Al Jazeera :
Students and early-career staff have accused Glasgow University of failing to properly protect them against misconduct by a former lecturer, including from alleged “grooming” and sexual harassment, Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit has found.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, six women made allegations of misconduct over the behaviour of Ian Shaw, who was a lecturer in the geography department at Glasgow University before he left to teach at Leeds University in 2020. He denies all wrongdoing.
Esther, who along with the other women Al Jazeera spoke to asked for her surname to be withheld, said she was finishing her PhD at an English university when she met Shaw at a conference in 2018. He praised her research and tried to persuade her to move to Glasgow so he could mentor her future career.
She alleges Shaw proceeded to increase the intensity of his contact with her to the point where it became grooming and sexual harassment.”It [was] intellectual, then emotional, then became sexual”, she said.But she says Glasgow University failed to take her allegations seriously.
The Glasgow story is one part of Degrees of Abuse, a two year investigation by Al Jazeera’s Investigations Unit (I-Unit), which reveals how British universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, and Warwick deal with complaints of sexual harassment, sexist, drunken behaviour, and coercive control.
