In this episode the tables are turned and I'm being interviewed by Nutan Limaye who hosts the ‘Life of a Researcher’ podcast. Nutan is an Assoc. Professor at the IT University Copenhagen. We met when she was a participant in one of our residential academic leadership development courses in 2024.

We talk about my unconventional career path starting in social work, moving into nursing and midwifery, then finding myself in computer science and human-computer interaction, and now doing more leadership and academic development work. As with many career stories, serendipity figures a lot, along with a strong people-centred red thread that weaves through all the various turns.

Nutan also asks about how the academic leadership development courses came about, and how we facilitate learning experiences on hard topics like challenging conversations. And we talk about themes that have arisen in the podcast. Along the way we also touch on interdisciplinarity, and academic mobility and what is home. This is a slightly edited conversation from the version she released end of June 2024, shared with her permission.

I'm releasing this now as a complement to my careers article in the Feb 25 edition of Communications of the ACM

Overview

00:29 Introduction

02:41 Nutan's Introduction to the Podcast

05:09 An Unconventional Career Path

07:34 Transition to Computer Science

11:08 Shaping Interests around People-Centred Perspectives

14:21 How Research Evolved as Technology Evolved

17:14 Reflections on Changing Paths

23:12 The Challenges of Interdisciplinary Research

28:03 Supervision Serendipity

34:21 Leadership and People-Centred Academia

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