University English’s response to Brexit

The University English executive is disappointed by the outcome of the referendum on the UK’s membership of the European Union, and deplores the likely consequences of Brexit for the UK HE sector. We will do all we can to support our many non-UK European colleagues and postgraduates teaching, researching, and studying English in HE throughout the UK. We are actively working to facilitate the creation of a caucus of those colleagues in the next few months and plan to devote some of our resources to this purpose. In the meantime, we re-affirm our commitment to our sister associations in Europe, to the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE), and to the unity of English as a discipline across the UK, in all of its areas.

A letter written by colleagues from Bristol’s English department, outlining their disappointment at the decision (and its potential ramifications) can be found here. We hope that colleagues in other institutions might like to use this as a model for similar letters to their own representatives; if your department would like to post their letter here please contact Tasha Alden at nla@aber.ac.uk.