ISRF Newsletter – July 2025
This month we have a Director's Note reflecting on cuts and mismanagement in UK and US universities. Also included: latest blog posts, Fellows news, and our upcoming competition schedule.
Contents

Director’s Note
A New Regulatory Framework for University Cuts
Christopher Newfield
In this monthly Director’s Note, Christopher Newfield reflects on cuts and mismanagement in UK and US universities, and proposes a new regulatory framework to guide more accountable and constructive reforms.
Universities are not tobacco or oil companies. But their managements have long concealed or distorted the effects of their marketised business model, with a dependence on student debt paired with inadequate public funding.
At the same time, the managers with financial authority are as unregulated as were pesticide manufacturers and oil companies—and as unaccountable to staff, students, research, teaching, knowledge, public benefit or society. Pro forma consultations with unions focus on completing redundancies rather than collaborative rebuilding.
The result is the long-term decline of an essential social sector at the core of so-called knowledge societies, future industries, basic productivity growth, and stronger, happier societies with better intellectual lives, that has entered long term decline. Yet I see no urgency in government, in management, or even in much of the sector. I see plenty of resignation.
One conclusion is that universities need a regulatory framework as badly as AI, chemical and fossil fuel companies do. The obvious model is an Environmental Impact Assessment or Statement. It would function as an Educational Impact Statement (EIS).
‘There is no green transition’: Why oil runs through the history of Empire and decolonisation
Adam Smith
Political economist Adam Hanieh explains how the history of state-owned oil companies is tied up with imperialism and anti-colonial struggle.
Bulletin 32: Crisis and Conjuncture: Climate, Borders, Politics
Lars Cornelissen & Baindu Kallon
In May, the ISRF published issue 32 of the Bulletin. This issue speaks to the links, tensions and affinities between migration and issues of climate and politics. Based on papers presented at the ISRF's 2024 annual conference, contributions aim to recalibrate existing categories of analysis in the face of escalating political, humanitarian, and environmental crises.
New publication: Threads of Labour: Tapestry of an Ex-Industrial Community, by Lisa Taylor
Charting a collaborative art-based project using carpet-making skills and the industrial heritage of the region, the book investigates how a cleaved ex-industrial community used arts methodologies as a cohesion strategy. Drawing on images from the company's archives, the book mines the history of Firths Carpets Limited, a firm that carpeted interiors across the globe from the mid-1800s.
New publication: Taming Egg Donors: The Egg Donation Reproductive Market in Spain, by Anna Molas
In this important new ethnographic study, Anna Molas discusses the Spanish egg donation market, one of the most prominent fertility markets in the world. She explores how young women are incorporated as egg donors into the global reproductive industry and reveals the fragile processes of selection, monitoring, and control that ensure the supply of human eggs.
New Publication: Bordering social reproduction: Migrant mothers and children making lives in the shadows, by Rachel Rosen and Eve Dickson
This book shows how enforced destitution and debt work alongside detention and deportation as part of a tripartite of exclusionary technologies of the racial state. It advances the novel concept of weathering to comprehend mother' and children's life-making practices under duress – arguing that these are neither acts of heroic resilience nor solely symptomatic of lives rendered disposable, but indications of the fragilities of repressive migration regimes and, on occasion, refusals to accept their terms of existence.
11th Independent Scholar Fellow Competition (ISF11)
Launching late summer 2025
Independent scholars not employed at a university or research institution can apply for a one-year fellowship to complete a significant piece of new research.
12th Flexible Grants for Small Groups Competition (FG12)
Launching winter 2025
Funding support for small groups (2-10 scholars) to complete a piece of research or undertake face-to-face joint group work.
11th Flexible Grants for Small Groups Competition (FG11)
Application window closed on 10th January 2025
Funding support for small groups (2-10 scholars) to complete a piece of research or undertake face-to-face joint group work.
8th Early Career Fellowship competition (ECF8)
Application window closed on 14th February 2025
Individual scholars and pairs are eligible to apply for a one-year fellowship to complete a significant piece of new research.