Shakira Martin has been elected the next president of the UK¡¯s National Union of Students, deposing incumbent Malia Bouattia with more than half the total votes cast.

Ms Martin, 28, is the NUS¡¯ current vice-president (further education) and describes herself as a black single mother from a working-class family.

At the union¡¯s national conference in Brighton, Ms Martin secured 402 votes, compared with 272 for Ms Bouattia and 35 for Tom Harwood, a politics student at Durham University who backed the campaign for the UK to leave the European Union.

The result comes a year after Ms Bouattia herself defeated Megan Dunn, who was then the serving president, to become the NUS¡¯ first black female leader. Ms Bouattia¡¯s presidency was marked by ongoing political division within the NUS and she faced continued criticism for making comments that were allegedly anti-Semitic ¨C something that she denied.

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Ms Martin positioned herself as a centrist and said that she wanted to lead a union that focused on its members, not its leader. Having taken a leadership and management course at Lewisham College, she is the NUS¡¯ second president to come from the further education sector, following in the footsteps of Toni Pearce, who led the union from 2013 to 2015.

Ms Martin said that she was ¡°honoured and humbled¡± to become NUS president.

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¡°I take this as a vote of trust that our members believe I can lead our national movement to be the fighting and campaigning organisation we need it to be, representing the breadth of our diverse membership,¡± she said. ¡°Further education made me who I am today and I look forward to sharing stories of just how powerful all forms of education can be when we¡¯re all given access to it.¡±

Also at the conference, Amatey Doku, president of Cambridge University Students' Union, was elected NUS vice-president (higher education). Izzy Lenga, a theology student at the University of Birmingham, was elected vice-president (welfare).

The successful candidates will start their new roles in the summer.

chris.havergal@timeshighereducation.com