Academic years can rarely have started in more difficult circumstances

The crisis affects everyone in higher education. Academics worked at great speed, often with limited resources and training, to move teaching online in the spring. Many then worked through the summer to plan teaching on new, ‘blended’ models of learning. Academics are often balancing professional responsibilities with caring duties and personal health concerns; many have also experienced severe cuts to the time and resources available for their scholarship and research.

Students also face great difficulties. Many suffered considerable distress from the exam results fiascos; many others have already seen considerable disruption to their studies. Most alternative options to study (such as travel or work) have been effectively closed off. Students deserve to receive the full university experience, or as close to it as can be managed at present.

I also acknowledge the huge challenges facing those managing higher education institutions, and that many Vice-Chancellors and other university managers have serious concerns for the financial health of their institutions.

All of us would love Covid-19 to disappear and ‘normal’ life to resume. But this is not plausible with case numbers rising rapidly in UK and many other countries. Until that is possible, in my capacity as PSA Chair I urge higher education institutions to work closely and collaboratively with their staff and with relevant unions (including UCU, Unison and NUS) to achieve the best educational outcomes possible while also taking care of the long-term health and well-being (both physical and mental) of both staff and students.

For my part, I will ensure that the PSA continues to do what it can to support all its members, and the continued vitality of political studies and international relations. Among the ways we will do this are through:

• Continuing to provide support for those delivering teaching through our Teaching and Learning Network. Two webinar series have been delivered already, and there will be more to come over the autumn.

• Maintaining the continued vitality of our discipline through supporting the activities of all our specialist groups and networks. For example, our Populism, Environmental Politics and Participatory & Deliberative Democracy specialist groups have already held a series of popular webinars. And our Early Career Network adapted their annual conference to an online format that attracted more participants, from more countries, than have ever participated before.

• Finding new ways to deliver major PSA events so that they engage as wide a cross-section of our association and its work as possible.

• Vice-Chair Claire Dunlop and I will continue to prioritise making the voice of political studies and international relations heard across the higher education world, including with universities, funding councils and other influential bodies so that our discipline is in the strongest possible position whatever comes our way.

Author biography

Professor Roger Awan-Scully is the Chair of the Political Studies Association and previously the Head of Politics and International Relations and Professor of Political Science at Cardiff University.