Welcome to everyone. My name Richard Black. I'm head of the College of Social Sciences. A really great pleasure to welcome you to this inaugural lecture on the Tempered, Radical and Other Stories. I've been given a four- part plan, which I need to explain to you. It says Richard's introduction. That's me, Nicola’s lecture. That's Nicola. Professor Sheila Greenfield will give the vote of thanks and then drinks reception. Okay, so we'll try and follow that to the letter. Let me tell you a little bit about Nicola by way of introduction. Nicola was born and raised in London, one of two children. Her mum, Kay and her brother Jonathan are here today. I don't know exactly where, but. Hello. Welcome. Her wife, Rachel, and her son Rufus, who's four and a half. Hello, Rufus. Welcome. Are also here. And her parents in law, Colin and Janet, and lifelong family friends Annie and Jerry. Jerry are also here. So welcome to all of It's great. These events are so great because they're a mixture of family and friends and colleagues, and that's also what makes it so scary for the speaker as well. And Nicola started her life in academia just down the road at the University of Warwick, where she completed a B.A. in Politics and Sociology and a dissertation under the supervision of Professor Steve Fuller. She did her M.A. in Sociological Research in Health Care, her Dissertation was supervised by Gillian Bendelow, who I think isn't here, but who I know very well. And she then applied for an ESRC Studentship took a year out working and traveling while she waited to find out whether she'd been successful. Such a such a well-planned thing here. And she was. She returned to Warwick to complete her PhD in sociology under the supervision of Dr. Carol Wolkowitz Carol, welcome. And Professor Simon Williams, who is online. So hello. Simon Online, the PhD was a Comparative Ethnography of Two Institutions for Training Complementary and Alternative Medicine Practitioners. Immediately post-doc. She moved to London, where she worked at Birkbeck and also at the University of Westminster. And in 2009 she moved to the University of Birmingham to work in the College of Medical and Dental Sciences. This was a five-year research fellowship, bringing her sociological perspective to a range of applied health projects such as pregnancy outreach to tackle high levels of infant mortality in Birmingham. Prevention of cardiovascular disease, and introducing tele monitoring for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In 2013, she moved within the university to HSMC, the Health Services Management Centre, and I'm tempted to say never looked back, although all of our wonderful colleagues from MDS who are here, of course, these are the kinds of links that we really treasure in the university. And Nicola really embodies the interdisciplinary links that we all want to have. Nicola's continued her applied health interdisciplinary collaborations, and her work has enabled these projects to develop and implement new interventions that are not only clinically appropriate, but also effective because they're sensitive to the social context. That's what an interdisciplinary multi faculty university should be all about. She's developed her theoretical interest in the sociology of work and the professions she's developed with Dr. Patrick Brown at the University of Amsterdam. Theories of Risk Work. And this is about how epidemiological calculations about population level risks are then applied in 1 to 1 clinical context to drive lifestyle change or support medication taking such as statins. I work in this field matters to the real world because their theories allow us to pre-empt and manage the tensions faced by frontline workers. And this also allows us to design better policies and training programs as a result, Nicola has also made significant contributions as a methodologist specializing in qualitative and ethnographic methods. The paper that she wrote with some colleagues who are here today on the framework method has been come to be known as something of a Bible by many qualitative health research PhD students here at Birmingham. She's always seen educational scholarship as equally important to the life of an academic and has made a particular contribution around inclusive education. Working with Dr. Nicki Ward and others, the project was selected as an institutional nomination for the Advance H.E CATE Award Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence in 2017, and they ran the first ever International Conference on LGBTQ Inclusive Education. Nicola won an institutional award at Birmingham for Educational Leadership and a National Award from Stonewall as a role model of the year. She's collaborated internationally around this work, including in very different cultural settings such as Japan and Nigeria, where in the latter there is still an anti-homosexuality law that in some regions carries the death penalty. But even in these challenging contexts, she's worked collaboratively to improve things around the training of health professionals. She's held a number of leadership roles in the institution, including College Director of Postgraduate Research, College Director of Impact and Engagement, and most recently as Head of the Birmingham School of Social Policy, in which it is my great pleasure to count her as a colleague. A few things you might not know about Nicola. And she apparently loves sport, although quite willingly, quite willingly, will accept that she has no coordination and can't catch or throw. So she's always done alternative sports, surfing, yoga and running. Indeed, she's a qualified yoga instructor and she also loves reading and is currently studying for an M.A. in Creative Writing here at Birmingham and has performed at the Birmingham Literature Festival. She loves music and cooking. Rachael apparently grows the food in their veggie patch and uses them as a way to decompress at the end of the day of work as well as to relax and feel creative. And with that introduction, I should take up no more time. Please give a warm welcome to Nicola Gale.
