Give Me Inspiration! The Paradigm Shift with Professor Nancy Rothwell 30th October 2019

What do academics actually do? What motivates them to get out of bed each morning and to deliver what is — or in many cases what isn't — expected of them?

For a student setting out, the life of senior academics may seem very mysterious, particularly as many may end up taking on responsibilities and activities far removed from where an individual started. The trajectory from student to senior academic is rarely a straight line, with twists, setbacks, timeout and/or opportunities (taken or declined) all to be combined with a personal life.

This series of conversations aims to explore the individual paths of some eminent academics who have made it to the top in their own particular ways. How have they found their own solutions to 'life', what tips do they wish they'd been given earlier on, and what might they view, retrospectively, with most pleasure or regret?

This event in the series of conversations is with Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell — President and Vice-Chancellor of The University of Manchester, founding President of the (now Royal) Society of Biology, former President of the British Neuroscience Association and Co-Chair of the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology.

This event was filmed on the 30th October 2019.

[SueLyons]

49:41 'neither of us are in favour of positive discrimination... we do do unconscious biss training ... we've tried [blind] cvs... positive discrimination is against the law in this country'

[SueLyons]

46:15 'significant bias' [against women and pro-men] : jobs, grants

[SueLyons]

7:25 'the men were given initials and the women were fiven full names and that really annoyed me' and then the interviewer describes another example where there was a list with all initials but one was followed by (F) as the 'default' was an assumed male - and this was only about eight years ago

yep: ridiculous patriarchal anachronism