Research careers are complex and unpredictable, but the lives of researchers are fascinating.On this podcast, Dr Sandrine Soubes interviews researchers, academics and professionals with research background about their journeying through research lives and professional transitions.Bringing these stories to you listeners is about illustrating the diversity of approaches in navigating the complexities of the research environment. Stories from our guests show that there is never a set path for r ...
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73- Dr Phil Elks- Joining a thriving community
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Dr Phil Elks is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Medicine and Population Health at The University of Sheffield. His research career has been dedicated to using Zebrafish as a model to study human diseases. Being part of a vibrant community using this animal model has shaped his career. Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinkin…
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72- Dr Cariad Evans- Integrating research into your clinical practice
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Dr Cariad Evans is a virology consultant for the NHS, as well as an infectious diseases specialist. After a period of working in Africa, Cariad returned to the UK to work as a consultant. A corridor conversation with a senior colleague kick-started her engagement in doing research via an MD. The recent pandemics have been fertile grounds to contrib…
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71- Dr Deanne Bell- Weathering the white gaze and inventing post-colonial higher education
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Deanne Bell is Associate Professor in Race, Education and Social Justice at the University of Birmingham. When I interviewed her, she was working at Nottingham Trent University as Associate Professor of Critical Psychology and Decolonial Studies. Her research has the potential to shift higher education towards an era where the colonial past is addr…
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70- Prof. Jo Richardson- Helping people feel at home
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Professor Jo Richardson is Associate Dean of Research for Nottingham Business School at Nottingham Trent University and Professor of Housing & Social Inclusion. Her expertise on homelessness and methodological stance in co-production have created solid and value-based foundations for her leadership style. Jo’s career was not planned from the start …
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69- Dr Cristina Nostro- Demonstrating research independence
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Dr Cristina Nostro is a Senior Scientist at the McEwen Stem Cell Institute at the University Health Network (UHN), a research hospital, as well as Associate Professor at the University of Toronto. She recalls challenges in demonstrating research independence. Cristina started her research career not taking no for an answer. As an undergraduate stud…
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68- Prof. Milica Radisic- Creating interdependence in teams
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Prof. Milica Radisic is a Functional Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering Professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (University of Toronto, Canada). Her work sits at the interface of engineering, stem cell biology and chemistry. Her ethos as a PI is to create interdependence between team members to build a collaborative and effective resear…
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67- Dr Catarina Henriques- Drilling down what to focus on
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Dr. Catarina Henriques is a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow at The University of Sheffield. Her journey into a research career was ignited by a TV documentary on telomeres she watched as a teenager, which fueled her enduring interest in the biology of aging. Transitioning from Portugal to the UK to pursue her research ambitions i…
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66- Prof. Kristen Brennand- Transitioning out of the sprint
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Kristen Brennand is Professor of Psychiatry and Genetics at Yale University School of Medicine. She first set up her own research group in 2012 at Mount Sinai, after a Postdoc at the Salk Institute and a PhD at Harvard University. She reflects on balance in research careers. From the outside, Kristen’s research career looks like the perfect traject…
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65- Dr Dawn Scholey-Cheerleading the career progression of others
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Dr Dawn Scholey is a Senior Research Fellow at Nottingham Trent University. She never intended to become a researcher. After working for an extended period in industry, she returned to academia as a technician. It was the cheerleading of her manager that convinced her to embark on a PhD. Dr Dawn Scholey’s career is a good example that for some peop…
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64- Dr Ahmed Iqbal- Challenging the status quo of understanding
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Dr Ahmed Iqbal is a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Clinical Medicine, School of Medicine and Population Healthat The University of Sheffield and Honorary Consultant Physician in Diabetes for the NHS. His research interests emerged from challenging the status of understanding of the physiological impact of diseases and how this could be managed for bet…
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63- Dr Sowmya Viswanathan- Incorporating Equality, Diversity and Inclusion principles in teams and research approaches
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Dr. Sowmya Viswanathan is a Scientist at Schroeder Arthritis Institute and the Krembil Research Institute (University Health Network) and an Associate Professor at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and at the Division of Hematology, Department of Medicine (University of Toronto). She built her industry experience developing regenerative medic…
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62- Dr Iryna Kuksa- Designing green personalisation
