(Year 2 episode 12)

In today’s episode, recorded Thursday 26 June 2025: campaigns officer Anja Komatar on the role of the campaigns officer, and some of the campaigns the branch is involved in internationally and in the workplace.

With Rachel Walls and Anja Komatar.

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Rachel

Welcome to the Leeds UCU podcast for members of the University of Leeds branch of the University and College Union. In today’s podcast we’ll be speaking with our outgoing campaigns officer Anja about the role, our recent campaigns, and what to do if you’re interested in becoming a campaigns officer in the coming year.

I’m Rachel Walls, your podcast host for today. I’m also a UCU department rep for Lifelong Learning Centre, Branch Committee member and saxophone or clarinet player in our occasional picket line band Orchestrike.

The podcast exists to be a friendly voice from the UCU University of Leeds branch to keep you in better touch with what’s going on, such as what the elected officers are working on and what opportunities there are for you to get involved in UCU discussions, socialising, activism and decision making.

And for today’s podcasts, which we’re recording on the 26th of June 2025, we have Anja Komatar to give us an update on campaigns.

Rachel

So hello, Anja!

Anja

Hi!

Rachel

The first question I thought I’d ask you was what your role has been as an officer? Tell us about that.

Anja

So as a campaigns officer, you really work alongside other officers and alongside members on specific campaigns. I joined the committee and then ran for officers because I wanted to do something and the campaigns officer role is really allowing for a lot of action. There is a campaigns officer role available in the next year, so I’d really encourage you to consider running for it. There will be an election for it to be announced in due course, but just get involved. Join us.

Rachel

Brilliant. Yeah. So we had our AGM not long ago and we elected new officers for the coming year. But there was just that one vacancy because you’re moving on to a different roll out your next year.

Anja

Yes, I’ll be membership officer next year.

Rachel

Excellent. If you listeners are interested in taking on a branch officer role, maybe have a look at our website. And if you want to kind of talk to existing officers about what it’s like, get in touch. The website is leedsucu.org.uk.

Anja

I’m breaking in to our original recording with some updated news. The committee has met on Tuesday 1 July and decided that the nominations for the campaigns officer role will open in September. In the meantime, if you are considering running or if you’d like to find out more about the role, please reach out to us on ucu@leeds.ac.uk You could, for example, chat about it with the current officers. Now back to our original discussion!

Rachel

We’ve had a lot going on and one of the most current campaigns, I suppose, has been to do with Palestine and there’s been a lot a lot over the last year that that members have brought forward and actions that we’ve taken. So could you tell us a bit about that year and what’s happened?

Anja

So this campaign really started before I even joined as a campaigns officer. It started last year in response to our university welcoming someone who’s gone to Israel to fight in the Israeli army and then coming back to university. But over this past this past year, we’ve done a series of events and we’ve had a lot of branch policy dictating us what to do because really what we do as a branch is in response to what our members would like us to do. So at the start of the academic year, we hosted an event Campus Voices [for Palestine] tour. We welcomed a speaker from West Bank, Sundos Hammad, and we heard from a speaker from a Gaza University online about scholasticide about what’s happening in Palestine, specifically in Gaza, but also across West Bank. And then throughout the year, we had a number of workplace days of action. Last year, some of those were joint with the students, and this year we’ve tried all different things. So the latest one we hosted a lunchtime event. It was very relaxing, just a space for people to come along, have a chat and plan what we would like to do to support Palestine. We’ve also regularly been updating members on what the Leeds PSC are doing, so about the weekly marches, about the emergency demos. And in terms of looking a bit broadly, yes, we contribute to the policy of our own branch, but at the UCU Congress, we can also contribute to the national policy. One of our motions at the Congress, was on doing another campus voices tour, and this motion was moved alongside three other motions to do with Palestine. So the national UCU policy has always been pretty strong in support of Palestine and we’ve just strengthened it in response to the world events. And I think it’s important to know that that the person moving those motions at the UCU Congress was our colleague from University of Cambridge, who is from Gaza and he really really urged us to do everything we possibly can to stop the genocide, stop the scholasticide and support our colleagues across Palestine, especially our colleagues in Gaza, who want to rebuild the Gaza universities. He’s called Wesam Amer. And the motions at this year’s Congress relating to Palestine have all passed almost unanimously, at most two people voting against. And there was real sense of unity and UCU standing together to support our colleague.

