Research lives and cultures
Research lives and cultures
74- Prof. Jenny Clark- Modelling parenthood in research careers
Prof. Jenny Clark is a Materials Physics research leader in the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at The University of Sheffield. Jenny has sailed the fellowship boat to build her research career while putting her family as one of her priorities. She is an example to showcase that whilst no one can ever “do it all”, researchers with parenting responsibilities can progress in science and protect their family time.
Listening to our conversation will prompt your thinking:
- What are the boundaries between work and other parts of your life that you want to reassess and work on?
- What could be more in control/ feeling more balanced look like for you?
- What are you prepared to push away/ say no to/ accept not to be involved in to reclaim a sense of control?
Read the full blogpost:
https://tesselledevelopment.com/research-lives-and-cultures/jenny-clark
Okay. Let's get started. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, dear listeners. This is Rin Sub, your host on the podcast Research Lives and Cultures. And today I have the privilege to have with me Dr. Jenny Clark. And Jenny is a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield in the Department of Physics and astronomy. I met Jenny a few years ago when I still worked at the university so let, let's get started and with a few question about your research so far. Can you give us an update of, the last few years in your career? Where are you at that moment
Jenny Clark:okay, well first of all, thank you very much for, for having me on. It's really nice to see you again, Sandrine where I am in my career. So yeah, I'm a senior lecturer. I still work part-time, so I work three quarters times, so percent. I have a research group of about seven researchers, PhD students, postdocs, and I've been very lucky to get research funding so we can continue doing the research that I did during my research fellow. We're working on at the moment, photosynthetic staff and photonics and kind of tying all of those things in together and it's, it's just absolutely, I mean, I love working in, in research, really enjoy it. So have a lot of fun days working with the my group.
Sandrine Soubes:When you think about the years before the fellowship, what got you to be in a position to apply for a fellowship, because of course, I meet a lot of postdocs who, you know, have intention of having academic careers think about, fellowship lectureship, and we are not always in a position to be able to apply. So, what happened in the early years on your journey that enable you to be in a position to apply
Jenny Clark:yeah, that's a good question. So I will go back to, I did a PhD in, in Cambridge University and then, I've always been a bit happy go-lucky. So I enjoyed doing the, the PhD and then I wanted to go abroad. So we, I went and do a postdoc in, in Italy. Me and my partner decided early on in our relationship, we got together when I was 19, a long time now, and we decided early on that we didn't wanna have long distance relationships, so he chose Cambridge and I went there to do my PhD and then I went to chose to go to Italy and, and he came with me and then he chose to go back to the UK again. And at that point, I managed to go back to the uk, back to Cambridge on a Dorothy Hodgkin fellowship from the, the Royal Society. The things that got me in the position of being able to do that, first of all, when I once were thinking of going back to the uk, I applied to every single fellowship under the sun. So I think I applied for seven different fellowships at the same
Sandrine Soubes:Oh wow. That's impressive. Wow.
Jenny Clark:To, to try, because once you've got one idea, then, then you can apply for all of them. I, I was awarded two of them and, and then was able to choose, which was really nice. The thing that got me there I think is because I was extremely lucky during my PhD to collaborate with a theoretician who was just amazing. And so the work got quite high profile. And then I was also lucky in my postdoc and I was able to, when I was talking about the fellowship, I was able to say, okay, I'm gonna bring the things that I learned during my PhD together with the different things that I learned during my postdoc. And this puts me in the unique position. And then I was able to write a project that things that I was very excited about in that field and, and I kind of was able to put all of that together, if that makes sense.
Sandrine Soubes:I have many conversation with people about, developing the research niche because obviously that's what you are ask, you know, when you are building a fellowship and what do you felt really supported that process of bringing things together?
Jenny Clark:That's a good question. I I'm not sure I know the answer to that one, Cause I, I, I didn't have, I didn't, I wouldn't say that I, I didn't have help writing the fellowships. Nobody read them before I submit all, I did all everything wrong. I didn't give them to anybody to read. Apart from one of the postdocs in my group, I didn't, I just said to the, the PI that I wanted to, can I, can I apply for a fellowship? And he said yes. And then I just basically went ahead and did it. And the other thing I should say is that I've always wanted to do biology. But because of the way things worked out, I ended up in a different group doing something else. And for my PhD I didn't do pH physics in biology that I was interested in. I did something completely different and I kept wanting to try and go back into it. And I saw writing a fellowship as a way of getting back into that. And so that gave the niche something different because I was coming from organic electronics and photonics and then bringing that together with something that you could learn about biology or, or, and trying to move in that direction. And so it was very much, there was definitely something I wanted to do, and then I could think about this particular skills that I had, and I, it, it just, it took a really, really long time and it was a lot of work. At the time when I applied for the Dorothy Hogan Fellowship, for example, it was a two page application, which is ridiculous. And there was so much work that went into that. So that putting the fellowship together, It, it's only two pages, but it took me a year probably to get all of the ideas together and thinking about it and talking about it with people and yeah, I dunno, difficult, I can't, I can't quite say there was one thing that helped it, it, it is just lots of thinking about things and reading and all the rest of it.
