Career Breaks
Case Study
Alison Mainwood's experience of returning to work after a career break.
My career is unusual among physicists, but it gives me direct experience of the problems facing women trying to follow an academic or research career.
It started conventionally enough, I did O levels at a single-sex private school but they were not interested in science, so I moved to a co-ed boarding school to do A levels in Physics, Maths and Chemistry. I took a gap year, much of it as an au pair in Norway, and went to Bristol University to do Joint Honours Maths and Physics degree. Just after graduating, I got married and my move to Oxford to do my DPhil was largely prompted by my husband also moving there to take a BPhil degree (in Philosophy). My husband joined the Civil Service, and that meant that we were tied to London. I took a 2-year postdoc position at King's College London, and started my main research line, which is computational modelling of defects in semiconductors. Towards the end of that job, I became pregnant, and slightly unwillingly, left work to bring up my son, followed by a daughter who is two years younger. My DPhil supervisor, who worked at AERE, recruited me to do a number of short computational modelling projects - just a few hours per week on a freelance basis, and AERE lent me a very early modem (running at 60 bps!) and computer terminal. Later on that was upgraded to a PC. When my daughter started school, I took on some part-time lecturing (again, only ~3 hours per week in term time) for Hatfield Polytechnic (now University of Hertfordshire) which was quite close to where I lived. Throughout all this time I had kept in contact with King's College, and I had also managed to get invited to attend one of the small annual conferences in my research field
After a career break of 12 years (not counting those part-time jobs), I returned to a full-time position in the Physics Department at King's College London as an "Experimental Officer". It is a position that I might have expected to get 12 years before, if I had not had the career break. By this time my children were reasonably responsible, and a neighbour and myself shared an after-school childminder for a year or two, and then abandoned the two families to look after themselves, which they did without any serious problems.
It took quite a few years to build up my research again. After 4 years I was transferred onto the academic staff as a Lecturer, and since then have been promoted twice (most recently to Reader) and have built up a strong research base. I now lead three UK-based major research projects, amounting to nearly £1.4M and a European Union funded Research Training Network comprising 8 institutions around Europe. Currently, one Research Assistant and four PhD students (plus one who has just finished, in South Africa) work for me. I have been active in the organisation of international conferences in my field of research and have presented invited and contributed papers all over the world. I was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics a few years ago.
My children both did extremely well at school and university. My son is now doing a DPhil at Oxford (in the Philosophy of Physics!) and my daughter works in the theatre.
In conclusion, what you need to return to academic work after a career break is very helpful friends, both at work and home, co-operative children, lots of energy and determination, and a lot of luck.
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