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Dr Iryna Kuksa is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Art and Design at Nottingham Trent University. She describes herself as a cross-disciplinary researcher, having studied and worked, in departments as diverse as History of Arts, British Politics and Theatre, Performance & Cultural Studies. The common thread in her research interests is Dig…
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61- Dr Sara Vasconcelos- Starting with curiosity
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Dr Sara Vasconcelos is an Associate Professor based at the University of Toronto in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering with a research team in the Toronto General Hospital: University Health Network (UHN). Her research focuses on tissue engineering approaches to address cardiovascular problems. Imagine getting your first grant as a PI and not …
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60- Prof. Thushan de Silva- When building compartiments between clinical and research practice creates better focus
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Prof. Thushan de Silva is an Infectious Diseases Clinician Scientist at The University of Sheffield. His research journey started during his medical training and continued thanks to several clinical fellowships that have allowed him protected time to build his research portfolio alongside continuing clinical work. Thushan is currently working as a …
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59- Dr Rebecca Dumbell- Reflecting to gain perspective
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Not everyone can say that their PhD recruitment interview took place from an exotic place; well Rebecca started her research career following a phone interview whilst she was travelling in Borneo. To me, this is an interesting career trait of not seeing limitations in a less than perfect situation, but a positive attitude in believing in positive o…
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58- Dr Joby Cole- When Covid changed the story
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Dr Joby Cole is an Infectious Disease and Acute Medicine Consultant for the National Health Services and an honorary lecturer at the University of Sheffield. He has held several clinical fellowships to enable him to undertake research alongside his clinical work. His current interest to give all patients the opportunity to get involved in clinical …
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57- Dr Ruth Payne- When flexibility mattered
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Dr Ruth Payne has a dual professional identity as a Consultant Microbiologist for the National Health Services (UK) as well as a Senior Clinical Lecturer at the University of Sheffield. Her interest in malaria vaccines may have been the starting point for her research career, but her expertise in vaccines became the corner stone of her ability to c…
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56- Prof. Jason King- Setting up your research group
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Prof. Jason King is a research scientist at the University of Sheffield who progressed his career via the fellowship route. He has spent the last 10 years working as a Principal Investigator and building a team with the ebb and flow of PhD students and Postdoc contracts. Jason has travelled the country from Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow to Sheffield…
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55- Dr Leili Rohani- Emerging as a research leader
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Dr Leili Rohani is a research scientist with a specialism in engineering heart tissues for cell therapy. Leili currently works at The University of British Columbia in Canada in the department of Cardiology and cardiovascular surgery. Leili has had an itinerant research career across different countries and continents. She started her career as a g…
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54- Dr Madeleine Jotz Lean- Crocheting a mathematical life
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Dr Madeleine Jotz-Lean has always had a passion for mathematics and research, which was nurtured from an early age by her teachers and supervisors. She began her publication record early, with 10 articles to her name by the end of her PhD. After moving from the US to Sheffield into a lectureship, she became more involved and interested in teaching,…
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53- Dr Jonna Kulmuni- Creating nurturing research environments
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Jonna Kulmuni’s love of nature began at an early age but biology wasn’t her strongest subject. The challenge was what drove her to pursue a biological career and she fell in love with ants during her Masters degree, where she worked with a very supportive group and continued on to a PhD. At the same time, she completed a Masters in Science Communic…
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Prof. Jim Thomas was inspired by his father to become a scientist but, after not achieving the best degree in Chemistry at Reading, he opted to teach in the UK before going to Western Kenya with Voluntary Services Overseas, where he taught in a rural high school for several years. This lent him a great deal of perspective and led him to revisit his…
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51- Dr Julie Hyde- Following a teaching route in academia through an unusual route
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Dr Julie Hyde’s love of chemistry was inspired by her father and experimenting with him in the garden shed when she was young. She left school with no qualifications but got a job in the chemical industry as an Analytical Chemist while also studying part-time at college. It was here that one of her tutors suggested applying to university, which she…
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50- Dr Nicola Nadeau- Facing fears at each transition in research careers
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Dr Nicola Nadeau became interested in the natural world at a young age. After studying Zoology at Newcastle, she secured a PhD at Cambridge in evolutionary genetics. She moved from being unsure that genetics was really the area she wanted to be in, to becoming captivated by the possibilities it presented. She thoroughly enjoyed the PhD process, hel…
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49- Dr Jenny Clarke- Putting family and relationships first
