Staff Newsletter 14 June 2024

Important Information

New HR Adviser

Due to some movement in HR portfolios, we now have a new HR Adviser: Catherine Dearden.

You can contact her at hr-operations@york.ac.uk or +44 (0) 1904 32 5713.


Action on the Climate & Ecological Emergency: Open Letter

Staff and students at the University of York have written open letter to the Vice Chancellor, titled Action on the Climate & Ecological Emergency: The University's Role and Responsibility.

The authors and co-signatories would love for as many people as possible to take 5 minutes to:

A range of student, staff and alumni signing in support would signal that there is appetite and motivation for change. It also might be a mechanism to help bring together people from across the university to support one another's efforts. 

P.S. To give you a  flavour of what we have written the six key areas we have highlighted where we feel greater leadership is needed are: 

  1. Education fit for a transforming world.

  2. Research that informs and accelerates transformation.

  3. Greater ambition and progress on sustainability targets.

  4. Cutting the ties: partnerships and investments.

  5. Transparency, accountability and democracy

  6. Facilitating academic advocacy and activism


Year end is approaching! Expense claims deadline Thurs 11 July at 4pm

Do you have any expense claims that need to be paid in the current financial year? If so, please obtain the relevant budget holder’s approval in the first instance. If you are not sure who the budget holder is for a work order, please see Column C of the work order list spreadsheet one to bookmark!

Thursday 11th July at 4pm - Expense claims

Submit expenses to environment-finance@york.ac.uk. Follow the Wiki pages with expense claim instructions and use the new expense claim form (with extra guidelines).

To ensure your expense claims are not classified as out of policy, please adhere to the following guidelines:

  • Timely Submission: Submit your expense claims as soon as possible after the event.

  • Processing Time: Allow at least one month for processing to ensure your claim is handled within the three-month window.

  • Cut-off Date: After 28th June 2024 out-of-policy claims will not be accepted unless there are exceptional circumstances. 

By following these steps, you can avoid having your claims classified as out of policy.

Upcoming Events

Digital Accessibility Conference

Date / Time: Wednesday 26th June at 9:30 - 16:00

Location: SLB/001 to 003 (Spring Lane Building)

This year's Digital Accessibility Conference on 26th June will be hosted online by University of Nottingham. This means events are streamed live but at the Uni of York, we will have 3 rooms on campus for us to participate together. SLB/001 to 003 have been booked. The conference offers lightning talks, short papers, round table discussions and posters. You can register to attend online or in person at UoY (both are free). 

The line up offers a wide variety of topics to engage with, including:

  • Accessible Maths

  • 360 video

  • Accessible libraries and archives

  • Accessibility checking

  • Accessibility statements

  • Accessibility training

  • Captioning

  • Champions programmes

  • CPD

  • Employability

  • Gen AI

  • Leading accessibility transformations

  • Learning design

  • Procurement

  • Student awareness resources

  • Student needs and student voice

  • Student personas and profiles

  • Students as change agents

  • UX design

  • Accessible VLE sites (Blackboard and Moodle)

Register now! Please contact Lilian Joy (lilian.joy@york.ac.uk) for more information. 


International Staff Drop-in Event 

Date / Time: Wednesday 26th June, 13:00 - 14:30

Location: Church Lane Building (CL/A/025)

Are you an international member of staff looking to meet other international staff, share experiences and build a network? Then we welcome you to come to our international staff group drop-in event. Sponsored by the School of PET and the SREF Ops Team this event will take place on 26th June from 1-2:30:30 in Church Lane Building (CL/A/025). Refreshments will be provided. Feel free to come for the whole event or just to drop by for a bit. 

For more information contact Simone Quinn (simone.quinn@york.ac.uk) or Aiko Mizumori Hirst (aiko.mizumorihirst@york.ac.uk).

Good News and Media Engagement

Darpan Das presented his recent work: Co-creating an indoor air quality study with different vulnerable groups of India in the UKIEG 2024 conference held at University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

On 10th June, Sam Buckton gave an online presentation to North Yorkshire Council's Public Health team about transformation-focused evaluation and how it has been applied in the evaluation of NYC's food strategy.

A short documentary output titled "Clean cooking: fast path to saving forests in Nigeria" linked to Lindsay Stringer's Royal Society International Collaboration Award was recently released: Clean Cooking: Fast Path to Saving Forests in Nigeria

Lindsay Stringer took part in a visit to Kasertsart University and met with Thaliand's Department of Agriculture, alongside colleagues from York's Centre for Novel Agricultural Products. Discussions focused on how interdisciplinary research is fostered in York, as well as how different countries and their policies approach the regulation of gene edited crops.

Congratulations to Emilie Stokeld (and Chris West, Simon Croft and Lindsay Stringer) for passing her PhD viva.

On Monday the University welcomed 70 Year 9 and Year 10 students from 6 local secondary schools to take part in a Sustainability Enrichment Day! The Enrichment Day aimed to give students three main opportunities: to expand their knowledge of sustainability, to experience university life and encourage future applications, and to have fun meeting peers from other schools. It was also a chance for the PGCE geography trainees to practise designing and leading workshops in consultation with Adrian Gonzalez, Georgia Ramsay and UoY PGCE Geography trainees. Over the course of three interlinked workshops in the morning, students calculated carbon footprints for different families, explored green and ethical jobs, and used New York City as a case study to apply ideas to York. After lunch, student groups used what they learned to re-design York as a sustainable city focusing on transformative change while considering its historic constraints. Prizes were awarded to All Saints RC School for the winning sustainable city idea. A huge thanks to all the schools, students, and staff for engaging in these important sustainability issues!

Sahar Hofmann has:

  • A new paper published: The ‘colorblindness’ of climate finance: how climate finance advances racial injustice in cities in City.

  • Been nominated and shortlisted for the Great Service Award in the GSA Awards 2024.

  • A research paper that has been accepted, "Grappling with real property supremacy in US urban climate finance" in City. This paper is co-authored with Julia Wagner, Mark Kear, Sarah Knuth and Zac Taylor.

  • Been awarded a funding grant from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for a workshop, 'Disentangling the relationships between race, property and climate finance' that will take place in October 2024.

Jason Snape is on a panel today in Biology talking about how to effectively engage with industry to maximise impact. The session is called “Conversations between academia and industry.”

Research Opportunities and Updates

The University Research Priming Strategic Capital funding is now available!

Deadline for applications: Noon, Friday 17th July 2024

Funds are now available from the University Research Priming fund for the purchase of strategically important capital assets (e.g. equipment or non-equipment items such as large databases). Applications are invited for assets valued between £20,000 and £200,000. 

Please visit the Internally-distributed funding website for more information. Please do not hesitate to contact the Internal Funding Team if you have any queries (re-internal-funding-team@york.ac.uk).

Do you have an item to share in our next newsletter?

Great! Please add it to the Research, Teaching, Outreach and Good News Spreadsheet. Please use the most relevant tab for the activity/news and ensure that the description details are written out in full as you would like it to be presented. If your item does not fit the spreadsheet, please email it to environment-pa@york.ac.uk by 12:00 next Thursday.

Thank you for your help in making the newsletter a great way to catch up on all of the Department's latest news and activities