Thank you. This is a bit nerve-racking I would say despite doing lectures a lot. But this does feel a little bit different. so thank you Richard for the introduction. Thank you also for coming. I did quite a bit of research to find out about how you do an inaugural lecture it turns out everyone does it differently. which is not helpful. So anyway, I took it as licence to do whatever I wanted. So this lecture is structured around five short stories from my career and I do know there are few people from the creative writing department present - please don’t judge me on the technical quality of writing stories. However a colleague in Chemistry did say to me that everyone should have a when I was a cute kid photo in their inaugural So there’s mine here’s some nice ones of my family too my Mum and brother who are here today. And also Nat just my sister in law, my collection of nephews and there's one of me singing Christmas songs and my speciality is Good King Wencelas I am not going to do it now, you’ll be thrilled to hear. There’s Rachel and me - our first Pride together
And then also our wedding. And then these are the animals, the many animals that cats and the dogs, we do have two more cats but they’re feral cats and they don’t like having their photo taken and there are our hens. So and then these photos are from Cornwall, where I think a lot of you know I spend quite a time
It’s where my wonderful parents in law live and who do so much to support us all. So I have going round - it’s on Carol’s desk at the moment but maybe we could move it a little momento, yes just send it round I know it’s really cheesy and corny, but I had this vision of being really old in front of the fire with a blanket over my knee reading and enjoying your messages. from today so only if you want to there is no pressure at all. If you want to, it would be lovely if you could sign it. and write a message.
So, Story One. So this one's called the Scenic Route. So when I started my undergraduate degree in politics and sociology at the University of Warwick, I had no idea what an academic career it was, what it felt like, what it looked like, and it was nowhere on my horizon. Both my parents have professional jobs that neither had been to university. So at school I loved art, I love maths and geography and so I considered jobs like architect, civil servant, accountant town planner but academia emerged quite surprisingly. I was really enjoying my undergraduate course and I'm doing all right. But things really shifted for me when I completed a second year module called Field Studies in Social Research, and for it We all had to conduct a mini ethnographic study. And for those of you don't know what ethnography is, is it's a form of research when you go out into the field and you kind of participate in the community that you're trying to study, to understand it’s unwritten rules. So my project was a comparison of a community pharmacy, and a health food shop and I was interested in how they engaged with the customers around their health. And I entitled, and I thought myself very amusing no doubt at the time, Retail Therapy. And I got First and it was my first First. And it really changed the way I thought about sociology. So going into my final year, I decided that I really want to do well in this degree but because my marks so far I needed to get a First for every module and the dissertation together overall. So I had a wonderful group of housemates and we all, for varied reasons, needed to work hard for that final year. My son’s here, so I won’t mention some of the things that happened in those first two years. We got up, we made out packed lunches and we chatted and we drove my battered VW Golf to the library every single day of that final year. And at some point the poor car got written off. But we did get the grades we hoped for. I did a Masters and then applied for a studentship to do my PhD but it was only probably once I started teaching myself and second year of my PhD, where I went full circle back to teaching that module on field studies. And I really thought that this would be a career for me. But it’s fair to say that didn’t really have a plan And, and halfway through my Ph.D. with another comparative ethnography, but this time with the two training institutions for complementary therapists I decided to move back to London, it wasn't a career decision. It was just of my family and friends are there And I commuted each week up to Warwick to teach and see my supervisors. There have been three babies in my life so far, and my PhD was my first baby. It occupied the biggest space in my life for about three years and its influence really extended far beyond the theories, the methods, the data that comprised it, it was called Knowing the Body and Embodying Knowledge. So it was about how people acquired knowledge during their training and knowing the body, but also how the knowledge changed them as people as well, which is what I conceptualised as embodying knowledge And our health system is dominated by the kind of Western biomedical orthodoxy. That being an outsider to that system was a really big theme in this study. And one example I often use what I'm trying to explain to people. What this means is that the practitioners didn't really conform to conventional social norms and even after a year in the field I didn't always know what they did for a living and asking. What do you do? Is such a conventional way to start a conversation. But it carries with us so much about how we judge and value others and once you know what someone does, you get to put them in a box, a status box. But really different things shape these students ways of knowing the world, knowing about their body, and they were transformed and in the chapter that I wrote about the social research methods I used I reflected on a deep impact that those practitioners had on me, both as a researcher but also as a person. And I learned a lot about bravery and about following your heart. And this example is one of them. So when my studentship funding ran out and I haven't quite finished the PhD the regulations name when I finish it I knew I did have a whole year left and I didn't want to be commuting back and forth to Warwick anymore, so I said no to teaching the following year, but I wasn't quite sure how I was going to pay the London bills. So I took a leap but without beginning to see the other side. And when you teach children, you were encouraged to get into imagine jumping over something like a river or a rainbow but what about where they might land? And I had, I think, the confidence to take that leap. literally because of what I’d learned from the participants in my study, they taught me that if you want something new in your life you have to make space for it and I didn't know what I wanted but I knew there wasn’t space for it as things were so it was a leap of faith. And things filled the space pretty quickly. So I started to experiment with new forms of protest about women's and property rights. I started learning kung fu, which gave me a newfound sense. My own