Sandrine Soubes:what's I'm picking from that, that I think is particularly interesting. It's kind of hanging onto something that you really want and really care about, and this idea of, biology is something that interests me. You know,, how can I bring stuff together to answer a question within a biological context? That's one of the things that I keep asking people, okay, what do you really care about? What are your values? You know, what matters to you? And, I'm really curious because you said that you didn't show your applications to others, what stop you from doing that? Because one of the thing I always say to people who are trying to apply for fellowship, I say, oh, you know, try to, get feedback from as many people as you can and then, don't necessarily listen to everyone but actually hear what people have got to say, but you didn't do this.
Jenny Clark:why didn't I Do that? I, I'm, I'm not sure I'm, I'm naturally quite introverted and the, I, I find, I find the most difficult thing in the world is showing things to other people and, and asking for help. I'm, I'm just not very good at that. So, Unless, like when I first arrived in Sheffield and I had to write my first grant, there was a piece of paper said, you have to show it to other people and you have to get evidence that you've shown it to other people. So then I was, I, I felt enabled to go and show it to other people. But otherwise, I know everybody's busy. I know these, that's how things work. And so it was more at the point when I had, when I was happy with it, that's when I send it out. And at that point, it's like the deadline is in two weeks and there's really no time for feedback. And it's only to the people who have to know what it says in order to say, yes, I'm happy for you to come and work in my group. So I, I've always worked a bit like that owned and quite often my own worst critic. So I read it obsessively many, many, many, many times.
Sandrine Soubes:No, but it shows that, we've all got different ways of going about it, there isn't a right or a wrong way to do it.
Jenny Clark:Absolutely. Cuz I always tell everybody, get feedback, get feedback. It's a good thing to do, but you
Sandrine Soubes:And often, yeah, often we've got lots of messages to others, but we don't apply this to ourselves, you know, in, in many areas of a professional life.
Jenny Clark:Absolutely. So I, I, I think I sh I shared with you and it, it would be good maybe to share, to share with other people the, the blog from professor Anal at Harvard University. And she talk, talks about not taking advice because people give you advice on how to succeed. And they tell you everything they did, everything they wish they'd done, everything their friend did, and they give you this list and you're like, oh, I can't possibly do all of that. And that's because it's not a real list. Not no one person can do all of that. And I think that's really important that just what you said, that, that we often give advice that we wish we'd done rather than what we actually did to succeed. And I think that's the case here that I always tell people, look for feedback, but I'm very poor at asking for feedback.
Sandrine Soubes:It's interesting you mentioned that because yesterday I was running a workshop for some new PIs who are taking part in a program via the academic of medical sciences. And we were talking about mentors and people always say, oh, you need to get a mentor. And I was saying to them, well, you have to be cautious of how you listen to what a mentor is saying. Because a mentor comes within their own experiences. We are on their lifetime. And, the context that they were in when they progress, academia may have looked different. we listen for advice, but actually we have to take a picture of salt when we are listening to all these things and Often it's about listening more to what we want and how we want to go about things instead of actually how somebody else has done it. Particularly in the context of, equality, diversity, and inclusion. Because often people who are in senior position may have been much more privileged than maybe we are, and their way of dealing with the world, their way of dealing with academia cannot be the same as ours. When you're thinking about the way that you've built your own research team, you will have had many colleagues who may have told you, or you should do it this way or should do it that way. But when you think about, the step-by-step progression that you've had in building your own team what have you had to tell yourself, okay, that's my way of doing it. You know, my colleague down the corridor may run their group this way or may recruit in this way, but actually that's my way.
Jenny Clark:I think there's several bits to that, that question. There's the how do you build your research group? And to be honest, slightly haphazardly is the answer. As an experimental scientist, it's really important that I have a group of people who can work in the lab and support each other. And so the group has to have a specific size so that there's enough people that, as people leave, cuz it's a constant flow of people, that there's enough people to help the people who are coming through and to teach them. And there's a lot, it's, it's different if you're if you, if you do theory or, or, or something else, then you don't need to have such a big group and then the building up of, in order to have a group that's a sustainable size to allow that to happen, then you need to think about, okay, what funding do I need in order to keep that going? And then it all stems from that. And so it's all about how do I get to do the science that I wanna do? And, and, and so it goes through that. And then there's the people who come into the, into the group and again, ha absolutely haphazardly because. The way you, you have to kind of take funding from different places sometimes. At the moment, I've got a student who's self-funded who's, who's got funding from their government. And, and she's a Saudi Arabian student. She's absolutely fantastic. And, and so, and we, we get a, a different viewpoint in the world because she's there doing that. But I couldn't have predicted that because it's not something that I applied for. She applied to me. And so that was kind of haphazard in that way. One of my so the, the person who was in charge of my group when I was a PhD student once told me, you always wanna try and work with people who are smarter than you, who are more intelligent than you, and. That is absolutely. If I could, if I could, if I could choose anything, it would be that, it would be, I wanna work with people who are smarter than me and have different opinions and come from different places, because that is that's where we get the, I, that's where I get the most joy from doing the research is we do the science. We, we occasionally you get these moments when everything just clicks this thing that you've been worrying about for. Years sometimes just kind of clicks into place and you suddenly understand it and you're like the only people in the world who understand this thing. And it could be a tiny little niche that nobody else really cares about, but it doesn't matter. You've been worrying about it and it clicks into place and working with people who are smarter than you and you can work, really work together on something that's just absolutely fantastic. So you just have to hope that, that you find these people and you can infuse these people to come and work with you. So you want, you want really the smartest people you can find because it's just such a joy. The other bit of it is that it's really important to have people who are nice and kind, and that that is the ethos in the group because everybody should flourish in the group. And, and I worked once with, with somebody who, who, who, who wasn't like that. And it, it, it was Horrible. And it, it made the whole of the group kind of fail and fall down. And it's amazing how just one person can, can make everything go bad. And so I think, yes, you wanna work with really smart people, but you wanna work with people who are smart and kind and thoughtful and, and that's just, yeah. So that's how I kind of build my group completely haphazardly. But when I'm doing it, I'm looking for these things.
