Crunched? Academic Careers and the Recession
Thursday 3 December 2009
Speakers' Biographies
Dr Birgit Brandt: Director of Programmes at the British Academy.
The British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. As a Fellowship composed of nearly 900 distinguished scholars, it takes a lead in representing the humanities and social sciences, facilitating international collaboration, providing an independent and authoritative source of advice, and contributing to public policy and debate. As a learned society, it seeks to foster and promote the full range of work that makes up the humanities and social sciences, including inter- and multi-disciplinary work. As a funding body, in receipt of Government grant-in-aid, it supports excellent ideas, individuals and intellectual resources in the humanities and social sciences, enables UK researchers to work with scholars and resources in other countries, sustains a British research presence in various parts of the world and helps attract overseas scholars to the UK.
Birgit was previously Head of Grants at the Royal Society. Before joining the Royal Society, she worked as Research Grants Manager for the Big Lottery Fund. She has a Master’s degree in race and ethnic studies and a PhD in sociology, both from the University of Warwick, and a Diplom from the Freie Universitaet Berlin.
Dr Charlie Ball: Deputy Director of Research, Higher Education Career Services Unit
Charlie runs the labour market research team at HECSU and is responsible for support and research for university careers services across the UK. He is an active researcher on HECSU’s projects on graduate employment and in collaboration with external organisations. He is an expert on the employment destinations of graduates and postgraduates.
His research interests include:
• graduate destinations, particularly for postgraduates and for scientists;
• the study and career motivations of scientists and postgraduates;
• regional labour markets for graduates and postgraduates;
• migration of graduates within the UK and overseas;
• student and graduate demographics, particularly for scientists and postgraduates.
Dr Tennie Videler: Progamme Manager for Researcher Networks, Vitae
Vitae is a national organisation championing the personal, professional and career development of doctoral researchers and research staff in higher education institutions and research institutes. Before joining Vitae, Tennie was a researcher herself, completing a doctorate at the University of East Anglia and a dozen years of post-doctoral research in different fields of structural biology at the University of Glasgow, at the Laboratory for Molecular Biology in Cambridge and at Cambridge University.
Tennie joined Vitae last year and is the person dedicated to making contact with researchers, both postgraduates and research staff. She writes and commissions resources for researchers and attends events. She is also involved in research, such the ‘What do researchers do?' publication on the first employment destinations of doctoral graduates, hot off the press. It focuses for the first time on destinations by subject (as well as whole disciplines). It is accompanied by a publication with careers stories of people following completion of their doctorates.
Dr Ruth Smith: Postdoctoral Careers Adviser, Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
Ruth Smith enjoys a double life. As a freelance scholar with an international reputation she lectures, teaches and writes on Handel’s oratorios and operas. Her research for her Cambridge PhD resulted (after many years) in her monograph Handel's Oratorios and Eighteenth-Century Thought (CUP 1995, pbk 2005). Meanwhile she worked as an editor for academic presses and established and ran a small commercial publishing firm producing high-quality affordable illustrated guidebooks to cities of historic interest.
In 1983 Ruth joined the University Careers Service as a (part-time) careers adviser for all users of the Service, covering a range of specialisms. She initiated the Careers Service’s Guidelines series and its two popular CV handbooks, CVs and Cover Letters and CVs and Cover Letters for Higher Degree Graduates. In July 2009 she began the new role of part-time careers adviser for postdocs and contract research staff in the Schools of Arts & Humanities and the Humanities & Social Sciences.
Anna Nerukh: Cambridge Research Office
Anna is Information Administrator for the Training and Communications team at the Cambridge Research Office. She is responsible for the university’s subscription to the ResearchResearch funding opportunities database and provides training for individuals and groups in finding funding and partners for research.
