Let's Talk Disability

Let’s Talk Disability Series 2, Episode 3

Host: Professor Jackie Carter
Guest: Doctor Jessica Boland
Guest: Professor Richard Jones

[MUSIC]

JACKIE: Hello, I'm Jackie Carter.

I'm a professor in Statistical Literacy and the Academic Lead for Disability Inclusion at
the University of Manchester.

I live with a disability and a long-term condition and often describe myself as deaf, dizzy and disabled.

Here's a fact of two.

24% of the working age population in the UK has a disability. 80% of disabilities are hidden or invisible, as are mine.

I started the Let's Talk Disability podcast series to provide a platform to raise awareness of what it means to be a disability-inclusive university.

The podcast is a series of conversations which I host on the lived and living experience of our colleagues and postgraduate students of being disabled or having a long-term condition.

On each episode, I host two guests. One is a senior leader at the university, a person with influence and responsibility.

The other is a member of staff or postgraduate student who is open to sharing their disability or long-term condition.

The aim is to demystify what being disabled means and create a culture of sharing.

But and this is important, each episode moves from dialogue to deeds, from talking to action. The senior leader is invited to commit just one thing, an action they will take away as a result of the conversation.

The disabled guest gets to say what one thing would make the difference to their lived experience as a colleague or a student at the university.

So let's dive in and find out what today's guests want to share and what they will commit to make our university more disability-inclusive.

JACKIE: Okay, good morning and welcome to episode three of series two of the Let's Talk Disability podcast.

I'm here today in the studio with two guests who are going to introduce themselves in a minute and I just wanted to foreground this episode by saying we've got a campaign on campus that I've worked collaboratively with the Disabled Staff Network and the Student's Union to show what it means to have a hidden disability.

And for those who haven't heard me say it before, 24% of the working age population in the UK have a disability and it's estimated that 80% of those disabilities are unseen.

So I'm particularly pleased to be wearing my sunflower lanyard today and have two guests in the studio, one of whom is about to talk about her own hidden disability.

So if I can hand over Jessie to first to introduce yourself and say why you're here, please.

JESSIE: Yeah, really pleased to be here. So I'm Jessie, Jessica Boland and I'm a senior lecturer in the Department of Materials and my research is focused on functional materials and devices.

So I get to play with lasers to look at nanomaterials and hopefully make everyone's devices faster, which is pretty cool.

As you've already mentioned, I also have a hidden disability. So I am hard of hearing and have been since birth. I got hearing aids at about 16. I've had as many operations that I can't count them anymore and I like to say that I'm a bionic woman because I have artificial ear drums and metal bones in my ear, et cetera. So I am currently living with this hidden disability.

I also don't usually like to think about it as a disability because I don't necessarily see myself as disabled. I think it's society that needs to change and I think I just have a different lived experience.

JACKIE: Thank you very much and that's what we're here today to hear about.

Thank you very much, Jessie.

Richard, over to you. If you could now introduce yourself and say why you're here.

RICHARD: Yeah, I'm Richard Jones. I'm the Vice President for Regional
Innovation and Civic Engagement. So my administrative role, as it were, is to look after everything in the university about our relationship with the city and the region, about what we can do to support our citizens to drive the economy.

It's also connected with everything we do about knowledge exchange, the commercialisation activities that we do.

My professorial title is I'm Professor of Materials, Physics and Innovation Policy, which
is a kind of slightly weird mixture. So my department, home, is the same as Jessie's. I'm in the materials department.

I work on nanomaterials also, thin films, polymer thin film surfaces and interfaces. I’m an experimental physicist essentially, but as the other half of my title says, I've got very interested in innovation policy and science policy more generally over the years.

So I mix up quite a few things really.

JACKIE: That's wonderful. Thank you both of you for being my guests today and I'm hoping we get into a conversation about what the university's doing to support our disabled, whether we like to use that term or not, Jessie, I take that point, staff and students, but also about the work that we do in a more societal, a broader sense from local to national and perhaps in some cases international as well.

So Jessie, I know a little bit about the work you do but I'd like the readers to also understand some of the research you do as a woman in STEM. So maybe that can be starting point, please.

JESSIE: Yeah. So yeah, so a little bit of background. So I am also experimental physicist as well by nature.

So I did an undergraduate in physics that involved a year in industry and that's when my love for research really started. So I worked for Hewlett-Packard labs for a year and that was making colour Kindle displays. So I got really interested in how do I kind of use the kind of change them, get them to coat nicely to a device.

So really thinking about the kind of materials, how do I improve them to then make something that can translate into kind of the real world. And that thing got me kind of excited.

So I decided to carry on and I did a PhD and that was more thinking again now about the materials, but material characterisation.

So that was terahertz spectroscopy and we all actually know terahertz radiation because if you have gone through an airport scanner, that's very, very similar to terahertz radiation.

So it's the type of radiation that is not destructive. It's harmless and it's very good at telling you how conductive a material is. So that's great if you want faster devices.

So my whole PhD was trying to use this terahertz radiation to look at materials and tell you how good they would be. How good are they at carrying a current in a device.

And that's kind of sparked my current research.

So I spent a year in Germany as a postdoctoral researcher. That was a challenge because also as someone who's hard of hearing, lip reading in a different language, I can tell you is difficult, but not impossible.

So that had its own kind of different cultures associated with it.And that was really trying to use this terahertz technique and push it down to the limit.

So when I came back to Manchester, my lab and my research focus is now employing that radiation, but to try and shrink down the length scale as well.

So we can now map conductivity of materials on nanometer length scales. And that brings me into the nanotechnology.