Sandrine Soubes:And in a way it's the challenge because obviously just getting the first funding for PhD student or getting students to apply, a few weeks ago I was running a workshop with some fellows and we were discussing the challenge in term of recruitment where you get very few applicants, then you choose people that, may have the technical competencies, but they don't necessarily have the ethos in term ways of working that you would want. So how have you approached, creating some visibility so that people will want to work with you.
Jenny Clark:Again, I'm not entirely sure. But I think it's to do with word of mouth. So I have had people who came from I had a student who got a really high class grade at their undergraduate in, in, in Cambridge, and, and chose to come and work with me. And I'm not entirely sure how that happened, but I think it's to do with word of mouth. And I think it, it's that kind of, oh, Jenny's really nice and good, so maybe go and work with her. But I think it's partly that that kind of ethos that, that you bring. The other thing is that one of my best PhD students since being in Sheffield came through a completely different route. So he didn't have a math a level, for example, and went to university. And the university that he went to is Nottingham Trent University. They really supported him and he realized that actually if he works hard, he can do, do this stuff. And he came here and he worked hard and there were bits missing maybe from his, some of his education, but we were able to, to work together with that. And, and he's been really successful. And it, it isn't necessarily the ones who are the top. That are the smartest, it just sometimes depends on how their education worked out. And so I think it's impossible to tell when you interview a PhD student where they're going to be. And some of it is luck. But once you get in, I think being able to nurture people and to infuse people in the end, everybody has something that they can do and bring to the group. And with hard work and, and, and support, there's no reason why it shouldn't be successful.
Sandrine Soubes:it brings this idea of, equity of access I don't know if, whether it's the right term, but giving people a chance when people don't necessarily have exactly the right degree or exactly the right thing that they've done before, but actually are really interested in what you're doing. And You have a sense that there is a internal motivation and interest that's beyond just the technical skills that they may not have acquired yet. And, you know, how can you trust yourself? Of taking on people like that and giving them a chance. And I, I suppose, if you are a new PI, just setting up your group, that's hard to do. I think that probably when you've had a few PhDs on and you've kind of build a confidence to work with people in that sort of, you, role. Maybe you can, but you can get people that you say, okay, I'm going to take a chance on this person. It's, it's, it's kind of hard. Really.
Jenny Clark:It's, it's very hard. So this PhD student that I took the chance on, I suppose you could say he, he was my, one of my first PhD students in, in Sheffield. When I was kind of forming, I had a. Or Hodgkin Fellowship when I was in Cambridge. But that was a lot easier to get students because the students came because the group was famous. And so that was a totally different thing. Really. The first real independence I had was coming to Sheffield. I was so worried about not having PhD students when I started that I applied my strategy for fellowships that I talked about earlier. I applied for everything I could think of to get a PhD student. And in the end, I had four PhD students starting in my first year, which was a bad idea. It was an awful lot of work supervising those students all at the same time. And I think it was detrimental to them because, because it was a new group. I had one postdoc and it was me and one postdoc and these four students. So partly because I had the funding, I took the students and so I was able to make a bit of a, I was able to take a bit of a chance on one of the students because. There were four. Do you know what I mean? So Yeah. It's, it's, it's difficult. And, and he turned out to be the most successful of the four. the other three did really, really well. But in terms of academics, he's the only one that stayed in academia. And the, the others went on, went on and did very successful things elsewhere, but yeah. But not, not in terms of academia. Yeah.
Sandrine Soubes:So if, if you reflect on the, last few years, what do you feel has been the most challenging in term of progressing, in academia you went from, Doroty, Hodgkin, and then you had a, a VC fellowship when you started in Sheffield and now you are a senior lecturer. When you think about, these various stages, what do you think has been, the most difficult?
