Branch Committee Bios

PRESIDENT

Sophia Woodman (she/her) is an interdisciplinary tourist with a current home in Sociology, in the School of Social and Political Science, where she has worked for 11 years. For many years, she has been involved in local organizing in her School, in campaigns around international staff and student issues and in collective diagnosis of conditions at UoE with students and staff. A high point of this was ‘The Future of our University’ course, which ran in 2018-2020. She has a research interest in universities as institutions, and has written on academic freedom. She joined branch committee in 2023. She’s a member of UCU Commons. You can e-mail Sophia at: ucu.president@ed.ac.uk

VICE PRESIDENT

Helen Eborall (she/her) is a Senior Lecturer in Critical Public Health in the Usher institute, where she’s the UCU local contact. She (re)joined the university in 2020 (she did her PhD here many moons ago). She was actively involved in UCU at her previous branch (in various roles, including equality officer and vice-chair) and is a member of UCU Commons. After a break from branch duties for a couple of years, she joined the UCUE branch committee as an ordinary member in 2022.

SECRETARY

Dr Elaine Newton-Bruzza (she/her/ella) is a Tutor in Spanish Language and Culture in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures and a Spanish > English translator. She came from her home city of Portland, Oregon (US) to undertake her PhD in 2015 and has worked at the university since 2018. A long-time union member in her previous teaching jobs in the US, Elaine became a Local Contact for LLC in 2022, UCUE Vice President in 2023, and is currently serving as Branch Secretary. Elaine doesn’t really have spare time, but in between teaching and helping run the branch, she is an avid crocheter, completely addicted to buying yarn for imaginary projects and diving down the rabbit hole known as ‘Ravelry’, searching for crochet patterns she will never make in her lifetime.

TREASURER

David Rush

MEMBERSHIP SECRETARY

Alejandro De Coss (he/him) is a Lecturer at the School of Geosciences. He is the branch Membership Secretary since 2024. Alejandro has been active in UCU across four different institutions, in a trajectory all too familiar for early career staff across the sector. His research looks at labour, infrastructure and urban water politics. 

EQUALITIES OFFICER

Artist by training and academic at the Edinburgh College of Art (to pay the bills), Sophia Lycouris (she/her) researches how artistic thinking and ways of working can transform capitalist society to a more just, equitable, collective and caring space. She is intrigued by the resistant nature of forms of discrimination which are embodied and embedded in everyday life in society, even in areas such as the wider Left and the trade unions, which present themselves as fighting against it. She sees trade unions as prefigurative spaces, in addition to being spaces of firefighting and fire-preventing (policy making), which is why she prioritises cross-union community building and non-hierarchical staff-student relationships. She is an autistic and queer person who is the UCU Edinburgh Equalities Officer and a member of UCU Commons. She also sits on the STUC LGBT+ Workers Committee.

MIGRANT OFFICER

Idil Akinci (she/her) is a Lecturer in Race and Social Policy at the School of Social and Political Science and UCUE Migrant officer. She has lived and worked as a migrant including in London, Rotterdam, Dubai and now Edinburgh. Her research and teaching center around the role of immigration and citizenship regimes in the construction and maintenance of inequalities in a local and global perspective. More specifically, she is interested in passport based inequalities and legal insecurity as well as in strategies people develop to navigate restrictions attached to their nationality and residence statuses. She has been teaching at the University of Edinburgh since 2019.

LGBT+ OFFICER

Dr Gina Gwenffrewi (she/her) is an interdisciplinary researcher, tutor and lecturer in Trans Studies, Queer Studies and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. As well as being Co-Director at SUISS, she lectures and publishes on trans issues relating to trans cultural production, media studies, and anti-trans ideologies.

BAME OFFICER

Dr Mohan Sridharan is an academic in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, specializing in robotics and artificial intelligence. Prior to his current appointment, he held academic positions at University of Birmingham (UK), The University of Auckland (NZ), and Texas Tech University (USA). As a member of the UCUE committee, he is interested in issues related to race and (more broadly) equality. 

WOMEN’S OFFICER

Poppy Gerrard-Abbott is finishing her PhD in sociology and social policy, focused on gender-based violence (GBV) in academia, having researched sexual violence in universities since her undergraduate. She is also a postdoc in Informatics, looking at online GBV. She is the co-author of the first GBV Charter for universities and colleges, which is being rolled out across the UK. She has taught at Edinburgh since 2019, mainly on research methods, and has worked in the charity sector and government policy. Poppy has been an active feminist, volunteering, campaigning, and running collectives for over a decade and is now UCUE Women's Rep.

ANTICASUALISATION OFFICERS

Adam Farquhar

Cecile Menard (she/her) is a research fellow in the School of Geosciences, where she has worked on casualised contracts since 2017. Her research explores how institutional culture, environment and employment conditions shape the research process and influence research practice. She joined branch committee in December 2023 to advocate for greater recognition and visibility of the challenges faced by long-term casualised researchers (LTCR). She founded the first UK Long-Term Research Staff Network in 2021. 

