About my current job
It is a classic academic position, combining research and teaching roles in the psychology department, alongside citizenship contributions to the department and university. My research continues to focus on the underlying causes of language disorders in children, and considers this problem from multiple perspectives, including genetics and psycholinguistic approaches. I also direct and teach on York's MSc in Development, Disorders & Clinical Practice, which means that I get to teach my favourite topics, to students who will be part of the next generation of researchers and practitioners in the field of neurodevelopmental disorders.
Did you have a favourite tutor/lecturer/prof, and how did they inspire you?
My undergraduate tutor in EP was Kim Plunkett, and initially I found him terrifying. Eventually it dawned on me that he was not only a kind person, but also very funny. One of the metaphors he used in teaching that struck home, and that I've passed on to many of my own students, was of the nativist approach to language acquisition as the Empire in Star Wars, with Connectionism as the Rebel Alliance. Not only did this make it more entertaining to wade through some dense and occasionally rather dry material, but it was also a good reminder to keep opposing theoretical frameworks in perspective.
I stayed on in EP to do my DPhil, on the cognitive mechanisms of developmental language disorder, co-supervised by Kim and Dorothy Bishop. I loved being part of two labs: I learnt a lot from their approaches to overlapping fields (typical and atypical language development), and also valued the friendship and camaraderie that I found in these close-knit groups of colleagues. Dorothy created a particularly home-like atmosphere in the lab, and regularly hosted very memorable pot-luck dinners at her house. She also had an excellent tradition of cracking open a bottle of champagne whenever a member of the lab had a paper published, and this has stayed with me - the importance of pausing to acknowledge and celebrate these hard-won achievements, when it is often all too easy to feel that you must rush on to the next thing on the to-do list.
With the benefit of hindsight, do you have any advice you'd give your younger self?
#1: Do not let shyness get in the way of networking, and joining groups you ought to join. As a classic introvert, I have always felt happiest with small groups of people I know well, and uncomfortable with larger groups and strangers. I would strongly advise my younger self to take a deep breath and plunge in, so as not to miss out on getting to know people within my field that I would like and could learn from. It turns out that psychology is heaving with interesting people, none of whom bite.
#2: Be realistic about time, especially when figuring out how to balance your career with family-life. This is (hopefully!) a long game, and pacing matters if you're going to last the distance. I now know that I am at my best focusing on one thing at a time, whether it is a session of data-analysis, preparing a new lecture, painting with a toddler, or mediating between warring siblings. I learnt this lesson early on, during my first maternity leave, when trying to unknot a data tangle on the phone while jiggling a hungry baby - neither I, nor the dataset, nor the baby came out of that encounter happy. Working part-time while my children were small turned out to be key, and a decision I have never regretted.