Jenny Clark:Hands down, it's having children.
Sandrine Soubes:okay.
Jenny Clark:I, I Almost quit. when my children were, were young, I, I had a certain view of what I wanted to be as a parent, and I also wanted to, to, you know, be there to support my group and, and to do research to the quality that I wanted to do it. And I, I thought actually with all of the other things that you need to do as an academic, I, I was like, well, actually there's not enough time in the day. This is not possible to do this. And it was very, very hard. And I kind of came to terms with it by thinking about it in terms of the, we still have this view of women in society as being the ones when you're at home, when you're in a relationship and you've got family, you're, I'm still the one that gets up in the middle of the night and the one that does all the emotional load and most. Families. I know most of them that's the case. It's the woman that does all of that, that kind of extra work in the house, the cooking, the cleaning, the deciding what to eat. Is it healthy, is it not healthy? How are we gonna, all of that stuff that we do. And on the other hand, we've got all of the academic work that we need to do, and my male colleagues who are fathers tend not to have the load at home. And so it's a little bit easier. They also don't take long maternity leaves. And when, when I took maternity leave, there wasn't shared parental leave at that point. So at hands down, having children until that point, my view of the world is that if I try and it doesn't work, it doesn't matter. I tried my best. I'll do something else. It'll be fine. And, and with that attitude, it doesn't, you know, you apply for seven fellowships if you don't get them, oh, well, nevermind. But you do your absolute best so that you know that if you failed, it was because of something else, not because you didn't do your best. And it'll be fine and something else will happen, and all of the work that you put into it is gonna be useful for something else anyway. But at the point of having children and being a early career academic, at that point, I realized that the way it, it's set up is not set up to be able to do that. And, and I. I wanted to have it all, and I couldn't, and it, it drove me mad. So yeah, I almost quit. And it was, my father actually said, no, it'll be good for your children if you stay, stay in academia. It'll be good for them to see that it's possible. And so I decided, okay, I'll, I'll do it, but I'll do it in my own terms. I had basically three years off to have children. I worked part-time., If at some point somebody says, Jenny, you're not pulling your weight. I'll say, okay, well, I quit because I, I do my best. And if I can't succeed doing my best, then it's time for a different career, if that makes sense. And so I kind of square it like that. I'm not very good at replying to emails, you know, I don't review as many papers as I probably should. I don't organize conferences, these kinds of things.
Sandrine Soubes:You create boundaries,
Jenny Clark:I create boundaries. Quite strict boundaries. Yes.
Sandrine Soubes:which is the only way, because, otherwise the academic work kind of sucks everything that there is.
Jenny Clark:Yeah,
Sandrine Soubes:What do you think help you to create these boundaries? Because many people don't do it. And male colleagues also do it at the expense of their mental health. I mean, all the reports that we have about mental health in academia doesn't make for, happy reading. So in a way, the only way to survive and thrive. In that sort of culture is to have very stringent boundaries. How did you make it happen upon, because I talk with so many early career fellow who say, they're going to check me out if I don't do this, do that, do and and respond to everything. So how did you go about setting these boundaries for yourself? Uh,
Jenny Clark:With difficulty. It, it was really difficult because you have to give up. I I remember just coming back from maternity leave and going to a conference and meeting a colleague who we, we had been in Cambridge at the same time. And I met him and and he'd just had a baby. And I say, oh, but you, did you not take Lee, you know, parental leave cuz you can in Germany? And he said, well, no, because that would be the end of my career. And I was like,
Sandrine Soubes:okay.
Jenny Clark:what? And so I realized that, that, you know, that, that, that there are different boundaries that you have to take. And I was like, well, okay, I have to think about this. And so I don't work at home. I only work at work. When I'm at home, I'm mom, and when I'm at work, I'm scientist. And if I don't get things, I, the, I've been extremely lucky by having my parents look after the children, pick the kids up two days a week. They live in York, but they commute to, to Sheffield to pick the kids up, to feed them. And, and so on those days when I'm not mum in the afternoon, I work really late. And so if there's something that I need to do, I work really late to, to get it, to get it finished. And I, I re recognize that that's not a good thing to do. I try very hard not to work hard on things which don't bring, the reason I'm doing this is because I love the science and I love doing the science. And so I try to hard to not work on really hard on things that are not that. So I put in. The amount of time I think is important for the teaching. And then I, the research, and then I also do a little bit of trying to give back to the community because I've had this amazing opportunity to be a scientist. And, and apart from that, I try not to do other things. And I, I think if, if somebody wants to say to me, well, you haven't organized any conferences, so therefore we're not promoting you. And then I say, well, yeah, whatever, it's, it's, you kind of downgrade the prize a little bit and decide that actually what I want to achieve out of my life is to be, to have some papers, some research that I've done that I'm really proud of. And that is for me, more important than being promoted or these other. External accolades. I don't want to bring in lots of money. I want to do good science. If I have to bring in money to do good science, then it's not the bringing in the money that's important. It's the end product. It's the having done something that's, that's, that's important. And so kind of changing the narrative for myself, that helps. And, and then very having these very strict boundaries, which are geographical. So I'm at work, at work and I'm at home. At home. I don't work at the weekends. If I have to work at the weekend, I organize it like very, very exceptionally. There's something that comes up and I have to do it. And, and it would only be for research. I wouldn't do it for like, uh, admin things. Then I would work somewhere else. And, and I would get somebody to come and look after the kids, and I would, I would like say to my husband, okay, this week, this day I'm going to go and work, but I would actually come into work and work rather than try and work at home. Covid, of course,
Sandrine Soubes:Yeah.
