1,000 signatures reached
To: Professor Koen Lamberts, Vice-Chancellor, The University of Sheffield
Sheffield Uni Needs East Asian Studies!
In November 2024, the University of Sheffield announced plans to “significantly” reduce capacity in the teaching and research of East Asian Studies. This involves four major proposed changes, which academic, teaching, professional staff and students of EAS at Sheffield believe will seriously harm our provision, and the state of knowledge of East Asia in the UK, Europe and beyond.
The proposed changes are:
- the elimination of all specialist undergraduate degrees in Japanese, Chinese and Korean and their folding into a generic East Asian Studies programme;
- the transfer of all language teaching staff from East Asian Studies into a teaching delivery unit, resulting in potential risks to job security and conditions for language teaching staff
- “significant” reductions in academic staffing, which they are seeking to achieve initially through targeted “voluntary” severance, to be followed by a restructure and compulsory redundancies if sufficient cost savings have not been achieved
- further centralisation of professional services staffing, removing the close connection our administrative colleagues have with teaching, research and student support
We think the university has made a fundamental mistake in failing to consult with staff, students, alumni and supporters of East Asian Studies and should go back to the drawing board.
The University of Sheffield needs East Asian Studies. And the future of our field needs major centres of East Asian Studies, like Sheffield.
If you agree, please sign the below petition to call on the Vice-chancellor to pause these changes and enter into meaningful consultation about the future of East Asian Studies at Sheffield.
If you agree, please sign the below petition to call on the Vice-chancellor to pause these changes and enter into meaningful consultation about the future of East Asian Studies at Sheffield.
Why is this important?
The University of Sheffield has been a global leader in East Asian Studies since its inception as the national centre for modern Japanese Studies in 1963. Korean Studies was introduced in 1979 and maintained as a small, specialist unit until the boom in interest in Korea over the last decade has seen an explosion in student and research interest. Chinese Studies also has a multi-decade history of excellence in teaching and research at Sheffield. And increasing numbers of our staff work across linguistic and other divisions to consider relations across and beyond the region.
Increased student numbers, particularly at postgraduate level, along with growth in research income has also seen a slow, but persistent, growth in staffing. This has begun to compensate for long standing inequalities in staff-student ratios that saw EAS having the lowest staffing levels per student in the university for many years.
We now have a team of about fifty academic, teaching and research staff working across the region and covering many major disciplines from the humanities and social sciences, including political economy, literature, history, international relations, anthropology, sociology, language pedagogy and film and media studies. We also have a wide range of partners from industry to government to the arts and community sectors. This makes Sheffield the largest and most diverse concentration of East Asia expertise in the UK, and one of the most significant in Europe.
That diversity also provides a unique platform for investment and growth to sustain our position as one of the major centres of East Asia expertise globally, should university leaders see the unique potential of Sheffield’s strengths. Learning about East Asia has merits on its own terms - greater cultural competency, deepening knowledge of rich and diverse cultures and societies and so on - but is also a key priority for governments of all stripes. As the University of Sheffield was finalising plans to reduce capacity, the UK Prime Minister was announcing plans to grow the UK's capacity in the Indo-Pacific. This follows on increased funding to build China capacity across the UK, and live plans to renew policy in relation to various countries of East Asia, which Sheffield staff have and will continue to inform. Reducing capacity now will make Sheffield less able to play the leading role it has played for many years in important areas of life that are deeply important to British society - from politics to culture.
In the School of East Asian Studies, we taught a record 500 masters' students in the academic year 2023-24 and have nearly 300 masters' students enrolled on degrees and modules in the current year. Many of these are international students. Sheffield is proud of its place as home of the #weareinternational campaign and the university must deliver on this message in the content of its scholarship as well as in student experience.
We believe ​t​hat radical reductions in capacity ​c​reate significant ​r​isks to Sheffield's world leading reputation in East Asian Studies, our deep and meaningful partnerships in the region and beyond, and the future of East Asia expertise in the UK​.​ In a world that is potentially both more connected and more uncertain, we must cherish the area expertise that allows us to meet global challenges.
​I​n this difficult year for universities across the UK, we must not lose sight of our core mission: to understand the world better, and to communicate that understanding. We need ​t​o recognise that the future success of the University of Sheffield relies on a strong East Asian Studies, and that East Asian Studies globally needs a strong University of Sheffield.