body its power, the ability to withstand pain. I got my first proper girlfriend and I also got a job two new jobs in fact. Part time visiting lecturer jobs. At Birkbeck and Westminster which really built my confidence in teaching public health and health policy. And then through the links I made there I ended up working on another fixed term contract at an impact unit at the University of Westminster and as a new university, it was really way ahead of the Russell Group in terms of its engagement and impact. And so I was suddenly thrust out of this really cozy world of research and teaching. that I’d got used to into the world of policy and into the NHS. So I inspired, I spoke to leaders in professional organizations and I presented my ideas to groups across parties in the House of Commons and in some ways it was a great experience, but it was still only temporary contracts. So one evening I was out having dinner with a friend and I was complaining that I was fed up of London life, dramatically And transport was my particular bug bear it was either like the crush of the tube or or like risking your life every time you went on a bicycle. So my friend chose to take me at my word and the next day emailed me Goldsmiths - here’s some jobs to apply for and one of them was at the University of Birmingham. And that role was working on a project which is part of a national experiment to provide significant funding to ensure that new evidence about effective health interventions made it out of the university and into the real world, which is called translational research and my best boss, Sheila, is here. had persuaded the principal investigator who I know couldn’t make it so I can say this, who is an epidemiologically minded clinical academic that two new full time sociologists were required for this project. And at that interview. I was pretty certain that that the other candidates who would all have been medical sociologists and with all that time and previous role understanding the real world of NHS and policy. And so the scenic route proved its worth. And I know in my career there a lot of really creative career researchers. And I'm often asked to advise on what new things they should do to build that CV. And it's really important to recognize that it's only the most privileged, the masses that don't notice that you know so well. So I do. I tell people I offer advice on applying for funding or writing papers on developing teaching skills getting involved in student representation and which are all the foundation of academic practice. But I also try to say that it's not the right way, but you never know how the strings of your life will come together in this unexpected confluence which they may end up being your next big thing. So by all means write the papers but don’t neglect or undervalue the other things you do, the things that bring you joy, the things that make you angry, or passionate, the things that are fuelled by love like caring for others. or in my case, the things to do to pay the bills, so there’s no one way to craft an academic career And when I was preparing for this panel interview, when we still had those, 10 professors, very scary to become a professor, My friend and colleague, Ted Jane, said to me, The thing about being internally motivated is that you’re uniquely qualified you can’t pretend to be anyone else You can just be a professor. So qualitative research in words. Quantitative research is numbers, and I was trained in both but I specialized in the words So. Much qualitative research starts with people telling their stories About their lives, their work their relationships, their challenges, their illnesses their pain but these stories have often not been heard before well they may have been heard but in not this way for someone with a chronic condition for instance will have told that story multiple times. They’ll have told it to the GP to the practice nurse specialist to their family, to that person at the bus stop and they would have told that story. slightly differently each time but they would have been able to abbreviate it to one minute, 30 seconds, and they would have picked the bits that they think the other person wants to hear and one of the pleasures of conducting qualitative research in health is that you often get an hour or two of uninterrupted time to listen to a person’s experience. Their story. And sometimes you have to draw it out. You have to give them permission to say more because they're so used to being brief. But time and time again people will say how valuable it is to tell their story. And they will also tell you that no one's ever heard it all before, to listen. Don't get me wrong, their understanding and generous and you know their friends have got their own challenges and heartbreaks to deal with, and they know the doctor has hundreds of other patients to care for too But it's an honour to hear that person’s story.
So this story, it's about learning to listen and how a sociologist can tell a good story in turn So let’s picture the scene young sociologist moves institutions of huge medical school in a Midlands city. Okay. Her name is so that's good. And she'd been trained at one of the best sociology departments in the country is highly critical of the way conventional biomedicine aligns with social with its focus on patients’ diagnosis and the cure. Rather than the broader social conditions that produce inequalities of health. She also, as you know from her PhD has research interest in those operating well, well and with those margins of orthodoxy in the health system. Various aspects, fortunately there were allies on the scene. Her boss, the aforementioned Sheila, and the other researcher, Sabi Redwood who was appointed at the same time who I think may be online. and but are you surrounded by epidemiologists statisticians, economists and lots and lots of clinicians and having spent most of academic life at this point critiquing the health system, it comes as a bit of a surprise to this to this young sociologist that these colleagues are very nice people indeed who are deeply committed to improving care for patients. And a small interlude, this young sociologist ends up marrying a doctor but we’ll save that story for another day. So she reaches out to other social scientists hosts in Birmingham, a network for those doing social sciences cardiovascular physicians you set for providing she set up a bring your own lunch seminar for politics researchers. It’s still running nearly 15 years later and eventually represents qualitative research on the research committee. But I'm getting ahead of myself in this story in this story because it’s a story about what makes a good story. So it's 2010 and this point we have some really powerful idea of the hierarchy of evidence, in health research is still relatively unchallenged Or it feels that way. And this hierarchy has meta analysis of multiple quantitative studies at the top followed by randomized controlled trials and cohort studies a and case series and case reports and right at the bottom a lot of social scientists