Jenny Clark:neatly destroyed that. And so that, that was another really difficult thing. And so in Covid, the way me and my husband dealt with it is that we had one day on work and we were at work and we shut the door and the kids couldn't come and talk to us, and the other parent was looking after the kids and then we'd swap around even, and you know, of course I did more. That's how it goes.
Sandrine Soubes:It's really interesting this idea because I was going to ask you about, the balance between the different element, the teaching, the admin research and, during, promotion application, there is this thing of you need to have the right balance between the different elements. When you are, parent and with several young kids, it can't be the same as, if you are a single individual or if you are much later and your kids are much older. So, being prepared to say, actually I'm focusing where it matters to me. for some academics actually the teaching is something that brings them a lot of joy. So they may actually spend much more time on the teaching side. But what matters is to have a deliberate choice and be prepared as supposed to take the consequences where you may be rejected from promotion, but say, okay, I am choosing to do it because that's the way I want to be, within my life as an academic
Jenny Clark:Absolutely. So for example sometimes. I, I was thinking about this because I saw that, I was thinking that you might ask a question about how do you balance the teaching and the research and, and the administrative role. And I was thinking, how do I do it? And one answer is that I've been on a research contract for very long time, so research is kind of on track. And so if research is your thing, I highly recommend applying for all research fellowships and really trying hard to get one because it helps you to, to decide how you're gonna do the teaching and on what terms and what other things you're gonna do. The other thing is that if I've found that I've got the grants and the, the group is going well and it's kind of self-sustaining, and I've got postdocs who are looking after PhD students and, and, and that's kind of going okay, then I decide, okay, now I'm gonna focus on the teaching and I'm gonna learn how to do good teaching and I'm gonna put loads of effort into, you know, how do I develop my, as a teacher and so I, I'd done that where I have a year where I don't. Input as much of myself into the research, and instead during that year, I input more into the teaching. But it's a very conscious choice because I'm very, I know myself and I'm very single track kind of obsessive. And so I, I, I find it very difficult to move between things very rapidly. And so I can't put myself into doing an excellent job teaching and doing an excellent job in the research all at the same time, because I would get lost and I wouldn't do a good job at either of them.
Sandrine Soubes:So the strategy is really to create a focus that's based on the flow of what's going on within your group. Yeah.
Jenny Clark:yes. Yeah. So my primary focus is research, but I, I also want to, I mean, I, I, I love teaching the course that I teach at the minute, I think I find it really, really hard. It's not something that comes naturally to me. I hate standing in front of students lecturing because everyone's looking at me. I hate it, but. I, I enjoy the aspects of teaching and the learning and the being able to pass on some of this information and to kind of help people learn things. But I'm, I'm not very good at it. I need to work on that, that aspect. And I, I know that I do, so I, I, for example, the, the, the teaching course that they offer, because I had a research fellowship until I was senior lecturer. I didn't have to do it. I don't have to do it, but I, I, I actually enjoyed doing it because it, it, it helps in the process of learning how to teach, is a
Sandrine Soubes:Yeah. It create, yeah, it creates a structure where you, you have to think about it, not just, okay, which lecture am I developing, but actually what is my approach to delivering this content and how do I engage the students and
Jenny Clark:absolutely. Yeah. And I have an awful lot to learn in, in that aspect. But it's, it's something that's important
Sandrine Soubes:So one of the things that I asking Keen to ask you, we've talked about, managing time and so, but one of the elements I, I'll be keen to move on, is this idea of collaboration, especially because, a, a lot of your focus has been on research and obviously collaboration are built on relationships. They're built on trust and all these things take time and, you can be thrown into a collaboration that doesn't quite work. So, when you think about the collaboration that you've had over the years, how have you initiated them, nurtured them and, what are some of the challenges that you've experienced as part of the process of building a really good collaborative pool?
