The School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences offers an excellent environment for me to conduct research and advance my career, with state-of-the-art facilities and the Centre for Autism, where I can discuss ideas with colleagues working in similar areas.
I am currently working on pitch processing in music and language, supported by my European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant, comparing two neurodevelopmental disorders, amusia and autism.
I have worked at the University of Reading in the Global Academy since 2019. I first came to Reading to teach temporarily on the summer Pre-sessional English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programme. I was living on a houseboat in Oxford at the time, after returning from some time teaching in South East Asia. I fell in love with the beautiful Whiteknights campus and met some very friendly and kind colleagues during that time. I was therefore very pleased to be offered a succession of further work in Global Academy after that summer, which resulted in my husband and I moving to Reading permanently. Shortly after this I secured a permanent lecturer position here.
After adoption leave, coming back to work meant adapting to a landscape that felt both familiar and new. A recently merged team, unfamiliar faces, and a different management structure made it feel like I was stepping into uncharted territory.
I was incredibly lucky to have unwavering support from a couple of wonderful colleagues and my new line manager. Their understanding made the transition smoother and far less daunting.
I am ethnically Russian, and I was born and grew up in Kazakhstan, which was one of the republics of Soviet Union before 1991. Since I was a teenager, I dreamed of becoming a scientist. I received my BSc and MSc degrees in chemistry from Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, then I continued to do a PhD in the same institution, specialising in the chemistry of polymers. During my doctoral studies I was fortunate to receive funding that supported my 4-month internship at the Technical University of Lodz in Poland, where my research was related to biomedical application of polymers and biomaterials. This internship was an eye opener and substantially influenced my future research and teaching interests.
In 2002 I moved to the UK to work as a postdoctoral research assistant first at the University of Strathclyde, then in 2004 at the University of Manchester. I then joined the University of Reading in 2005 as a Lecturer of Pharmaceutics in the Department of Pharmacy and progressed my academic career to a full professorship in less than 10 years. Since the very beginning of my time at the University of Reading, I had a fantastic mentor who supported me with my development as an academic.