and so well-meaning colleagues said things like well what is qualitative research? Isn’t it just anecdotes? How can any of it be generalisable? how can any of it be useful? And on the other side of campus at this point, and most social scientists, which is really not that into methodology and some social science journals don’t even require a methods section So our young sociologist finds that methods are a way into these kind of questions and she hones her skills explaining to non social scientists how it works so that you can use theory to generate ideas that you can then transfer from one setting to another and that this idea of analytic generalizability rather than statistical generalizability and this kind of research is believe it or not, actually quite useful for explaining the world around us and for predicting how this may unfold in the future and so in doing that, she deepens her own knowledge about doing qualitative research through teaching others, an eventually she writes a paper and I couldn't be doing an inaugural without mentioning my motorcycle papers. I think we'll all agree it's a very exciting title which is using the framework method of analysis of qualitative data in multidisciplinary health experts. But in the words of one of my co-authors, Dr Jen Heath been keeping our citation methods since 2014 So when you become a trustee of another person's story, what should a sociologist do? She must understand it, make sense of it. And alongside all the other stories she collects she must share it. And people share their stories of the health system with research just because they think it will make a difference, because they think it will make it better for the people who come next and the reader of of a well written qualitative research article should recognize the world that’s described but also feel like they've seen it with it with new eyes and have been given new insights. And I really believe that there is a power in sharing stories in this way and that some stories need telling more than others. As a sociologist, you've got access to these kind of privileged spaces in medical schools, and expert conferences and an opportunity to share stories in the margins challenge stereotypes and amplify the voices of those people who have been historically marginalized or minoritized But our young sociologist learned that designing research articles this is not the only way research articles are vital So they are vital to make sure that we can justify and evidence the arguments, major swathes and other experts But know what we're talking about and but the people who read the research articles are not always the people who need to read the stories So our not quite so young sociologist learnt that there are many ways to tell stories and she's worked with artists, script writers, poets and film makers to tell stories in new ways. So this is a journey that she’s still on today learning new forms of story telling and currently as Richard says studying for a Masters degree in creative writing. that and these images These images are from a series of short films about community health workers that Polly, who’s here, did and the challenges of their work and managing risk at the frontline of practice, which catch up on some of our work and it was a collaboration, between the university and and arts organization Network Polly third sector organization and patient accentatives So what did our young sociologist learn in this story? She learned stories matter. Stories can change the world, that different people will listen to different kinds of stories And then the job of an applied sociologist is not only to be able to capture the essential essence of the stories, but also to find the right way to share them
Number three. So this story called All’s Fair in Love and Firsts I have a spoiler alert for this story, all is not fair. Neither the outcomes nor the tactics and the idea is purely based on merit. It's an insidious but widespread privileges and opportunities are not distributed evenly, and we don’t all have the same chances in life. Even the idea that you have choices is not always helpful when each and every choice you make is constrained by a variety of social, economic and political externalities. And the School that I now lead, the Birmingham School of Social Policy is underpinned by a commitment to social justice, and that commitment comes first by admitting that things are not fair. And second, I believe that more fairness would be a good thing. So that's what this story is about. It's about how we work together to make things fairer. And in academia, as with many professional sectors, things are not equal. Only 28% of professor's in higher education institutions are women only 11% of professors are from a minority ethnic background compared to 18 in the general population, only 4% have a known disability. compared to 22% in the general population. And when you combine those different things, the effect is even more stark. So out of more than 22,000 professors in 16 UK universities, only 41 of them are black women. And there are some dimensions social difference that we don't know anything about. We don’t have reliable data on, things like gender diversity, sexual orientation, religion, and for our students it’s similar, a similar picture. There’s an idea of the degree awarding gaps. The difference between proportion good degrees that are awarded to different groups of students and the biggest gaps exist between students of different ethnicities. But this is not about ability. All students have to meet the same entrance requirements. This is about what we do in the university to create an environment where everyone feels that they can belong and that they’re supported to succeed. Though inequality is endemic But I don't believe it's inevitable. Most statistics show that things are getting better slowly, and and this is in part due to changes in the wider world, and it's in part due to the work of many inside the academy and the activism in the research and teaching from my own journey with understanding new patterns in social science teaching can have on our lives outside the classroom and started with a third year undergraduate called sexuality and society which is convened by Carol who is here. And who also supervised my PhD. And it started for me the process of really understanding and being confident in my relationship to my sexuality. To skip forward ten years and into 2014 which it sounds scary as it’s only been ten years ago now Dr Amy Ward and I sat down one day to discuss the challenges faced by lesbians, gay, bi, trans and queer students. And this was at the height of the time where ‘you’re so gay’ was one of the most common playground insults. And regrettably, we're hearing about it a lot among adults too and a lot of the conventional wisdom suggests that universities are a good place to be gay because you get away from home and you get networks and wasn’t this great. And to a certain degree that was true But it wasn't the whole story. So Nicki and I linked up with the student Merril plus