Jenny Clark:Again, I think it's, it's a little bit like the discussion we had with PhD students, collaborators are all individual people and, and all individuals. So how you've approached collaborators and how you collaborate with people is an individual thing between you and the collaborator. I was introduced to collaborations really early on in my PhD. My PhD supervisor left at the end of my first year and. When I took up a position somewhere else. But before he left, he said, I think you should email this professor in this theoretician. And so I spent ages, like months crafting the email and then eventually emailed him and he emailed right back and he became this theoretician in, in Philadelphia, became like a supervisor to me. And so it was a very collaborative, he's a theoretician. I do experiments, but you know, we work together and I learned so much from him and he's really huge, has played a huge role in how I think I would like to do science. And so for that a point of view, we never met until we had to give a joint talk at a conference. And so that, that's really interesting that you can collaborate with somebody and the relationship can develop only over email. We didn't even talk on the phone. Zoom didn't exist, so it was just over email and, and it was absolutely fantastic and really, really rewarding. I've had other collaborations where we don't meet very often, but when we meet we have these nice discussions and everything kind of fits together. And I also think that when I, when it works well, PhD, stu, supervision and, and post-OC supervision is collaboration because you're working together on, on something. And so I think of that as collaboration as well. So how collaborations, I don't know, I, I, this they have no strategy exactly for collaborations other than if here's some problem and we need some external some, some, some ex, some. Expertise from elsewhere, then we'll go and devel find that expertise from elsewhere and we'll say, here's our problem. This is what we think could, could you help us with this? And then, then we work out how it, how it's gonna work. And it, it generally works out. And it's I find collaborators by going to conferences and by knowing people and talking to them or by emailing them and look around who's in Sheffield and see if there's anybody can, can, can help with a problem that we have. And likewise, if people come to us and say, oh, you've got this technique, can we do this? Then I'll talk to my students usually, and, and we'll have a discussion and the collaborator comes to our group meeting, we talk about who would be interested to take it on. And then we do that. We had a student from Japan come a few years ago, and out of that, the student and my student got on really, really well and we got three papers out of it. And it was, you know, now I collaborate with the, the supervisor. We've got a joint project and it's absolutely fantastic when, when things work out, but it's very much person to person and
Sandrine Soubes:So what is the risk when things don't work out? when you've had collaboration that felt really difficult. What was it that the collaborator didn't do well or didn't do, what were the elements that made some of these exchanges more difficult than others?
Jenny Clark:So I find sometimes people are just too busy and, and, and they're doing their own thing. And I, I think that's kind of reasonable. We're all really busy and, and, and that's how it goes. Sometimes. And, and I, I don't think that's a problem. I think that that is, if they're not interested enough, that's because I haven't sold it and you know, we haven't kind of got the joint enthusiasm in that and that's abso I think that's fine. So I don't really have a problem with that. And so then we, I would talk to'em and say, Hey, you're not interested anymore because then I can go and find somebody else and we have an honest discussion about it and, and it's totally fine. What I struggle with more is people who sometimes collaborators who, treat people in a way that I don't like people to be treated. And in that case I will tend to just walk away from the collaboration. don't want to be a part of that. So that's more where I struggle is, is when things have have gone or, or I feel like I'm not comfortable, but it's generally not about the work, it's more about the type of relationship. And if I don't feel comfortable than I tend to disengage and, and I just give up on that particular bit of thing that we were working on and I go and work on something else. And I just generally let it drop off.
Sandrine Soubes:So it's about the culture, basically, that this person may, either within their own lab or with, you know, the way that they, they interact
Jenny Clark:Yes, absolutely. And I, I, I don't want to I don't wanna be involved in that. Life's too short. So I think that's, that's very important for me to work with, with, like I said, with, with people in my group, that they're kind and respectful of everybody else, and that's so important. I don't want, I don't want anyone in my group to feel that they're going somewhere where they're not gonna be respected or, or people are not gonna be kind to them. I'm just not interested.
Sandrine Soubes:I'm really interested in this concept of research culture that now people are starting to talk about, more often some of the thing that you've said earlier in term of, you the culture of our work people have too much work, and we kind of accept that that's what happens in academia. When you think about the research environment, what really frustrates you the most? and maybe this element of overwork is one of them, but what I'm interested is about what you are doing yourself to be part of, changing the culture of the research environment. To be a change maker in that space, in the way that you are, either within your group, but also the contribution within your department, your faculty, the university, the broader research community.
