Faces of Reading

I now live in London, and I have two children. My work schedule was set up to balance being a mother and a lecturer, so I was able to start early in the morning and work in Reading three days a week. I would creep out of the house quietly so as not to wake my children! Now the children are older and they don't need so much of my attention, I also work from home two days a week. This requires that I am very reactive on the days I'm not in Reading and also that I am flexible about the days I choose to work from home.

I also act as carer for my mother and mother-in-law. It would be fair to say that I've always had significant care responsibilities, but have always managed to balance them with my work because the University has been flexible. I never missed a parents’ evening and made it to most school events.

For example, there are days when I work at home so I can pick up my five-year-old son from school. My electric car cuts down on carbon emissions but unfortunately not on travel time; I still have at least an hour-long commute each way, so being able to work from home on certain days really helps to fit everything in.

There’s a lot of support for doing things differently at the University, and from my mentor and manager. In addition to flexible working, I also benefit from interdisciplinary research interactions through my work with the Centre for Past Climate Change, and I’m co-chair of the Equality and Diversity Committee in the School of Mathematical, Physical, and Computational Science.

Read more about flexible working in the School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences.

DAS provide support to all students across the university, with conditions from dyslexia to depression to assistance dogs. Collaborative working is a necessity in such a busy department providing multi-faceted care to 3,500 students, and we commonly pool our knowledge and expertise when an unusual query arises.

As a Disability Support Co-ordinator, my most important function is working on the ‘front lines’ – particularly on our reception desk in the Carrington Building. I know from my own experience as a student how much difference it makes when staff are friendly and understanding and I do my best to make our reception desk as welcoming as I can.

It had not gone unnoticed to me when I first interviewed on campus that there were rainbow flags wherever I looked. I joined the Disability and LGBTQAI+ networks immediately upon starting work, and formed tight-knit friendship groups with university colleagues I simply never would have encountered otherwise.

Within an outwardly accepting employer, I have found DAS to be even more reflective of that – although I have rarely been shy about my disability, my queerness, or my three-person relationship I have never felt more accepted for who I am as an employee than at the University of Reading.

Collaboration was never something we planned, it was more of a way of doing things that seemed practical to us. But, when it came to finding institutional support for our work, particularly in academia, we found that it was quite difficult to square this way of working with existing frameworks. 

Few universities were willing to take us on as joint lecturers, so we were delighted to find the University of Reading more open-minded. Here, our collaborative approach is not only supported, but reflected in the teaching in the Department.

The Art Department offers many opportunities for students to work collaboratively and really fosters an engagement with practices that challenge the idea of individual authorship.

As well as working students in the studio, we have had several opportunities to run projects offsite as mini-residencies with students in collaboration with various venues both nationally and abroad, from the Merzbarn in Cumbria to Nova Perla on the outskirts of Prague. In these less formal environments, we have found group work to be particularly useful as a way of instilling the mutual support that we hope will serve our students as well when they graduate as our collaboration has done for us.