I was born in Germany and I'm from Cornish and Scottish parents. I grew up mostly in England, in a very small village. My dad was going out to work as an academic engineer, whereas my mum (who trained as an Occupational Therapist) ran quite a large smallholding.We were almost self-sufficient with goats, chickens, vegetables and fruit, but in fact it was a very hard life for my mum. Smallholding is really hard work and it never goes away, it's also quite isolating. However, it was amazing as children to grow up with that around the four of us.
The main thing that brought me to BSMS, which was just over 10 years ago in 2010, was a very good, strong collaboration with Melanie Newport, Professor of Infectious Diseases and Global Health. I had been living with my family in Ethiopia for 10 years and I was working at Addis Ababa University doing teaching and research there. I had a couple of collaborations in the United Kingdom. One was with colleagues in respiratory health in Nottingham, and the other was with Melanie. She was incredibly supportive of the genetics work that we were doing on podoconiosis and realised, around about the time that we were thinking of returning to Britain, that it might be possible to join BSMS. So she introduced me to the Dean at that time, Professor Jon Cohen, and others that were able to support an application that I made to the Wellcome Trust for a fellowship to help me return from Ethiopia to the UK.
My title is Professor of Global Health Epidemiology and what that means day to day has been quite different over the last 18 months. Essentially what I'm doing is bidding for and managing large-scale international research projects. I co-direct two big National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) funded programmes, one called the Global Health Research Unit and the other called the 5S Foundation. These are both programmes that deal with three of the most neglected tropical diseases, podoconiosis, scabies and mycetoma. We work with institutions in three partner countries, Ethiopia, Sudan and Rwanda, and train young scientists in these countries to address the problems that their populations face with these neglected tropical diseases. Before the pandemic, I would often travel to train and accompany researchers on field trips in these countries. More recently, training has all had to happen through remote meetings. I do a little bit of teaching too, but not a huge amount. I still very much enjoy that, but mostly my teaching comes in the form of training of international PhD students.
Alongside these two major programmes, there are also other slightly smaller projects that I’m working on. I’m supporting the Global Atlas of podoconiosis, which is a mapping project, and numerous masters and PhD projects, mostly around the area of neglected tropical diseases. I also have roles beyond BSMS, for example, I’m currently President of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene.
You've asked why I chose my field of speciality, but in fact I didn't because it wasn't a field of speciality when I first moved out to Ethiopia. “Global Health” didn't really exist back in 2000, but I had always been interested in applying epidemiological skills in an international setting. So I trained in epidemiology, having had a background in medicine, and then I went and worked in Ethiopia for 10 years. By the end of that time, global health had emerged as a discipline. When it came to returning to the UK, this was a discipline that almost found me, and I came back to the UK under it.
I'm a bit of an opportunist and tend to wait for things to come along. I really believe in serendipity and things happening and that’s how my career has worked so far. I don't really go out seeking things very much and I'm happy with that. I'm very open to whatever comes next.
I find it difficult to answer about what is my biggest professional achievement. I don't really think along those lines. I'm really happy if I can do things that I enjoy and can be the person I am in a situation - and then things happen as a consequence. I find this a healthier way of looking at outcomes. I feel that being true to oneself all the way through one's life is probably the most important thing.
I would actually look for inspiration beyond my professional world. I find Derartu Tulu very inspiring. She's an Ethiopian runner, the first black African woman to win an Olympic gold medal. I find it amazing to see the consequences that her role modelling has had in the communities that she comes from. She's inspired hundreds of young women to look beyond fairly narrow possibilities in their own villages and communities in rural Ethiopia and understand that they can do so much more - and that's a very powerful thing.
In a different sphere, I've been inspired by Willa Cather’s writing for a number of years now. I did English A-level rather late when I was a senior house officer, and Willa Cather was one of the authors I studied. She writes with a strong sense of landscape and of the tension between belonging and nostalgia, because she was an immigrant from Eastern Europe into the United States. I find that incredibly powerful and a really interesting way of looking at migration and nostalgia.
Probably in common for many people, one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced is illness within my own family. I think that's always going to make us see things in quite a different way. Even if one is surrounded by settings in which people are unwell, even as a medical doctor, it is always very different when it's someone very close to you that's affected. So, I think that would be the biggest challenge that I've been through.
To switch off, I often read or do exercise. Going out for a run is a great way of letting things unwind in your mind and putting things in perspective. Reading-wise, I tend to read fiction, and find you can explore other worlds and again, really bring perspective to your own life. So, I think those are the two main ways that I unwind and try to find some balance.
When I was little, I wanted to be an Olympic gymnast. I was pretty small when Olga Korbut was at the Munich Olympics and then when Nadia Comaneci won in Montreal. That was the sort of age when children start gymnastics - so I did. I spent hours and hours doing gym, all through my childhood and teenage years. I didn't make it to the Olympics, but it was good for so many other things. It instilled a love for sport and I was able to travel internationally with it. It’s also a really good way of instilling confidence in your own body. When I was in Addis, I started a gymnastics club so that children could have the opportunity to learn confidence in their own bodies.
I think the best piece of advice I'd give my younger self is to think beyond traditional career structures. Don't feel you have to fit in. If there are things that you really feel motivated to do, then then go for it, a career of some sort will work itself out.
What would I tell young women who are just starting to work? I would say live somewhere you can run from the door! Even if that's a tiny attic room somewhere in Sheffield (like when I was a junior doctor), or now where we live in Hangleton - if you can run from the door, then that’s a great place to be.