The UCU branch at De Montfort University Leicester

@ucudmu.bsky.social

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Defend DMU! ucu@dmu.ac.uk

The we're all trying to find the guy who did this meme
Newspaper page featuring a story about spending on a celebrity visit to the University of Ulster by Arnold Schwarzenegger
Photo of a linkedin post from De Montfort University. Text "Labour must be careful not to sideline excellent research in its drive to introduce "strategic distribution of funding", argues DMU's Vice-Chancellor Professor Katie Normington. Writing in Wonkhe today, Professor Normington examines the post-16 education and skills white paper, in particular its proposal to reform research funding, favouring "specialist" institutions. She looks to the past example of the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise, which highlighted research excellence across the sector, particularly among former polytechnics and universities formed from institutes. And she makes the appeal for any new policy direction not to forget this and to "resist the lure of neat hierarchies and support the full spectrum of UK excellence.""
Image of a University of Derby tweet praising their VC for receiving an honorary doctorate
Video of the UCU picket at the University of Derby
UCU picket line at the university of Derby's £75m Cavendish building.
A poster detailing the strike action at the University of Derby. Tuesday 2/12 830am at the Kedleston Road campus; Wednesday 3/12 930am at the Cavendish Building in the city centre; Thursday 4/12 830 picket at Kedleston Road.
DMU UCU banner depicted in De Montfort Square in Leicester during a UCU rally
Wide panoramic photo of the UCU rally in Leicester
DMU UCU member speaking to the rally in Leicester
Image of a UCU protest at the university of Leicester featuring a number of picket signs
The university deserves better. Leicester deserves better. DMU’s staff and students demand better. The performance of Katie Normington and her executive team can only objectively be defined as a failure, for which the university, its staff, its students and the city of Leicester have borne the brunt. It is a level of incompetency that has been exposed elsewhere, as was the case at the University of Dundee, where their leadership were obliged to resign. Without question, therefore, the time has come for the DMU leadership to do likewise and for an independent inquiry to take place before further damage is done to an institution that staff and students are invested in. It is, after all, our obligation - whether we are staff, students, Alumni or the public who benefit from the university or rely on it for the economic wellbeing of the city - to protect our valued institutions if those tasked with doing so have abrogated that responsibility. DMU Townhall Meeting 16th July 2025
The University has failed to maintain the previously hard-won Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) Gold award and decimated the university’s research capacity—undermining whole academic units to the point of collapse, and rendering them non-viable. While imposing “essential spend” restrictions on academic departments, the University Leadership Board (ULB), with the consent of the (remunerated) Board of Governors (BoG) has embraced indulgent spending, racking up business-class expenses on a scale comparable to the entire budget of DMU’s much-lauded research institutes. Student-staff ratios have surged to unsustainable levels—we are now ranked 116th nationally — largely due to a weaponised redundancy programme that has demoralised staff, degraded the student experience, and driven the university into an avoidable doom-loop. The imposition of “block teaching”—a pedagogically regressive model was pushed through with no proper consultation or due diligence—has been a demonstrable failure. The continued denial to recognise that the introduction of that system has not produced positive outcomes, not least for student recruitment, shows a reckless disregard for educational standards. In a time of uncertainty and the need for prudence and careful, considered planning, the ULB has gambled university finances on high-risk ventures, particularly in London and Dubai, and now face potential multi-million-pound legal action from a former partner, Study World—yet another example of strategic failure by former academics cosplaying at venture capitalists and ‘global leaders’, with money generated primarily from student fee income. Concerns raised by students about investing in Dubai, where LGBTQ+ staff and students would not be safe working or studying in, have been met with anodyne responses.
A Reckoning with Failure: Five Years of Catastrophic Mismanagement at DMU In August 2020, in the wake of the scandal that led to the resignation of Dominic Shellard, the previous Vice Chancellor of De Montfort University (DMU), Katie Normington, a Deputy Principal (Academic) at Royal Holloway, University of London was appointed. After the reputational damage caused by Shellard’s removal, it was hoped that the appointment of Normington would herald the beginning of a more positive era for DMU Five years on, the evidence shows clearly that this has not happened. On the contrary, matters have worsened considerably under her leadership. After five years of mismanagement, decline, and lost opportunities, the time has come to confront the bitter realities of her tenure at the head of DMU. The evidence is overwhelming and damning: Normington’s tenure has been defined by strategic incoherence, risky investments, indifference to staff and student welfare, and a dereliction of the university’s civic and academic responsibilities. That she has presided over a precipitous fall in academic standing, abandoning the institution to the lowest reaches of national league tables and now languishing at 120th is undeniable. Worse still, there has been no discernible recovery strategy—no aspiration, no plan and no hope. https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/universities/de-montfort-university/clearing