CAF has intervened on behalf of a former Cardiff University professor who was denied emeritus status after criticising senior management over a cost-saving institutional restructuring, and who is now seeking to prevent the University from using his published research in the next Research Excellence Framework (REF), whose results help determine the allocation of billions of pounds in public research funding.
Dr James Whitley, formerly Professor of Mediterranean Archaeology at Cardiff University, spent 35 years at the institution, during which time he established a substantial academic record and an international reputation in his field. Last year, Whitley took voluntary redundancy during a major programme of academic restructuring intended to address a £31.2 million deficit, which included the reorganisation of the School of History, Archaeology and Religion and the decision to cease degree programmes in Ancient History, as part of wider plans to cut 400 jobs.
While retiring full professors are typically granted emeritus status in recognition of their service, particularly where they remain active researchers, Whitley says the honour was withheld without explanation. This was despite his continuing programme of research and publication, which has since seen him appointed an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Cambridge’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. He believes Cardiff’s decision was prompted by his opposition to the restructuring prior to leaving, which he expressed in a letter to the University’s governing council.
In an age of rampant managerialism, when senior university administrators increasingly regard their decisions as beyond challenge from “mere academics”, this apparent penalty for speaking out is all too believable. And yet, the potential detriment suffered by Whitley for exercising his right to lawful expression is only the beginning of the story.
Although Whitley has long since been removed from Cardiff’s list of honorary staff and lost access to University email, library systems and online journals, many of his publications – including several published since 2021 – remain listed on ORCA, the University’s open-access research repository. And under REF 2029 rules, Cardiff is still permitted to submit at least some of that work as part of its next submission to the REF, the results of which will inform the allocation of around £2 billion a year in public research funding.
Unlike previous exercises in 2014 and 2021, REF 2029 does not require universities to submit named academics through a staff census list. Instead, institutions will report an aggregate number of outputs based on the average size of their eligible research workforce, calculated over two full academic years – 2025–26 and 2026–27 – rather than a snapshot on a single census date. When it comes to selecting individual outputs, however, universities may submit an academic’s work irrespective of whether that person remains employed during those volume-measure years.
For many academics, the most contentious feature of this system is that institutions may still be able to submit their work after their employment has ended. This is because the required “substantive link” to the institution can be established either when an output is first made publicly available or during a defined period before publication, when the research was carried out. That period is generally two years, extending to five years for long-form outputs such as monographs, to reflect longer research and publication timelines. Crucially, while outputs published after an academic has been made compulsorily redundant are excluded where the substantive link depends on that former employment, the same exclusion does not apply to those who have taken voluntary redundancy. The rules can therefore apply even where an academic has been denied emeritus status, is no longer listed as honorary staff, or has left higher education altogether. Nor is their consent required. The essential condition is that the output must derive from research supported during their qualifying employment.
The risk, in other words, is that REF 2029 creates a one-way arrangement: universities can withdraw status, access and institutional recognition from departing academics, while retaining the ability to claim REF credit for their work, without consent or any reciprocal obligation.
Despite repeated attempts to obtain clarity from University administrators about whether Cardiff intends to use any of his work for REF 2029, Whitley has received no substantive answer. The issue remains live, not least because the University’s own REF 2029 Code of Practice (the Code) explicitly permits the selection of outputs linked to former employees who have taken voluntary redundancy.
Understandably, Whitley objects strongly to Cardiff maintaining, for REF purposes and its own institutional benefit, an association between his former employment and his scholarship which the University declined to maintain following his departure. REF results inform the allocation of substantial public research funding, while the Code itself records that they will inform the Welsh higher education regulator Medr’s allocation of quality-related research funding and have implications for the University’s reputation and position in sector league tables.
Faced with limited avenues of redress, CAF has now written to Cardiff on Whitley’s behalf, formally objecting to the University’s use of his personal data for REF 2029 purposes and calling upon it to confirm that none of his research will be submitted on the basis of his former employment. And, with preparations for REF 2029 already under way, we have also requested that Cardiff restrict the relevant processing while it considers Whitley’s objection.
Our intervention relies principally on rights afforded to individuals under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), and raises questions about whether Cardiff’s proposed processing of Whitley’s personal data is legally necessary. Although REF rules permit universities to submit research produced by former employees, doing so requires them to process personal information establishing the author’s employment relationship with the institution. In Whitley’s case, this would include identifying information held in Cardiff’s historical staff records.
Under Article 21 of the UK GDPR, individuals may object to certain forms of data processing on grounds relating to their particular circumstances, even where that processing would otherwise be lawful. Once an objection is raised, the institution must demonstrate compelling legitimate grounds for continuing the processing which override the individual’s interests, rights and freedoms.
It will be interesting to see how Cardiff responds and whether it attempts to demonstrate such grounds. Having declined to recognise Whitley’s academic contribution through the award of an emeritus title, and having severed the practical ties between him and the institution, can the University really maintain that his research is so important to its REF submission that it must continue processing his personal data against his wishes? Given that REF rules permit Cardiff to select other eligible outputs, its continuing refusal to rule out using his work might seem less a matter of institutional necessity than a determination to preserve an institutional option.
There is another reason why the University’s response will be worth watching: Whitley’s case is unlikely to be a one-off. According to the latest publicly available HESA data, more than 1,800 academic staff retired in the most recent reporting year, while a further 3,600 were recorded as no longer being in regular employment after leaving a university. These figures obviously don’t tell us how many academics took voluntary redundancy, still less how many might object to their former institutions using their research. But voluntary redundancy is not always entered into happily – with a spring in one’s step, as it were – so it seems reasonable to suppose that at least some departing academics would take a dim view of their former universities continuing to benefit from their scholarship against their wishes.
We would have preferred a more direct means of addressing Whitley’s predicament. But where the available remedies are limited, we believe it’s right to explore every viable avenue to protect the interests of an academic who believes he has suffered detriment at the hands of a former employer simply for exercising his lawful right to freedom of speech. That the same employer should nevertheless be able to claim the benefits of his labour against his wishes makes the case for intervention all the more compelling.
Academics may well produce intellectual property for the institutional balance sheet as part of their contractual duties, but it ought not to be treated like a factory-assembled widget, turned out by an automated production line in which the machinery determines the finished product. Scholarship bears the distinctive imprint of the minds that mould it – intellectual judgment, originality, expertise, years of accumulated knowledge – and in the metricized neoliberal university, that level of craftsmanship ought surely to count for something, even if only after an academic’s services have been dispensed with.
We hope to report on Cardiff’s response in due course.