people working in the city like Sean and turn in get to try and work out how to address some of these issues of trans, bi, homophobia in the university. And we had to work really, really hard our survey shared across the university but when we did, we were blown away by the response we took becomes that that kind of hope for 100 responses we got thousands and thousands staff and students shared their views and wrote us really detailed tomes about their experiences with negotiating issues of sexual orientation and gender identity at the university. And nearly half of the students who responded had heard homophobic, biphobic or transphobic language used in their department And less than a quarter were confident that a lecturer would intervene to challenge bi, challenge trans or homophobia And that all really led us to the view that one of the biggest challenges was just the invisibility of the issues, the silence around the issue. And there were lots of really well-meaning people who weren’t actively or intentionally discriminating in their actions but they didn't feel confident in addressing the issues as they arose. So they just said nothing but doing nothing. left students feeling uncertain and unsafe. So we worked collaboratively to change that. We took data and stories from the students to their lecturers. So engineering professors, stories about engineering students, history lecturers had data about how many of how many of their LGBTQ students had discontinued their studies and how much higher that was than their cis and hetero counterparts. And we worked with them to think about how to make their lecture halls and laboratories more welcoming places. And honestly, I lost track of the times. I was told things like, I don’t have any gay students in my class and invited that’s very bad, and all this is irrelevant to me because I can teach about concrete. or cells or volcanoes and so we stress that this was not all about curriculum content classrooms, labs and seminars made up of people. They’re social spaces people communicate. So using inclusive language visible role models and allies in the education space is just as important for students’ as curriculum content. We showed things done differently in different places. So in some cases just awareness is good, you know just a basic acknowledgment that gender and sexual diversity existed and not using abusive language while in others it was appropriate to add stuff in so maybe a lecture on LGBTQ lives or some reading or some access to mentors. Whilst in other contexts a more transformatory approach is possible. And so critical approaches of pedagogy role models are analysed actually in the teaching environments, and we could use a very useful best practice guide. And I’m really proud to say that the work really did make a difference to people’s lives. Here in the UK and abroad. One example was Nikki and I designed and module called Gender and Sexual Diversity International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on LGBTQ lives. And at the end of the module, students are ready to reflect by writing an essay on what they’ve learnt. And these are an actual joy to mark Honestly, my best module ever and this is a quote from one of the students. Most importantly, the model has aided me in feeling more at ease with my own sexual and gender identify. confidence and ease which I hope to carry with me through the working world where I may have to face certain behaviours in response to my sexuality. I'm determined to work hard towards developing a healthy narrative surrounding LGBTQ issues working to shut down stereotypes’ and avoidable discrimination. And I also wanted to share I work very closely with Dr Adekemi Sekoni of the University of Lagos who I think is online, hello Kemi First on HMSC and then on her ongoing work around equality of Nigerian higher education, and she went to national conferences in Nigeria on inclusive education, which were modelled on the conference that we run here at Birmingham, and at the conference. And this slide was and this film ‘Hell or High Water’ was screened which was based on Kemi’s research on the experiences of LGBTQ people in Nigeria And what followed the screening was a discussion with LGBT people, allies and others in a safe space allowing participants to come up with context specific recommendations for integration and mainstreaming of LGBT issues in Nigeria. And this is an activity that I really need to stress, this is an activity that would ordinarily have been considered very dangerous. because of the laws that criminalize not only homosexuality but also those who are judged to be colluding with LGBT people. So for this to be happening on the platform of University of Lagos, which is a respected and high status institution, was really remarkable. And another amazing thing that happened in that conference was the first conference, was a closing plenary and had a presentation by in Bizia Aleemy and the University of Lagos, had originally suspended him from his studies because he came out as gay in his final year. And the conference was an opportunity to right that wrong and provided evidence that despite these anti homosexuality laws, academia is a space to bring change by providing a safe platform for the voices of LGBT people to be heard in Nigeria. So. So why has most of my own work around inclusion has been in solidarity with the LGBT community of which I’m a member. There are also lots of other difficult questions that I feel I ask myself regularly. So how do my privileges play out on the interactions with others and how can I become more aware of them? How do I live in solidarity with others who are experiencing other sorts of oppressions? How can I avoid being a bystander to oppressions? Such as racism, Islamophobia anti-Semitism, ableism, ageism, And how can I influence this institution that I'm part of, this university, but also the massive institution that I study, the National Health Service to be fairer and to be able to thrive on drawing on the energy, the intelligence and creativity of all who want to be part of it. And how do I deal with working in international environments, including some where my identity means that I would be breaking the law, but that I haven't been exposed to fields like this and I haven't yet been to our University campus in Dubai for this reason too. And there's a huge way to go And when you look across society in institutions, uniformity, is real, the effect is powerful and sometimes the experience can be devastating, but I think limiting who we have with me included also limits the changes of getting different and novel perspectives The next one is a bit of crisis point on the planet And so to borrow the phrase, if we keep doing the same thing, with the same people over and over again, how can we expect different results? Diversity is not only the right thing, it's also essential for our survival
Story four we’re nearly there. The Tempered Radical. I wrote a poem Sorry to the creative writers not particularly good And what I've done is enjoyed introducing the story.