Rachel

Interesting. Yeah. And in case it’s useful to go back to that, those events, which seems a long time ago now, but it wasn’t an employee of the university, but a chaplain, wasn’t it? Part of an organisation that the university used that that, and there was a lot of upset and concern about from students and from our members and other staff. So yeah, there was quite a response to that wasn’t there at the time.

Anja

Especially because that person was in a pastoral role. So even if we take all the context away, why would we put someone who’s just been engaged in a war in a pastoral role? It was actually concerns were first raised by our Jewish students. They were concerned about the content that that person was posting and about their fellow students being radicalised so. It it’s really been a cross-university response because we care about our students and we care about our staff.

Rachel

Yeah.

Anja

And I think the Union role in it was important, but working alongside everyone else.

Rachel

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, campaigns is definitely an area where we collaborate with with students often and other staff groups, and we’re going to come onto that, I think, but before that, yeah, is there any more that you wanted to say about how the Palestine campaign links with local issues and things that we’re doing around here?

Anja

Yeah. So really aside from us you know, doing what’s right, standing in solidarity with our colleagues internationally this is an issue that impacts us directly. We want our freedom of expression. We want our academic freedom. Those are really core issues that the Union campaigns about and we’ve seen a lot of attempts at repression and as a Union we’ve come out strongly supporting first and foremost our members, but really all staff, all students at the university upholding what university should be. The other issue linked to this repression is that as a university we’ve been put on a Gulf CAN boycott list of universities, so especially with the upcoming changes outlined in our White Paper that is probably really, really important, because if we look at the past 10 years at University of Leeds, about 10% of our students come from Gulf countries, pretty consistently. Out of the UK universities there’s only one that has more students – the Manchester University – we’re one of only 10 universities on the boycott list.

Rachel

So just explain that a little bit more what the boycott means

Anja

Yeah. So the Gulf CAN is a campaign, a grassroots campaign in the Gulf. They are arguing that while the students, of course might want to come and study in the UK, their students should boycott University of Leeds alongside 9 other universities because of the repression that students are currently experiencing on our campuses. And I’m really concerned about that because if their boycott is successful we could see a significant drop in the student numbers from the Gulf. Which is a big proportion of our students and we would be losing on, you know, the expertise that comes from those students, their unique experiences, but also of course, we would be losing on the money that they would pay in tuition fees. That could have an impact on how university responds to the drop in student numbers.

Rachel

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That’s a really good point. Quite a concern. OK. So thanks for explaining that. Anything else about the link with local issues before we sort of move on to other campaigns?

Anja

So in addition to what we mentioned, like events and stuff like that as a Union, we can also negotiate with our management. So specifically, when it comes to the boycott that’s being called by the Gulf Can campaign, we’ve been raising that with the management because we’re concerned if the boycott is successful, what will happen. And we’ve brought that up in negotiations with the management we’ve asked for the data on the student numbers so that you know if the boycott is working, we can be forewarned and additionally so the university is aware of what situation we’re in that and they can respond. Especially if one of the issues why we were put on the boycott list is the repression. The curtailment of freedom of expression, that’s something that we hope we could work with university to uphold and, you know, improve our reputation as a university and hopefully be taken off the boycott list.

Rachel

Yeah, really important kind of holding the university to account on that and keeping their focus on that potential issue. So yeah, let’s hope that they listen and respond to that. OK. Well, that that feels like a very present relevant campaign that we’ve all been involved with in lots of ways or a lot of UCU branch members have been, but there’s also lots of other campaigns, isn’t there? And over the years, so many we can’t count, but maybe we could talk about some of the more recent ones to give people a flavour if they’re not aware.

Anja

Yeah. So on one hand, we run campaigns related to specific issues. So in addition to Palestine one of the first campaigns I was aware of as a member of UCU is a campaign on trans issues, because this didn’t start just now. A couple of years back the university tried to just get rid of the trans policy and it was UCU working alongside the staff network and students that really made sure that that doesn’t happen and made sure that our trans staff and students are protected. And of course, this is coming up again now in response to the Supreme Court judgement and in response to the Sussex ruling. Another campaign was about our student Salma al-Shehab. Salma was imprisoned while visiting her family in Saudi Arabia, over some tweets. She has been in prison for a really, really long time and we’ve stood in solidarity with her consistently, and she’s finally been released in February 2025.