Jenny Clark:I think. In the research culture question one of the things that annoys me is this idea that we are all looked at by metrics and we're all being, we're all being graded on, on things and, we get graded on the quality of our research in the ref, I suppose, but we also get graded within the university on how much money we bring in. But something like how much money you bring in really isn't, it's an, it's a means to an end rather than an end in itself. I think it should be. So I don't like that management aspect of research. And what I try and do in my group is to trust people to do their jobs and that to try to offer a supportive environment. So that people are enabled to do the best they possibly can, but I'm not telling them exactly what to do. It's more trying to, like I said, collaborate with the people who work in my group and, and support them where support is necessary. Some, some people need help writing papers. Some people need help with time management, but it, it's really, everybody is different. So that kind of aspect and what am I doing myself, really just trying to keep that going in my research team. There are other things that annoy me about research. One of them is the, the e equity issue, so the gender equality issue. And I did quite a lot of work reading and trying to understand. What, what works in other countries and, and how that's working. We also, together with a lecturer in philosophy department, we did a survey kind of about parental leave and we put recommendations to the university based on that. So we've got a a report, we've got a business case. Why, for example, use it or lose it? Parent paternity leave is the best thing to do in terms of gender equality because if fathers starts taking their parental leave, then a lot of the inequities that associated with being a mother compared to a father go away. And so just having un gendered parental leave where everybody gets the same parental leave would make a huge difference. And there's various other recommendations that we have in that report, and it went all the way up to the gender equality committee at the university, which meets with the, the top of the university. So we're doing that kind of stuff. The other thing that at the moment annoys me as the inequity in terms of international, so it, it, it makes a difference where you are born to how treated in, in our country and therefore also at the university. So for example, now if you are, if I hire a postdoc with a three year contract and that postdoc comes from a abroad, Let's say with a family let's say they've got one child and a, and a and a partner. They have to pay almost 10,000 pounds in immigration fees, in visa fees and n h s surcharge fees before they've even started their job. And that's on taxed income and on a postdoc salary, you can't possibly afford that. It's insane. And I think the university should, should be fighting against that, has, has something to say about that. So the government should also be supporting those international workers who, who come here by, by helping them pay for their dependent visa fees and, and the rest of it. Like, I mean, I've had two postdocs recently who have had a baby and while they've, and they've realized that because they have to pay so much money for this new baby because the baby is not British. And they're not British, they have had to leave and get a different job. it is completely unfair that, that that's the case and so this, this inequity that you get at that point. So in, in that sense, I'm talking to everybody I can about the issue because nobody realizes quite how bad it is. I think cuz it's been such a rapid change in the amount of money that, that our government is asking for our international colleagues. So it's gone up through HR and it's gone up through various different points and I talk to everybody so that hopefully lots of people talking about it will mean that there is change. And our researcher, we've asked about, asked questions to research council. I've talked to my MP about it and, and all of these things. So I'm, those are my two main things that I'm working on is the parental leave policies and, and the, the inequality for international researchers.
Sandrine Soubes:I mean, you talking about this is timely because also, there was in the news, over the last couple of weeks conversation about the government wanted to change for the students in term of getting them to bring their family. So, if you're a PhD student and you can't bring your family and you've got a young kid, why would you want to come to the UK to do a PhD if you can't bring your family and not see them for three years? I mean, it's really quite insane.
Jenny Clark:Absolutely. One of my PhD students, as we talked about before, is from Saudi Arabia and she has three children. And, and I mean, I think that's incredible that her and her husband both doing PhDs here at the University of Sheffield, they brought their three children, they enrolled them in English schools. That's incredible that they'd made this, this, this change and, and we benefit. But she's doing amazing cutting edge research at, at in, in my group and, and supporting the rest of the group and, and doing such excellent work. And she couldn't do that if she had to leave her three children at home. You can't be asking that. So yeah, I think this is, the university should really be, be doing more, I think to support their international researchers.
Sandrine Soubes:that's really interesting. One of the question I was going to ask you was about the champions that you've had in your career and you've already mentioned this professor that you had when your own PhD supervisor left and you had this collaborator, but who helps? When you think about, the community that's been around you in kind of helping you in the last few years in figuring out how to navigate your career or supporting you,
Jenny Clark:I think that's a, another really good question, and I think the, what you said about it being, um, multidimensional is really true. So I've had the, the head of the group where I did my PhD is very influential and he's been championing me. As we go through from external, I think, I mean, I think he has been championing, championing Ning me. I'm, I'm not entirely sure because he never says it explicitly, but I think that I have his support, which is very important. I've had support at the University of Shuffle from other f r s type scientists are very eminent scientists around Sheffield. And if I ever need advice, I always feel like I can go and talk to, to collaborators or colleagues. And I find that if I need help in some way that's kind of above my pay grade, I can go and talk to these people and they help me to sort things out, which is really good. Within the wider international community. I'm very lucky as a physicist, I'm very lucky to be in a, in a field of physics that's got many women and there are women who are more senior than me and women who are more junior than me. And we've got surprisingly strong international community of women researchers. And when I was struggling having small children some of those women were, I was able to go and ask them, how did you do it? What did you do? And they said, oh, you know, I just took time off. Don't worry about it. The, the talk invitations will stop for a while, but then they'll come back, they'll come back, don't worry about it. It'll be fine. And having that reassurance from them, they, they were a few years ahead of me and to see that and they were always very supportive. And then because I was part of a network at the university, I have peers who are in different departments and that's been really useful to make sure that. As a sense check as you go through all of these things, you know, how do I deal with this and how do I deal with that and how much time should I be spending? Dunno reviewing papers or reviewing proposals. How do you spend a week on it? Or is it like 20 minutes? What are we looking at here? Those kinds of questions. It's really useful to, to talk to, to colleagues about that. It's also been really useful when we think about things like the gender equality or the international researchers to have contacts all around the university because then you can kind of push on multi different levels, which has been very useful. So in terms of my personal career, probably the most useful has been my international network and the more senior, mainly men who have been, who have been there kind of looking out for us. And on the day-to-day, it's more people at my level.