So to be radical is to know that the system is unfair to be tempered is to be exposed to repeated stress and become more resilient as a result. To be radical is the need for change that is fundamental to be tempered to moderate your goals based on the reality of your experiences To be radical is to journey to the margins of social norms then challenge to be tempered is to assess the audience, before curating the message to be radical is to seek to upend the status quo to be tempered is to choose your battles
So about a year ago, I was asked if I was interested in applying to be head of the School of Social Policy and as a school would be a metaphorical rough patch and the fallout from Brexit, for our international staff and student population, changes in leadership style were out of sync with the values of the school and the personal and professional impact of a global pandemic that disproportionately affected women, and disabled and minoritized groups. and it left us all feeling beleaguered in one way or another. But some things felt more than that. They felt needed. And this came on top of many years of the higher education set to acting more like a business. And less like a public service many years of real value cuts in higher education and greater expectations. And so do more, do it better and do it less. And it’s a form of higher education that’s been conceived by neo-liberal politicians and enacted by the institutions. And higher education was not alone in this many sectors, including most of those in public sectors felt those pressures. I nearly said no, I haven’t worked Fridays since I came back from maternity leave and I did not want to give up my Fridays and it's my family time with my wife and son. And I said to Richard I didn't think I could do the job and stay part time or more accurately, I didn't think I could do the job. and keep my research going and my teaching and do it all to a standard that I I was happy with in four days and I could have said I’ll stop teaching or I’d stop doing research and focus on the role. But I do believe in being grounded enough to do the day job and model good academic citizenship is part of what makes them good academic leaders. So I also did not know if I could do the job. And live with the inconsistency. So things like the persistence of the gender gap in the sector or challenging industrial relations or institutional racism in a curriculum still shaped by colonial history and being an ordinary professor I could remain one step away from all of this and critique it. But as head of school, I would face it for my colleagues and for our students, and I also question myself how much I was tempted by the neoliberal seduction of institutional power. But then I considered counterfactual. These things would all be still be there either way. And if I wasn’t prepared to step up and try to make a difference and what does that say about me I had a lot of conversations and a lot of people, many of whom are sat on this slide took the time to talk to me, persuade me that even with all the constraints and restrictions I would face even with all the histories and the legacies that were hard to unpick, that it was still cope to make a positive impact and that they would support me Professor Carol Roberson formerly of Birmingham but now Dean of Sociology at York first alerted me to Debra Meyer’s concepts of tempered radicals, via an article by another head of school Fiona McKay at Edinburgh Fiona had asked the question how how do academic areas experience and simultaneously the embodiment of institutional authority managing, regulating, quantifying and monetizing as well as source of oppositional knowledge as feminists. So I read the article and immediately reached out to Fiona too. I'm nearly a year into the role and it's being simultaneously hard and rewarding and rewarding bits for me have always been about people. So one of the first tasks was to move people off teaching only contracts where I could and I worked with colleagues to support them achieving ambitions. I worked with colleagues coaching them through difficult conversations building new networks. I've been reducing the gender pay gap and and I've really seen people thrive And I share in those successes as well as condoled with them when things haven’t gone as planned And all the challenging bits have always been about people too. So dealing with situations of trust being broken between colleagues, addressing performance issues have inevitably been entwined with issues of confidence and self-esteem, and some of the hardest of all of these being when my middle manager element comes in the fore So I'm the crunch point between institutional policy and sort of everyday work of people in the department. And rather than pleasing everyone, I’ve had to learn to live with accepting In some cases, if no one is totally with happy with me, then maybe I've got the balance about right. So tempered radicals work to change the world through leveraging small wins. And one way to do this is to identify the stories that we tell ourselves about our work. Then reveal them, and then revise them. One of stories I heard over and over again as a junior researcher, and I still often hear today is if you want to make it in academia, we have to be prepared to work weekends and evenings.
And this is a story that is based on the model of the person, usually a man, who doesn’t have domestic or caring responsibilities, because he has a wife to do all that and a man who is also prepared to compromise his own social and emotional health for the job. And I decided quite early on and in no doubt told Sheila I wouldn’t forget I’m not shy about these things if that is what it took, I didn’t want it and so I tried to do it differently. And now I can’t ignore that there’s a real gendered aspect to the role that I’m in or at least in the way that I enact it. So women need different forms of motherly roles. The star who deals with the housework and the school, so taping up broken pieces, nourishing, sustaining, doing it all again the next week. And, and in the end, it wasn't possible to do it all in four days and as I'm a mother to a real little person too, and I didn't want to give up those Fridays. So in the end I shifted to a compressed hours contract so my wife is a doctor and works long hours. So in the week I drop Rufus off at kindergarten in the morning and then I pick him up or his grandparents do when they’re around. And then I spend time with him playing, reading, bathing, watching, Octonauts or Rainbow Rangers I think that’s what might be on the iPad now. And then snuggling him to sleep, and then when he’s asleep I do a couple more hours of work and catch up on the various things I haven't fitted into the working day. I get my Fridays and this works for me and this is the whole point of flexible working. It’s flexible it works around the