Stan Papoulias: election address for UCU National Executive Committee (NEC)
UCU National Executive Committee elections 2019–2020 (standing for London and the East HE)

Dr Stan Papoulias, Research Associate, Health Service & Population Research, King’s College London
I am standing for the NEC as a non-aligned candidate because I believe that the strikes of 2018 opened a unique opportunity for us to refuse the violence of marketisation in HE and build a different future through a living, member-led union — a body of collective, open and democratic practice.
I have worked across disciplines in post and pre 92 universities since 1994: ten years hourly paid, seven in a permanent post and another seven in fixed-term contracts. I have seen hourly paid work deteriorate from a stepping stone to a millstone. In October 2011, I was senior lecturer at Middlesex University; in October 2012, a research assistant at KCL on a one year contract. My story is the story of UK higher education in the last 25 years.
At Middlesex, I was centrally involved in campaigns in 2010–11: against the closure of Philosophy, massive redundancies and further undermining of our nationally contracted workloads. These campaigns taught me three things: post-92s were the test bed for broader HE ‘innovations’ in efficiency savings, developing overseas infrastructure and outsourcing; collective mobilising against the violence of marketisation is hard when our workplaces train us to manage our exploitation rather than refuse it; finally, our union could learn a lot from the courage and inventiveness of student activism.
For most of us things got worse since 2011. But in the 2018 strike I saw that courage and inventiveness bubbling up again across new spaces, and co-organised pickets and recruitment drives at our KCL site, including the first local rally for many years. I became site rep and now acting Vice President of our branch, working to mobilise a highly transient workforce in grant-dependent departments. In the 2019 ballot our turnout was our highest for a pay dispute. I was a KCL delegate at Congress 2018 and refused to withdraw a motion of censure of our General Secretary for her conduct during the strike. The eventual passing of this motion testified to the new vibrancy in our union: a real hunger for democracy, transparency, a demand that members on the ground participate in and scrutinise leadership.
In standing for the NEC I want to work towards a living union which centers the voices of precarious workers and nurtures an ongoing sense of membership rather than one only emerging during disputes or casework.
As a non-binary trans person and someone who lives with enduring mental distress, I believe that the union, by linking us all as workers, can enable us to denounce the virulent politics of exclusion and develop new spaces of comradeship and care.
You can contact me through my Twitter profile @skourkos1.