ACADEMIC RELATED PROFESSIONAL STAFF (ARPS) REP

Grant Buttars (he/him) is an Archivist, based in Library and University Collections.  He is the branch Academic Related Professional Staff (ARPS) Rep and is currently UCU Scotland Vice President and chairs UCU Scotland Education Committee.  He is also a UK-elected member on UCU’s National Executive Committee (NEC) where he currently sits on its Education Committee and on ARPS Committee. He has served on Branch Committee since c2012, as Branch President, Communications Officer and ordinary member of Committee. Outside of UCU, Grant has been an activist since the late 1980s and has a keen interest in the historical. 

CASEWORK COORDINATOR

Claire Graf (they/them) are a linguist/finishing their PhD and have served the branch as a senior caseworker and H&S rep for over 3 years. They are currently serving their second term as UCUE Casework Coordinator and Joint Unions co-convener. Claire is a disability advocate and inclusion trainer (and a ND person with complex disabilities), they sit on UCU’s national Standing Committee for Disabled Members, the local DMSSC and serve as a co-chair of the Disabled Staff Network. They have done some odd things in their life: started out studying civil and agricultural engineering, did their UG in philology and then moved to try and glue maths and language together (neither side is happy about that!). They served as a volunteer paramedic for the IRC and are now in the Cave and Mines rescue. Their hobbies include Lion dance, ballet, learning languages and telling people about hedgehogs.

GREEN REP

Glen Cousquer is a senior lecturer and wildlife veterinarian at the University of Edinburgh, specializing in animal welfare and conservation. With a deep commitment to protecting endangered species, he’s been known to go to extraordinary lengths, including reportedly teaching lemurs how to play bagpipes to blend in with Scottish wildlife. When not in the field rescuing injured eagles or leading conservation missions in far-flung Celtic rainforests, Cousquer is rumoured to be developing a new language to help humans communicate directly with squirrels—because, as he claims, "They have a lot to say!" He is also the mastermind behind "Project Haggis Habitat," a tongue-in-cheek initiative to establish artificial burrows for the mythical wild haggis in the Highlands. Students often describe his lectures as a blend of serious science and stand-up comedy, where it's not unusual for Cousquer to demonstrate first aid techniques on life-sized inflatable penguins. 

PGR Rep

Sam Hughes (he/him) is a Postgraduate Researcher (PGR) at the School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh, specialising in fluid-structure interaction for wind and tidal turbines within the Wind and Marine Systems and Structures (WAMSS) Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT). In December 2024, Sam was elected as an ordinary member to the UCUE Committee and has since been elected as the UCUE PGR rep. 

LEARNING REP

(VACANT)

ORDINARY MEMBERS

Ben Coulson is a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Edinburgh in the School of Social and Political Science. He has previously taught at the Universities of Durham and Newcastle and been an active union member since the early days of his PhD. His work focuses on the history of US-China Relations and he organises courses on Geopolitics and Sport and Politics.  

Claire Duncanson

Casework

Fiona Brown is an Academic Support Librarian, in Library and University Collections.  She is casework convenor for the branch and has been an active caseworker since 2004.   She is a member of branch committee and has also been a local contact.

University Court

Kathryn Nash is a Chancellor’s Fellow in the Law School.  She is the UCU nominated member on University Court and serves on the Policy and Resource Committee of Court.  Prior to being appointed to Court, Kathryn served as the ant-casualisation officer on UoE branch committee and continues to work on implementation of the 2019 Collective Agreement on GH and Fixed-Term Staff.  She is also a branch negotiator and caseworker.  Kathryn earned her PhD from SOAS, University of London and worked with the Fractionals for Fair Play campaign during her time as a PhD student and GH tutor. 

Pensions

Pieter Blue is a branch committee member with a particular interest in pay and pensions. He is a mathematician and has been a member of the branch committee for over a decade. He was branch secretary for two and a half years in 2020 to 2022 and was on two local pay negotiation teams in former unions in the US and Canada. 

Ex-oficio: Treasurer

Jo Edge (she/her) is a precariously-employed postdoctoral fellow in History, Classics and Archaeology, and probably in her final year at the University of Edinburgh. Due to precarity she works remotely from home in London. She really loves researching and thinking about how people hundreds of years ago dealt with illness, death and life’s big questions - and would simply like some job stability. She serves as branch Treasurer and sits on UCU UK’s National Executive Committee as one of three women’s reps for HE (chairing the Women Members Standing Committee), and is a member of UCU Commons. A survivor and critic of the psychiatric system, she was a founder member of MadCovid, which carried out a variety of practical and creative projects relating to mental illness during the coronavirus pandemic. She really likes dogs, food, karaoke and not taking herself too seriously.