other things you want to prioritise in your life. So I have hobbies, I'm a mother, I work flexible hours, I rarely work weekends and now as Head of School, I try to visibly model that balance so that fewer people in future will hear or believe the myth that a career in academia is all or nothing. So in the language of the tempered radical it’s a small win, but I hope that it makes a difference So what is the future of the University? Or life of a university professor? Or life of a flexible university professor? So I've introduced quite a lot of characters and the setting and this story picks up what comes next. So what now? I'm in my early forties so I'm halfway through my career and as it happens probably halfway through my life. So what is in store for the second half? And now I want to preface this story by saying I really love my job and know in every ounce of my being, how lucky I am to do it and to do it the way I do it so I know I'll be taken seriously where I know I’ll be listened to. Where I know I've made a difference to the lives of my students who will then go on to make a difference themselves in their own careers. And I know I've made a difference in collaboration with many others. to the people who use our health system and the health system in other countries, and I do know what a privilege it is to have a job that’s relatively safe and I know I can pay my bills, but safety is not enough. It's not enough at a personal level, and it's not enough at a political level. Well not for me. And I still want more. I do work flexibly and I work to maintain work-life balance. and to not lose myself. To care for my body, nourish my soul with movement and creativity. But the stresses and strains of job are real and the sense of responsibility is something I particularly struggle with Aman Burr and Barbera Seiver wrote a book called the Slow Professor and it builds on this concept of the slower they get, so fast food, slow food. And they argue the case that we can take some small steps to make a university a place for sustainable forms of work, a place where we don't ignore fatigue, mental health issues, pregnancy, menopause, or aging, where we put more value on himisclerial labour where we recognize that creating something new takes time isn’t a linear process. And that not everything can be measured and Berg and Seiver I argue his idea of time makes sense of cutting yourself off from the emails and texts and social media. And it may seem like wishful thinking, but I do know that for me there are two spaces where the good ideas most often happen - on a walk or in a conversation, and some people get all nostalgic when they talk about what academia used to be like, ivory towers and long lunches, I don't want to go back to that because I wouldn't have been welcomed in that old world. So maybe the future of academia is the true cliffhanger. Personally I’m quite optimistic about the future of academia because I think it attracts people who are full of great ideas and who have a desire to make a difference. I’d be even more optimistic if we made greater in roads to diversity of the sector and start to really think about how we place value on what people in universities do So my story ends here for now I don't know what's going to come next. I've got another three years as Head of School. So I’m working with some hugely talented and passionate people from various and certain projects and even if you work on anti-microbial resistance I still love teaching and particularly the core module I run with Jo there she is participation, involvement and engagement. But every year I see students transform and deepen their understanding the way the way we place different kinds of value on different forms of knowledge within the health and care system. I'm also writing a novel and doing an MA in Creative Writing I'm enjoying each step of motherhood even the rainbow rangers bit. and Rachael and I are beginning to, post-covid, indulge our shared passions for travel again Back to doing daily yoga practice, and I'm still trying to move mindfully through the world. And I look forward to seeing what door will open next. So in my first story today said my first baby was my PhD, my second baby is now four and about to start school Hello Rufus. My third baby, if it gets to be born would be a novel. So I thought I'd end this section with something completely different, which is a reading. And so the opening scene of the novel I’m writing it tells of three interwoven stories of dealing with grief in different social circumstances and identities and I promise it’s a little more uplifting that it sounds. It’s called Sketches of Ordinary Grief and was a collaboration with an illustrator friend of mine. And it's basically a kind of character driven novel, based in Cornwall about the different ways that life can be upended or shifted by sudden and unexpected grief and how people can learn to live with that world without closure, and it’s inspired in part by all the stories I've heard over my career as a sociologist. And there are three main characters, Elinor, Constance and Tim, and there's not a really important character in the story, which is the house, Lily's cottage and her garden. And Lily was the village matriarch, and she's recently died from old age and Elinor is about to rent this. And although we don’t know it yet Elinor has just experienced the loss of her partner and child in an accident, but this opening scene belongs to Tim and Tim is a semi-retired gardener and widower And he's speaking to his old friend Constance, who’s an estate agent. And it's the 5th of January 2020.
I’ve let Lily’s Cottage . Tim paused, phone to ear, to take in what his dear friend Constance had said. Really? Already? But... he faltered Constance, in turn, stumbled over her words. I know, I know. The family were going to renovate it but they weren't starting until spring, and... she took a deep breath and started again. Well, Tim realized he was about to be treated to one of Constance’s long speeches and sat down. He was on the landline and wished he’d brought his cup of tea over to the sofa before picking up the phone. The cat hopped up on his lap and he started stroking the fur behind her ears s she would purr. Constance began. So. This girl well, young woman, well younger-than-us-woman, arrived in the village a few days ago, staying at the Shipwrights looking for a long-term rent. She didn't have a huge budget, but she said she could put down a whole year’s rent in advance I started showing her all the normal things - flats accessible locations, all the things I thought a young woman on her own would want. but she didn't like them. She was so quiet, and here, Tim realised, Constance was pausing for effect, she wears a ring. A ring? A wedding ring. Oh. But she's on her own Tim. Oh, right, of course. Tim felt a bit embarrassed to have missed that.
