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Your five student officers laughing and smiling at the camera

Campaigns & Democracy Officer

Your Campaigns and Democracy Officer leads on student campaigns and keeps UEASU’s democracy running.

Chris smiling against a backdrop of trees

Chris Kershaw

He/him

My manifesto

Hi everyone! I’m Chris (he/him), and I’m running to be re-elected as your Campaigns and Democracy Officer at our SU.

Thanks for checking out my core manifesto! To see the full thing and some of my proudest achievements this year click here.

Re-elect Chris4Campaigns

Before being elected as your C&D officer last year, I'd been working on my PhD researching Black British and Caribbean political radicalism, and its solidarity with the Palestinian People.

I’ve been at UEA since 2017 and started studying part-time for my MA in American Studies while I worked full-time at Morrisons. After graduating, I went straight into my PhD.

This research builds on my years of experience in anti-racism and decolonisation, trade and community union, social, economic, and international justice, and human rights activism.

I’ve been President of Palestinian Solidarity Society and President of DecoloniseUEA, Post-Grad Rep, and Vice-President of Labour Society.

Goals

Renew Our Democracy

As you’ve likely seen, I think Union Council is broken. Here and here you can see a bit more about why our democracy needs to change. Here is a summary and here you can read the full proposed changes.
Rather than asking a broken system to change itself, with the support of the Student Officer Committee I’ve called for a referendum, so students have the final say on the form that their democracy takes.
These changes add democratic legitimacy to your SU, ensure accountability of all elected officers, and means SU decisions and campaigns have extra weight when they call for change from the university or government.

Protect International Students

UEA is trying to bring more international students to study here with us. At the same time, the UK government is intentionally targeting international students making the UK less welcoming.
After the violence we saw in the summer of 2024, it is more important than ever that the SU campaign against systems that target international students for suspicion.
I’ll expand my “Know Your Rights” campaign to housing, visa, and settling in the UK with emphasis placed on getting international students confident in our community.
I’ll campaign on a national level to oppose the Prevent strategy and any other government policy that targets foreign nationals, international, and racialised students.

Make Your Voice Heard!

From £20 travel reimbursement for pharmacy students to ignoring the racist violence that we saw over the summer of 2024 in England, it is clear we are not a priority for the University.

We’ve seen the University cut staff before and we know where this leads – reduction in quality of teaching, falling in the ranking tables, and hard-working lecturers getting even more burnt out trying to deliver the quality education the trained for years to provide.

I’ll keep using my years of campaigning experience and connections with teaching staff to keep fighting for the people make this University a place to be proud of – the teaching and support staff, and every student!