This website is a repository for information, comments and letters of support regarding the threat of redundancy to 47 scientists from the University of Liverpool’s Faculty of Health and Life Sciences (FHLS). This group of 47 scientists includes many of the Faculty’s best teachers, researchers and clinicians.
The Faculty’s leadership has said the redundancies are not being made due to financial constraints, but as part of a restructuring exercise called ‘Project Shape’. They say the main motivation of Project Shape is to improve the health of the people of Liverpool. It is not clear how making these 47 people redundant will achieve that, especially when many of them are undertaking research on conditions that are prevalent in our region (either directly working with patients, or investigating the underlying mechanisms that cause disease).
An open letter highlighting major problems with the planned redundancies has been signed by more than 260 academics in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences. People from other Faculties at the University of Liverpool, and those external to Liverpool who are supportive, are encouraged to sign here
The University’s leadership is being asked to reconsider this catastrophic course of action. If the redundancies go ahead, there will be a profound negative impact on:
- The quality of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching
- The careers of PhD students who will be unable to complete their projects due to losing their primary supervisors
- The colleagues of the targeted staff who will need to pick up the teaching workload left behind, whilst worrying whether they may be next to lose their job
- The 47 scientists whose livelihoods are threatened in the middle of a pandemic
- The reputation of the University