Constance continued apparently undeterred And, well, I just couldn't place it but somehow she reminded me of me many years ago, coming to our dark corner of Cornwall for the first time. I mean, she's white and she's not coming to live here with her brand new Cornish husband, but... Oh, okay, so I don’t think she’s anything like me really, but still there was... there was something. Oh right. Tim wasn’t sure what to say. Constance, clearly hoping for a little more engagement, pushed on with her case. Anyway, it just occurred to me about Lily’s Cottage I took her and she didn’t say much. She hasn’t on any of the viewings. Not rude, in fact she is impeccably polite but... closed. We walked into the kitchen and she just said, “when can I move in?” Just like that. Can you believe it? “When can I move in?” I panicked then a bit because I thought, what if the family say no, want to go ahead and do the renovations. Tim suspected that Constance was trying to hard to persuade him this long term let is a good idea because building work was always a source of anxiety in Cornwall. Things being ‘modernized’ was usually a euphemism for getting something ready to let for the holiday market. Constance continued. But I spoke to the youngest daughter, the sensible one, and she said yes... thankfully. Realising that he would have to contribute to this conversation at some point Tim murmured ‘Oh yes, she is sensible’. He fidgeted and the cat hopped off, so his lap felt suddenly cold. She, the girl, I mean woman, wants to move in immediately - today. She didn't need the house emptied. None of it. She said she’s only brought two bags She doesn't have a car, so I said I'll drive her and her two bags to the house later. Her name is Dr Elinor Forbes. I don’t know what kind of doctor. There was a big pause, then Constance said, and this is what I really wanted to say, the family still want you to do the garden, if you want to that is. They will pay for it, rather than the tenant. I think they are as fond of their Mum’s garden as you are. She – Elinor – said she was happy with that too. Tim surprised himself with how relieved he felt. Oh Good. He can hear Constance breathing a sigh of relief too. And the main reason I'm phoning you is that, despite saying she was fine with it, I don’t think she has any idea about how to work a work-fired AGA. She's from London for goddess sake and it won’t have been lit for ages so it’ll be a nightmare to start. So please could you pop in, get it going and build the fire in the living room and maybe one in Lily’s bedroom too so she just has to light it? It's so cold and it just wouldn't be right to drop her off I don’t think, without a bit of warmth. Tim said, with feeling of course whatever you think is best. What time are picking her up from the Shipwrights?
‘Right, I’ll go now’ and he stood up poised. Thank you, Tim. Tim hesitated before asking Lily would have liked her wouldn’t she? I believe so Tim, I do believe so. I hope you are all a little bit intrigued to see what will happen to them all And how to conclude. So, for me social science goes far, far beyond our conventional ideas of what science is. We're not merely observing the world and reporting it objectively. We're exploring how things can be better, and we're working with others to change them. And the way we learn to think literally shapes our lives and the lives of others. Our theories and our stories offer the world to use as beautiful forms for things that allow us to find new ways of expressing ourselves and the various diversions I've taken over my career, I think have all contributed in their own ways to who I am here today and I'm hopeful of many more scenic routes in the future. And there are so many people I need to thank for the part they played on that journey and the lists on my slides haven’t been exhaustive they’re just related to my particular stories. I want to say thank you to everyone and all of you in person and online today for your support. And that is the end. Thank you.
Thanks. So I'm delighted to have the opportunity to lead the Vote of Thanks to Nicola for such a fascinating and entertaining lecture. So Nicola finished her lecture with an extract from the novel that she's writing, and I'm going to begin the Vote of Thanks by referring to another novel, an academic question by Barbara Pym, which I just happen to have been rereading. There's a quotation in that that always amuses me, and it resonated knowing I was going to to give the Vote of Thanks. So Barbara Pym was a keen observer of the eccentricities of human behaviour. Most of her novels focused on academic life, particularly anthropology, sociology and women's roles in an academic question, writing in 1970, she talks about a lecturer’s wife Caro, who's unwillingly attending a university lecture. The lecture starts, and Caro says she knows she's in for a deadly evening because after a very few minutes, it became apparent that the dead hand of the sociologist had been at work. This afternoon however the very lively hand of the sociologist has conjured up magic and entertainment for us and taken us on a journey where hard work, challenge, change and above all, a strong sense of care for justice and inclusion have ultimately led to outstanding success. Nicola told us five stories, which together have contributed to her becoming Professor of Health Policy and Sociology at the University of Birmingham. And I'd like to thank her for allowing us to get insight into some of the stages of that journey. You'll all have taken away from Nicola's journey, points that resonate with you personally, and I'd just like to pick out three that particularly spoke to me. In Story One, Nicola told us how at school she'd considered a number of careers, including architect, librarian and town planner. How glad we are, that all these potential options faded into the background. And instead, as with many other sociologists, Nicola gradually became aware that of course that's where her path lay and the rest is history. As we've heard this afternoon. Storytelling has been a leitmotif throughout Nicola's lecture, and listening to other people's stories, as you said, is and making sense of them using qualitative analysis techniques. Is the sociologist bread and butter. So in that story, in Story Two, Nicola briefly mentioned her most cited paper published in 2014, which talks about one of the techniques for doing this. I think she was far too modest when she talked about this paper. It is the go to methods paper for this type of data analysis for students and researchers internationally and according to Web of Science, this week, has 4334 citations. Not bad. A significant achievement and a wonderful resource for the academic community and the University of Birmingham. So finally, Story Four and Nicola’s stepping up to becoming Head of School of Social Policy and her experiences so far. When describing that role, she could have talked about any number of issues buildings, meetings, having the power to make decisions. But what came out overwhelmingly was interactions with others. She told us the rewarding bits have all been about people and all the most challenging bits have been almost about people. too. Nicola’s strong interest in and concern for others will, I'm sure, enable her to lead the school and her colleagues to success over the coming years. So please, will you join me in a round of applause? Professor Nicola Gale.