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Dr Jenny Clark developed an interest in biology at school in Belgium, but found it too qualitative and so ended up studying physics at university. She did her undergraduate and Masters at Imperial College London, with a year in Padua, but a summer stint at UCL was enough to cement a desire to work in the field of Biophysics. However, for her PhD sh…
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48- Prof. Sherif El-Khamisy- Experiencing multiple research cultures
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Professor Sherif El-Khamisy started off in community and clinical pharmacy in Egypt but the repetitive and unchallenging nature of the work left him seeking more. He completed a Business Administration diploma at the same time as a Masters in Pharmaceutical Sciences before securing a PhD position in Sussex, attracted by better research funding and …
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47- Prof. Ivana Barbaric- Building a research niche through disciplinary hoping
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Prof. Ivana Barbaric discovered a love of scientific research through competing in a national biology competition she entered in secondary school, for which she won 1st prize. Early on in her career, she realised the importance of networking and began to develop an international network of colleagues, as well as amassing new technical skills, throu…
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46- Dr Andrew Lin- Learning from your own mistakes
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Dr Andrew Lin is a senior lecturer in the School of Biosciences at The University of Sheffield. He was previously Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Science when he was awarded a 5-year European Research Council Starting Grant. From a young age Andrew had his sights set on a career in academic research, pursuing his passion fo…
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45- Dr Rhoda Hawkins- Persevering but asking for advices along the way
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Dr Rhoda Hawkins is academic director at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS Ghana). Rhoda has been a lecturer, then senior lecturer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield since 2011. Rhoda grew up in a Christian family, where she developed a keen interest in studying the world around her through…
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44- Dr Rebecca Corrigan- Building the courage to have next step conversations with your PI
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Dr Rebecca Corrigan first became enthralled by science at school and specialised in microbiology from the mid-point of her undergraduate studies. After a very successful summer placement, which produced 2 papers, she was certain that a career in scientific research was for her. She ended her PhD with a further 4 1st author papers that helped her se…
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43- Dr Rebecca Barnes- Doing your best work and enjoying it
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Dr Rebecca Barnes has always had an enormous love of science and imparting knowledge to others. She applied for a variety of PhDs before ending up in Glasgow to study the molecular biology of parasites, where she realised a passion for the academic environment. She was invited to help set up a lab as a Postdoc by a young academic from the USA and s…
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42- Dr Silvia Valenzuela-Lamas- Going for yes in your academic life
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Dr Silvia Valenzuela-Lamas is a Principal Investigator and archeologist at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Spain. She was previously a recipient of a prestigious European Research Council Starting Grant. She used this success to leverage a permanent position back to her home country after several years of hard work and…
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41- Dr Mirna Mustapha- Creating passionate and compassionate research environments
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Dr Mirna Mustapha is an MRC Senior Fellow at the University of Sheffield (UK). Her research through multiple international collaborations has led to the identification of over 15 human genes involved in deafness. She has plenty experience of being the only woman from a Global South country in the room. Why having support networks and mentors are ke…
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40- Dr Araceli Venegas-Gomez- Moving in between worlds
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Araceli is Founder and CEO of Qureca, a company that offers support to individuals and businesses in the quantum field. She has experience in both the academic and industrial world. She has created a space in-between the two to bridge gaps in understanding, communication, and conversations in quantum. Our conversation will get you to think about: H…
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39- Dr Natasha Chang- Asking for help is half the battle
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Dr Natasha Chang is Assistant Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at McGill University. She is one of these academics who has had the challenge of setting up her research group during the Covid period. She reflects on the last few years since becoming a PI. Things to reflect on prompted by the discussion with Natasha: How a coffee and a con…
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38- Dr Stephen Aderinto- Aspiring to promote science in the African context
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Stephen Aderinto is an early-career scientist working in the Chemistry Department at the University of Sheffield. He is not scared of challenges having left Nigeria for his undergraduate studies in China and a PhD in the UK. Now, he works on a multidisciplinary project to develop DNA probes to be used in cancer R&D. Find out a bit more about Stephe…
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37- Dr Amy Wong- Creating pioneering work
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Dr Amy Wong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine & Pathobiology at The University of Toronto. She became a PI in 2019 with a lab hosted at the Hospital for Sick Children, 10 years after starting her Postdoc. She is a pioneer in using human stem cells to model lung development and disease. Listening to our conversation …
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36- Dr Jonathan Draper-Choosing to step out of the Principal Investigator life
