Branch Committee Bios
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 10 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, and is currently co-president with Cat Wayland. She’s a member of UCU Commons.
Cat Wayland (they/them) recently finished a PhD in Political Theory in SPS, and now tutors in Politics and Sociology while looking for less precarious work. They have been involved in PGR and School organising for several years, and previously attended branch committee as postgrad/postdoc rep. They rejoined in 2023, standing for co-president with Sophia Woodman.
Elaine Newton-Bruzza (she/her/ella) is a Language Assistant in Spanish 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 for the past five years. A long-time union member in her previous teaching jobs in the US, Elaine became a Local Contact for LLC in 2022, and is currently serving on the branch committee as vice president.
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 branch secretary 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.
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.
Sue Sierra earned her PhD from the University of Michigan, where she was active in GEO, the trade union for graduate student employees. She took a number of years off during her PhD to work for the American Federation of Teachers helping graduate employees at several other US universities to form unions. After postdocs in the US, she was hired as a lecturer in the School of Maths at Edinburgh in 2011, and has worked her way up to professor. She has been on the UCU Edinburgh branch committee since 2020.
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.
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.
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 women's rep.
Jonny Dennis (he/him) is a chemist working as a PDRA in the School of Biological Sciences. During his PhD at Edinburgh, he worked as a UCU Local Contact in SBS and SoC before taking on an additional UCU Edinburgh committee role as an anti-casualisation officer. Now as a full-time postdoc, Jonny looks forward to working more to address casualisation at UoE. In his free time, Jonny submits FOI requests, goes hiking, spends time with his cats and makes kombucha.
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.
Stuart Moir is a lecturer in Community Education at Moray House. He completed his EdD in 2020. He has been an active UCU member since joining the university in 2012 and is currently the Learning Rep on the UCUE branch committee. Before working at the University, he was a community educator in the Lothians for 20 years. He has been actively involved in the labour & trade union movement all his adult life, as an activist and branch committee member of Unison and the Transport & General Workers union.
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.
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.
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.
Cecile Menard (she/her) is a researcher in the School of Geosciences. She joined the UCUE committee as an ordinary member in December 2023, where she is working with the anti-casualisation officers to represent long-term casualised research staff. She has represented long-term casualised research staff on many school and university-wide committees and working groups since 2021.
Grant Buttars (he/him) is an Archivist, based in Library and University Collections. He is 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 previously on Recruitment Organsing and Campaigning Committee. He has served on Branch Committee since c2012, as Branch President, Communications Officer and ordinary member of Committee. He currently sits on Branch Committee ex-officio as a member of NEC. Outside of UCU, Grant has been an activist since the late 1980s and has a keen interest in the historical.