Rachel

Yeah.

Anja

I don’t think that’s the end of that story yet because we are hoping that Salma can come to the UK and continue her studies, finish her studies as our student, but we’ve really stood alongside her in solidarity consistently. But on the other hand, there are campaigns that are linked to what we do as a Union. So you know, in the past when we’ve gone on strike, one of the things that needs to happen is we need to get the vote out, we need to make sure our members vote for the ballot, so we call that a ‘get out the vote’ campaign. What I can see coming up in the really near future is our response to the White Paper and we’ve emailed members about our upcoming EGM on 17th of July. So this will really be a place for the members to share the vision that they see for our university and this will really shape how we proceed with the campaign related to it.

Rachel

Hmm, yeah. So the campaigns are very much shaped by our meetings and the motions that people bring to meetings, and these are all ways that members can kind of express themselves and mobilise each other and come up with actions that we can take forward.

Anja

Yeah, exactly. Any successful campaign relies on our members engaging and relies on, you know, us as branch officers being in touch with where our members are and responding to that directly.

Rachel

And we will share the date of that meeting before the end of the podcast so that we can encourage everybody to come along. The e-mail did go out yesterday, so hopefully you can kind of get it in your diary.

Rachel

OK. You mentioned the campaign about Trans rights, which again has become something that’s current and we’re talking about again with university management. Could you tell us the role a union campaign can play as opposed to say the staff network the LGBT staff network getting involved. How does it kind of differ, the different kinds of work that goes on there?

Anja

Yeah. So it’s really, really important that I say everyone has a role to play. It’s really important what the LGBTQ staff network is doing. And it’s important to collaborate with students. The student societies are usually fantastic. Just in terms of the specifics of what we can do as a union we are a body that represents our members. So one of the things we can do is rather than our individual members having to fight the battles themselves, we can take that on as a collective and we can represent our members. But on the other hand, if you are a member and you are facing problems, for example because you are trans, we can support you in individual case work, so you would get a caseworker, who can see what the situation is and ensure that your problems are addressed in the most suitable way possible. Then in some cases, if you do experience discrimination again, for example because of being trans, or this really applies across all the other protected characteristics, you could access legal support through the union, or if it’s related to your job role, you might want to put in a grievance and the union can support you with the potential Employment Tribunal. But then on the other hand, if we look again outside of University of Leeds, UCU University of Leeds, is parts of the big UK wide union UCU. So we can learn a lot from the other branches. We can work with alongside the other branches to push for the issues. And because we’re speaking about the trans rights which the union is really united on in unapologetic support for trans people. So, for example, because of the EHRC guidance that has been released following the Supreme Court ruling, the union has created a trans task force that are looking into supporting our institutions and looking into what legally institutions can do because the EHRC guidance as it came out at the start was not really related to the law and there’s been some confessions made already by the authors in response to the legal challenges by the Good Law project, but nationally, we have a lot of resources, so the trans task force was able to work with the lawyers to really put together a document of well, if you are an institution and you do want to support your trans members, and also obviously you need to be legally compliant, what is it that you can do? I don’t think the document is finished yet, but of course we’ll share it as soon as it is.

Rachel

That’s that sounds great. It’s kind of just power in numbers, isn’t it? And as one of the largest union branches and national union, it’s great that, there can be such connection and the potential of really influencing things because yeah, there are so many people involved and that’s a really interesting example that we look forward to hearing more about. Let’s hope it can help create a better response in institutions across the UK. More positive and reassuring response.

How does the UCU branch decide to take forward a campaign just to hear a bit more about the kind of practicalities of how that works? How can members influence what our branch works on?

Anja

So really, every campaign should be, and hopefully is, a response to what our members would like to see. There are many, many ways of members getting involved, so an easy one to start with is perhaps emailing the branch so that would be ucu@leeds.ac.uk. Of course, we can’t always immediately respond to every e-mail or, you know, run a campaign based on every single e-mail. But if we don’t know what’s happening across the university, then we can’t do it. So please get in touch, let us know, then the next point of engagement and a way to get a few more people on board and informing people what’s going on is if you want to submit a motion to a general meeting, and when you’re thinking about the motion my advice would be really think about what you would ask the branch to do. Because if you give us some really good ideas, like for example. Why don’t we do this specific event where we would hear from interesting people and, you know, bring in more people to understand the specific issue. You know, we’re always really happy to hear what members would like to see and get new ideas. But really we as members are all the union. So if really if you want to influence the branch or if you want to have a say in what happens, the best way is to also offer to do something related to it, so that could be, for example, if you want the branch to put out the statement, you could draft a statement as a suggestion for the branch to have a start.