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Dr Jonathan Draper is Vice-President of the Canadian Stem Cell Network and responsible for the strategic design and rollout of the network research and training programs. After a decade of working as a PI, he took the challenging decision of letting go of his identity as a research group leader and not running a lab anymore. He shifted his professi…
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35- Dr Nika Shakiba- Leading with empathy
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Dr. Nika Shakiba is an Assistant Professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering (SBME) at The University of British Columbia (Canada). Her research into the social lives of stem cells aims to answer fundamental biological questions for the development of novel therapies. Her commitment to public engagement has been an important thread in her lea…
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34- Dr Samantha Payne- Taking group leader responsibilities
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Dr Samantha Payne is Assistant Professor in Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph (Canada). She has recently received funding from the Canada Stem Cell Network to examine how nerves modulate the response of organs and tissues to injury. She has moved quickly from her Postdoc to her first PI role. Interestingly, she has returned to …
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33- Dr Vijay Raghavendran- Sketching a polymath international research career
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Dr Vijay Raghavendran is an Indian researcher was has experienced the tribulations of short term research contracts. This has led him to work in many countries on several continents. Vijay has also worked as a science teacher. His broad ranging interests from science to the humanities have enriched his nomadic research life.…
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32- Dr Kristin Hope- Forging your path along brilliant mentors
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Kristin is Senior Scientist at the University Health Network and an Associate Professor in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. She also holds an Ontario Institute for Cancer Research Investigator Level II Award and is a Medicine by Design Investigator. Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking What would…
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31- Dr Sean Sapcariu- Influencing research culture
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Dr Sean Sapcariu is programme manager at the Luxembourg National Research fund. Trained as a biomedical scientist, Sean moved into university strategic development before jumping on the other side of the fence by now working for a national funder. Growing up as an American is maybe what gave Sean a sense of freedom as he moved along his career. His…
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30- Dr Zoe Hewitt- Believing in your own expertise and value
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Dr Zoe Hewitt is a stem cell expert wearing two professional hats through her role as project manager for one of the UK Regenerative Medicine Platform Hubs, and CEO and founder of the consultancy-Regenerative Cell Therapy Consulting (RegenCTC) Limited. Zoe jumped straight out of her PhD into setting up facilities for the growth of stem cells that c…
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29- Dr Matthew Cheeseman- Dabbling for academic resistance and resilience
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Matt talks about himself as someone who is “a Jack of all trades”. It’s true that I have known him involved in so many different types of projects that it could be hard from the outside to define exactly his research niche. As an interdisciplinary researcher and thinker, Matt acknowledges that both his stubbornness and his position of privilege hav…
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We take for granted informal encounters during scientific conferences. Some will shape the course of our lives. It was meeting an academic from Sheffield during a conference in China which changed the direction of Dr Yi JIn’s life. She is now a Wellcome Trust Sir Henry Dale Fellow at Manchester Institute of Biotechnology. Yi received encouragements…
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27- Prof. Stéphane Bordas- Enthusiasm as a competitive advantage
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Prof. Stéphane Bordas is an academic at the University of Luxemburg who has had a globe-trotter career, starting in France before working in the USA, Switzerland, Scotland, Wales and more recently Luxemburg. Stéphane’s transition to a Professorship was quite rapid considering he obtained it just 3 years after his first lectureship. Stéphane is keen…
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26- Dr Muna Abdi- Becoming an anti-racist scholar and change maker
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Dr Muna Abdi is an independent scholar and consultant who is using her own experience and expertise as a British Somali academic to support organisations embed anti-racist practices. Being a black British Somali woman in the academia is likely to put you in the odd-one-out category of university staff in the UK Higher Education system. Dr Muna Abdi…
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25- Dr Cristiano Malossi- Facilitating conversations for collaboration
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Dr Cristiano Malossi left his beautiful Italy to do a PhD in Switzerland. He comes from an engineering background and gained a PhD in mathematics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. His stellar path led him to get a position at IBM after his PhD and he has stayed there ever since. I was interested in hearing about his collab…
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24- Conversation on research culture with researcher developer colleague Natacha Wilson
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In this episode, I discuss with Natacha Wilson, who is like myself a research developer. We are both French. We have both lived and worked in the UK for a very long time. We both love our work supporting researchers. We are both fascinated by organisational work cultures. In French, there is an expression that says "refaire le monde" which would li…
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