In November 2024, the University of Sheffield announced plans to “significantly” reduce capacity in the teaching and research of East Asian Studies. This involves four major proposed changes, which academic, teaching, professional staff and students of EAS at Sheffield believe will seriously harm our provision, and the state of knowledge of East Asia in the UK, Europe and beyond.
The proposed changes are:
the elimination of all specialist undergraduate degrees in Japanese, Chinese and Korean and their folding into a generic East Asian Studies programmes;
the transfer of all language teaching staff from East Asian Studies into a teaching delivery unit, with resulting potential risks to job security and conditions for language teaching staff
“significant” reductions in academic staffing, which they are seeking to achieve initially through targeted “voluntary” severance, to be followed by a restructure and compulsory redundancies if sufficient cost savings have not been achieved
further centralisation of professional services staffing, removing the close connection our administrative colleagues have with teaching, research and student support
We need your support in pushing back against these changes. This website provides some background information, and some steps you can take. Any help you can provide will be greatly received!
Sheffield needs East Asian Studies. And the future of our field needs major centres of East Asian Studies, like Sheffield.