Rachel

Yeah, absolutely. So. Having a think about those specific outcomes that you feel are important could be really useful, but if you’re not sure how to do that, of course e-mail and ask for help. Or do look at the website because leedsucu.org.uk has a page about how we work together as a union. Which might give you some insights into what you can do, how you could get into a working group or I think there’s some advice about writing motions on there, but I might have imagined that so have a look at the website and you’ll be able to find some useful stuff anyway.

But thanks for explaining that Anja. I’ve kind of jumped the gun a bit because I was gonna ask you how members can get involved in working on branch campaigns, and you’ve mentioned a couple of ways. But I think perhaps so, yeah, maybe we could say a bit more about working groups, what working groups for instance, could they get involved in?

Anja

Yeah. So we’ve mentioned a couple of campaigns today. If you’re interested in the Palestine Campaign, one way that you could get involved is joining the BDS working group. If you’re interested in the trans issues or really disability issues and equalities issues you could join our equalities working group.

So at the start I invited people to consider maybe joining us as a union officer. That’s kind a big commitment: as a campaigns officer, you would get some buyout from your role about 0.1 of full time equivalent to do that union role then the next layer of involvement is as a committee member. As a committee member you’re committing to attending committee meetings one hour every other week, and then sometimes replying over e-mail. And there is getting involved in a working group. Really, you have a chance to get involved on a specific topic and the working group decides how often they will meet and what topics they will work on. And once there is a suggestion or a plan they can pass on that plan to the committee to actually implement or sign off, or they can bring it to the general meeting to get support from our members. But it’s less of a commitment for example, than being on committee or officer, because you’re committing to work on a specific issue of interest for you. But also we know that all of our members have a lot of different expertise, so that could be professional expertise that could be academic expertise and we really want you to help us with that as a branch as we’re just as strong as our members and like I said earlier, we have specific things that we can do like negotiating with the management or getting involved with the national issues but really, as members, you are shaping what the branch is. So we want to hear from you. Come to the meeting. Let us know.

Rachel

Absolutely. And that next meeting responding to the White Paper will be on the 17th of July, 12:45 to 2pm. So we tend to have an hour and a quarter just that seems to be a good amount of time for a meeting. So hopefully you can come to that and listen and input and if you did want to put anything forward for us to consider the deadline for motions is 12pm PM Monday the 7th of July. If you’re not sure how to write a motion, do email ucu@leeds.ac.uk and ask for advice because we don’t want that to be a barrier to anyone. So yeah, have a look. If you forget those details, have a look in your e-mail that that came yesterday, but I’m sure we’ll be emailing a reminder close to the time. OK. Well, I think that’s everything for today. We’ve covered quite a lot and given you’ve given us a really good insight into how campaigns work. Any last thoughts?

Anja

Just, really, get involved!

Rachel

Yeah. Get involved. It would be great to meet new people and have new insights. And I find it a very enjoyable community to be a part of and interesting and insightful and a good way to kind of lead and influence in small or big ways. So those are all kind of great reasons to get involved I think. Right. Well, thank you very much for coming, Anja, we appreciate your time and we look forward to hearing more about the current campaigns as they evolve and when you’re working in your new role as membership officer next year.

Anja

Thanks for hosting Rachel.

Rachel

Cheers.

That’s all for today’s UCU podcast. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe on whatever platform you’re listening to us on so you’ll know as soon as we publish our next episode. If you work at the University of Leeds in an academic or academic related, professional or managerial role, or as post graduate student doing paid teaching and if you’re not yet a member of UCU, head to ucu.org.uk/join to find out more. Wherever you work, make sure you join the union for your work. This this podcast is made on behalf of the Committee of the University and College Union, University of Leeds Branch. If you have any questions or concerns, please e-mail our branch officers at ucu@leeds.ac.uk. See our website leeds.ucu.org.uk for alternative contact details and for a transcript of this episode.