After news broke Monday that Sheffield Hallam University in the U.K. had suspended the research of Uyghur human rights scholar Laura Murphy in response to pressure from China, the university defended its actions.
“For the avoidance of doubt, the decision was not based on commercial interests in China,” a spokesperson told the BBC. “Regardless, China is not a significant international student market for the university.”
For the academic year 2024/2025, that statement is true. According to The Telegraph, Sheffield Hallam had 785 Chinese students enrolled. By last year, that number had fallen to 170. What happened in the interim became the subject of explosive reporting in the British press, which shows that administrators blocked Murphy’s research after university employees in China received a visit from Chinese police officers.
In 2021, Murphy published research on the role of Uyghur forced labor in the solar panel industry, the first of a string of reports that made her a leading global authority on the topic. Her work was cited in the U.K. Parliament, and the Biden administration called on her to advise on the implementation of the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention act.
According to documents obtained by the BBC, the director of Murphy’s department congratulated her on her research in 2021, writing in an email: “This is an exceptional moment in the history of the HKC,” referring to Sheffield Hallam’s Helena Kennedy Centre.
The center is named after Helena Kennedy, a prominent human rights lawyer and member of the House of Lords who served as the university’s chancellor from 2018 to 2025. Kennedy has also been sanctioned by Beijing for her criticism of its human rights record.
When the Chinese government saw Murphy’s research, it was not enthused. In 2022, they blocked access to Sheffield Hallam’s enrollment website, a move which university administrators later said “undoubtedly had a negative impact on recruitment.” In 2021/2022, the university’s Chinese enrollment stood at 280. All U.K. universities took a hit in international enrollment during Covid, but Sheffield Hallam’s has continued to decline.
Another 2022 email from that year obtained by the BBC suggested that China’s criticism of Sheffield Hallam could lead to a “boycott” by prospective students and recruitment agents.
An internal risk summary from the university from December 2024, also obtained by the BBC, described how employees at Sheffield Hallam’s office in China had received a visit from “three officers of the National Security Service,” who questioned them for hours about the university’s research on Xinjiang. The phrase “National Security Service” likely refers to China’s Ministry of State Security.
The officers reportedly told the university’s employees that they had blocked the website because it contained links to Murphy’s research. University administrators then made the decision to cancel the publication of a final piece of Murphy’s research. In February 2025, the school removed the landing page for Murphy’s research group from their website.
The school has since lifted the ban on Murphy’s work and apologized. Murphy has filed a lawsuit against Sheffield Hallam, saying it failed to fulfill the contract which funded her research.
Leave a Reply