To Debra Humphris and the Senior Management and Governors of the University of Brighton,
We write as the steering committee of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence at the University of Sussex. We are deeply dismayed to learn of the mass redundancies recently announced at the University of Brighton. The arts and humanities research culture at Sussex depends on our rich, decades-long connections with colleagues and students at Brighton.
We have collectively worked closely with colleagues from Humanities, Media Studies, English Literature, and Geography, both through the Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender and through other community initiatives such as the Coast is Queer LGBT Literature Festival. We are continually humbled and impressed by the brilliance and hard work of Brighton Uni staff across these areas, not only in terms of their contributions to research culture but also their commitment to students and their deep and longstanding engagement with the broader Brighton community.
Countless LGBTQ+ local organisations and individuals have benefitted from and continue to have their lives enriched by working with the very staff whose livelihoods you threaten. By making such gifted, hardworking staff redundant you deal a serious and entirely avoidable blow to some of our city's most vulnerable residents and to the creative work they do with your staff. We have no doubt that other staff facing redundancy are equally talented and committed. Please reconsider this grave mistake and reinvest in the people whose shoulders you stand on. Until you do so, staff at Brighton will have our full support in fighting to stay where they belong.
Yours for the wellbeing of our city,
Steering Group for The Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence, School of Media, Arts and Humanities, University of Sussex
Dr Sara Jane Bailes
Dr Natalia Cecire
Dr Charlie Jeffries
Dr Sandra Nelson
Dr Rachel O’Connell
Dr Samuel Solomon