put themselves forward to terminate their contract in return of a financial package. Last month we entered the next phase: voluntary redundancy. Here, particular groups of staff are targeted in areas where senior management have determined specific ‘efficiencies’ need to be made. My department was one of those areas selected. This is despite the fact that we have two high performing undergraduate courses in our department (one ranked 2nd and another ranked 3rd in the UK, in the Guardian University Guide 2025) so surely cannot be considered to be underperforming.
During the voluntary redundancy phase, targeted staff are told how many people, and at what grade, need to put themselves forward for voluntary redundancy, again in return of a financial package. This has been rather terribly described as “sacrificing yourself to save the jobs of your colleagues”, because should these requirements not be met, the whole targeted group will be placed at risk of compulsory redundancy. This means senior management will decide who will go.
It’s important to stress that many universities are going through a similar process due to the financial pressures I outlined earlier, in additional to a range of other challenges too. It isn’t just my university. However, as you can imagine, it’s been an incredibly stressful time for my colleagues and I, as we continue to try and do our best for our students, at a time when we should be winding down from a long semester of teaching and research activities, ready to spend quality time with friends and family over the holidays.
There’s nothing unique about people being made redundant in academia. It can happen in any job and working outside of academia wouldn’t provide immunity from the risk of redundancy. However, what is unique is that we endure precarity early in our careers on the implicit assumption that job security will eventually come. It’s disappointing to realise that I’m in no more of a stable situation than I was when I started my career. What have I worked for? Now, with the prospect of compulsory redundancies on the horizon, the illusion of stability is shattered, and my fate may depend on how someone who I’ve never met judges my performance on arbitrary measures, in direct comparison to my colleagues. Last time I was made redundant, only I was involved in the process, my performance wasn’t under scrutiny, and I didn’t have to compete with anyone.
I don’t know what the next few months will look like, going into the new year with this looming, but I do know that there are no winners in these situations. Those left behind face higher workloads, as the need for teaching, research, and administration doesn’t disappear when staff leave. These ‘efficiencies’ we keep hearing about are code for doing more with fewer people, and somehow, we’re expected to maintain the same standards of student support. We need more compassion and thought for staff wellbeing as the process can be extremely demoralising. But ultimately, in academia, we’re all replaceable.
Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali
Author
Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali is a Lecturer in Biomedical Science at Teesside University & Affiliate Researcher at Glasgow University. In addition to teaching, Kamar is exploring how neuroinflammation following traumatic brain injury contributes to the progression of neurodegenerative diseases that lead to dementia. Having first pursued a career as an NHS Psychologist, Kamar went back to University in Durham to look at rodent behavioural tasks to completed her PhD, and then worked as a regional Programme Manager for NC3Rs.
Dr Jodi Watt
Dementia Researcher
I’m sorry to hear about your situation. On the other hand, it tends to be senior staff that are targeted for compulsory redundancy.
The reasons are simple : already close to retirement, very expensive compared to junior colleagues and often ‘dead wood’, meaning not very productive in terms of either teaching or research. Of course, department politics also plays a role.
In the life sciences and related fields, the precarious nature of employment has long since been a feature. It’s very expensive to sustain teaching and research activities compared to other areas. even within Stem. For as long as I can remember there have been rounds of redundancies and fierce competition for permanent positions, especially in medical science.
The good thing is that unlike most other areas of stem, there is a massive pharma and biomedical industry out there in search of skilled researchers. If you were a theoretical physicist, the situation would be very bleak.