Sandrine Soubes:I was really interested to hear also you said earlier that the approach that you had when you were applying for fellowship was to apply to any that you could, and also when you were looking at PhD, funding, applying all what you call and. Research careers always, come hand in hand with rejection, whether it's a grant of fellowship or all these things. So maintaining motivation and building the resilience are things that you just have to develop. But we all have different ways of doing that. What has been your own way of being resilient in a context where rejection is just part of the job?
Jenny Clark:I think. Changing what the goal that you are aiming for is really important. So I see grant writing, for example, as not to write. I mean, yes, it is also about writing a grant to get money to do the science. But if you also see it as an opportunity to give yourself time, to read the literature, to have thoughts, and to be creative and to understand what's happening and to make headway in your understanding of the field than having it rejected is less important because it's only part of the reason why you did it. You've also, you've still got all of that other knowledge that you gained by doing it, or you could be, I'm gonna write this proposal in order to make time and space to collaborate with that person. And, and we are gonna put this together to, to make this and, Therefore we get to spend time talking about the science and therefore maybe a paper will come out of it. And so even if the project is rejected, something else comes out of it. And so in some senses, thinking about it in those terms, the same with first of all, I always try my be, I think we publish too much. It's one of my little book letters. I think we publish too much. I try and put as much effort as I can into a few papers. And so the papers that I put out are to the best of my ability. This is what I think it is at the moment. And generally the reviewers appreciate that. And so the reviewers, even if it's a rejection, it's usually a kind rejection and it's a, a rejection, well, I think you've misunderstood this. Here's some other papers to read. And it's, they're usually very considered and polite. And, and so then it's, again, it's about learning and Oh, yeah, no, they, they're right about that. Or no, I think they've got that wrong. And you can think about it much more in those kinds of terms. And so I, I. I guess the other bit of it is, as an experimental scientist, when I was a PhD student, I realized that you go into the lab every day thinking today is the day that it's gonna work, and then it doesn't. But you have to come in the next day and be like, definitely today. Definitely today. It's gonna work. And so it's almost like you have to have no memory of all of those failed attempts and to be persistently optimistic that today, this one, this one is gonna work. Okay. Those are the ones didn't, okay. They weren't any good. And so this kind of, I think you developed that as well. Being a an, at least an experimental scientist, it's probably the same elsewhere. So all of those techniques changing why you're doing things, being constantly optimistic that this today is gonna be the day when you're gonna find that breakthrough. It doesn't matter that nothing else worked. And yeah, partly that's who I am. That's, I am an optimistic person in general, but partly it's been practice.
Sandrine Soubes:actually really love that idea of, coming. To the lab in the morning. And yes. Forgetting that the day before it didn't work and you don't necessarily want to do exactly the same thing if you experiment has failed and you're repeating in the same way.
Jenny Clark:No, I don't mean it like that. I mean it like, okay, yesterday didn't work. This thing that I'm gonna change today is gonna be me thing.
Sandrine Soubes:yeah. But having, you know, kind of re regenerating the enthusiasm to start the day with the same positivity is a really good way of framing it. If you had to do it all over again, is there something that you will do differently or think differently or will just, just do it exactly the way you've done it?
Jenny Clark:As an optimist, I would do it exactly the way. I think I'm in a perfect position now, so I wouldn't have changed anything. I would hope that gender equality and society's view of roles of women and men at in the home and in the work will change so that the women coming through who wanna be. As scientists and mothers are able to do that easier than, than it was for me, but in the way that it was then. Now it, I'm happy with how it, how it went. I'm glad I'm still here.
Sandrine Soubes:and if you think about the contribution that you really want to make as a research leader. What's the big picture of, the legacy that you want to have, as, as a scientist in term of the research culture, the way that we do science.
Jenny Clark:I want to show partly part of the reason I stayed in academia is to show that it is possible to be there for your kids at three in the afternoon and to be able to do good science. And so I want to, to, I talk about having children a lot. And I talk about it when I'm giving science talks because I want to show that that is possible, that this is a route forward, that it isn't yet as easy as it should be, but nevertheless it's possible and that everybody can have a different route into science. And I think that's really important, that as a community, we build different types of people being in in. And it doesn't have to be a, you know, I'm privileged in so many ways, and so I'm lucky to be able to do this and to be able to say, look, I also had children and I'm a scientist, and I think that's important.
Sandrine Soubes:Mm. And what gives you the most joy in research in your research life?
Jenny Clark:I think I talked about it already a little bit. It's collaborating with my group, working with really smart people who come through my group and. The high that you get when you have been working on something for so long and you don't understand it, and then you make the breakthrough and suddenly everything fits in place and you understand it and you're working together with somebody and you just both understand it. That high that you get is just incredible and it's, it makes everything else worth it, I think. I love it.
Sandrine Soubes:Thank you so much, Jenny, for coming onto the podcast. It's been really a pleasure talking to you and I hope to see you very soon. Thank you.
Jenny Clark:Thank you very much, Cindy.