ISRF Newsletter – November 2025
This month's newsletter features a Director's Note unpacking the UK government's latest White Paper on higher education. Also included: upcoming ISRF events, Fellows news and our latest blog posts.
Contents
Director’s Note
Labour’s White Paper Fails Higher Education
Christopher Newfield
The university’s core activities are teaching and research. UK universities lose two billion GBP a year on teaching UK students and over six billion GBP by conducting research (on about £18.5 billion in gross revenue, Table 5). This is because home fees have been frozen for years and thus deflated, and research funders cover in the aggregate only two thirds of the full costs of research. As a result, nearly half of UK universities projected deficits for 2024-25.
Rather than persuading government to fix these losses at their sources, universities sought to cover them with large margins on the high fees paid by overseas students, those migrants the British public loves to hate. This made up for half of the shortfalls. That, combined with “other (non-commercial) activities”, still left a deficit across all universities of over £2.3 billion in 2023-24, which has since likely gotten worse…
Book Launch: Threads of Labour: Tapestry of an Ex-Industrial Community, by Lisa Taylor
Thursday 20th November 2025, 6:00pm-7:30pm (GMT). In person & online.
The Leeds Library
Charting a collaborative art-based project using carpet-making skills and the industrial heritage of the region, Threads of Labour 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.
Book Launch: Neoliberalism and Race, by Lars Cornelissen
Tuesday 9th December 2025, 6:00pm-7:30pm (GMT). In person & online.
University College London
Neoliberalism and Race uses historical methods to reconstruct neoliberal ideas of race and position them within the broader field of racist ideology. Using archival sources, Cornelissen identifies relationships between the neoliberal tradition and fascist race theory, the British Colonial Office, and the transnational eugenics movement, each of which markedly impacted neoliberalism’s trajectory.
This launch will be co-hosted with the UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation.
Against Improvement
Lorna Finlayson
As institutional leaders and politicians continue to pursue budget cuts to essential resources, language becomes a tool to mask their harmful impacts. Lorna Finlayson explores the subtleties of ‘improvements’, a political euphemism that indicates a change for the worse.
Neoliberalism is Constitutively Racialised
Lars Cornelissen
In his new book, Neoliberalism and Race, Lars Cornelissen argues that the question of race has always preoccupied neoliberals, both as a theoretical and political issue. From colonialism to immigration, Cornelissen’s book explores how race has played a crucial function in the neoliberal worldview.
Reimagining Victims’ Reparations: Building a Global Network for Grassroots Justice
Sandra Ríos Oyola, Matt Snell and Camilo Tamayo Gómez
As the field of transitional justice has grown, official reparations schemes have emerged to address victims of political violence, displacement and structural injustice. But what happens when the harms are irreparable, when the wounds inflicted are not just individual but collective, cultural, and historical?
Launch: ‘Creating Inclusive Workplaces for Academics with Energy Limiting Conditions’ with Bethan Evans
Join ISRF Political Economy Fellow Bethan Evans for a launch event on guidance around systemic changes and individual adjustments to create more inclusive workplaces for academics with energy limiting conditions (ELC). The guidance is based on research exploring the dual problems of burnout and ableism in the UK neoliberal academy.
New publication: ‘Win-Win-Win: Taxing wealth for fairness, revenue and growth’ by Martin O’Neill and Howard Reed
This report for the Fairness Foundation outlines the case for changing the UK’s approach to taxing wealth. Noting the negative impacts of rising wealth inequalities, it examines how an increase in taxes on wealth can help drive economic growth and raise much needed revenue.
New Publication: ‘Public Order and the Internal Security Apparatus: Affective Tension Monitoring as Police Epistemology’ by Illan Rua Wall
The ‘tension monitoring’ system is used by police in the UK to predict and in turn prevent disorder from erupting. This article explores how the system aims to understand the affective life of communities, playing an integral role in police epistemology and securing civil order.
New Publication: ‘States of Transition: From Governing the Environment to Transforming Society’ by Peter Newell
States play a key role in facilitating the transition to a more sustainable world. However states do more than govern - they are deeply embedded in contested social, political, cultural and economic systems. Newell’s new book examines state power within broader social relations to explore the possibilities and challenges of building a ‘transition state’.
12th Flexible Grants for Small Groups Competition (FG12)
Launching January 2026
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.
11th Independent Scholar Fellow Competition (ISF11)
Application window closed on 31st October 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.