So to do that, we do need lovely high power lasers to get the terahertz radiation. And those lasers are usually bigger than I am, which is always fun. But we can really focus that radiation down to these really tiny length scales. And we need to know how these material properties change on those nanometer scales, because that's what's going to make those next generation technologies.

So things like quantum technologies, telecommunications, 6G wireless communication, you all need to know how your nanomaterials are going to work.

And that's kind of my research at the moment.

So in kind of practice, it's kind of managing a lab facility, quite big space.

Also something quite unique to this beautiful terahertz microscope I have is it hates sound. So my lab is very audio damped, because vibrations are bad for this particular kit.

So that's quite fun, because it amuses me, but I can cope in a quite silent word, a like world anyway.

So there's challenges with that that we can come on to in terms of an accessible lab space as well.

But kind of running a lab space, also all the teaching aspect, which I love.

So I'm teaching courses on material science, nanomaterials, those types of functional properties at the moment as well. And getting more into kind of development of quantum materials now for quantum technologies.

JACKIE: I'm somewhat in awe of this.

I am STEM trained. I'm a mathematician and computer scientist by training.

But this is really, and you come to life when you talk about your research.

It's wonderful to observe and hear.

You're a future leader. That's right.

JESSIE: Yes.

JACKIE: What does that mean? Again, just for listening for Richard, so we can sort of spark off this conversation.

JESSIE: So I'm a future leader fellow. So this is a fellowship from the UKRI, the UK Research and Innovation. And it's aimed at early career researchers to really strengthen their own independence. So build that independent research group and lead in a particular area. And it's funding of quite a large number for about up to seven years and recently got that renewed for the last phase of three, which I'm really, really happy about.

So it's initial four years of research to build your activity and then it gets renewed three years. And a really nice thing about this future leader fellowship is there's also an aspect for your career development. And stuff that's outside of the research. So it's given me flexibility, not just to focus on the research that I obviously love, but also to do things more on a kind of EDIA focus. And also more research strategy.

So I currently have a role within the Henry Royce Institute, which is a research area theme lead on atoms to devices.

And that's thinking about strategy for that particular theme.

But I also am an active member of NADSN, which we know and love, the National Association Disabled Staff Network, which is really kind of instigated by the epic Dr. Hamied Haroon, who I think has been a guest on your show. And we have a STEM action group there as well. And that's fabulous because it's a group of STEM researchers and we're all passionate about accessibility.

So we all have different lived experiences and we can share best practice. And at the moment, that group is drafting a technical white paper to go to government and how we can make STEM more accessible.

So that's an aspect that I can actually weave into that future leader fellowship and
they support, which is really nice.

JACKIE: Wonderful. Richard, you suddenly listen very quietly. I've got lots of
questions, but this is a conversation between you two and I'm thinking about research, inclusive research cultures.

RICHARD: Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, perhaps what many people don't appreciate about kind of experimental science is lots of it's very hands on, isn't it?

You've got, you've got a lab, you've got things to fiddle with.

What's kind of, what helps you and hinders you in terms of your condition?

JESSIE: Yeah, that's a great question. So with experimental, I love being an experimentalist. And a lot of the lab spaces that I go into are not always accessible.

And I also think not just about my own disability, but other disabilities as well. A lot of these spaces, especially a laser lab are difficult.

If you're a wheelchair user, for example, you can't get into the space and you can't move around the space and just very small things like the lab height and the bench height kind of is going to be not appropriate for a wheelchair user, but also is not appropriate for someone of slightly smaller height of which I am.

So it's kind of difficult for those because they're not designed with a accessibility in mind.

So also something that I have noticed in my lab space is because it's lasers and we're measuring light, often the lab spaces are always dark. So switching off the lights, can't lip read in the dark. I'm a wizard, but not that good.

So that proves that they're in a challenge with communication. Also in these lab spaces, I'm sure you know yourself, it's quite noisy in these environments. There's lots of compressors, there's lots of kind of heavy machinery that's working.

That's also not great for an environment for me personally to hear in and communicate, but also things of you also have to wear laser safety goggles, which shuts off visible light.

So again, lip reading in laser safety goggles is impossible. It's easier to sign in the dark than lip read for me. So sign languages really helped me with that communication in the lab, especially in noisy environments and kind of shouting to each other.

But I think being an experimentalist is difficult when you kind of come to these spaces and they're just not accessible. And I think that's something that can be solved.

And there's a really good piece within the NADSN STEM group looking at how you might make an accessible lab space for as many disabilities as you can kind of think of.

But a lot of it as even if you're designing. So I think there's a point of designing a space from the start and that's also more cost effective.

So a lot of pushback when we talk about these kind of accessible lab spaces is budget and the cost.

But actually it's more expensive if you have to redesign something and change it later.

RICHARD: No, absolutely.

Getting it right first time is always right.
So I guess, you know, a big part of your work probably is, you know, you have a graduate student and graduate students, I can't get this to work. Come and show me or whatever.

How does that work for you if you, you know, that kind of practical hands on working with a graduate student?

JESSIE: Yeah, that's a great question.

My group are fabulous. They all know that I struggle with communication. So they make conscious efforts to make that an easier experience. So I will never say no to a student.

I probably spend too much time actually fiddling with kit, which is great.

But in terms of it's a weird dynamic because you're in a supervisor position trying to kind of, you know, teach and train.

But then you're also quite vulnerable because like have to say, I can't understand you, I can't communicate or I need you to do something.

So it's, yeah, it's quite a vulnerable position to have to ask for support and ask for that access.

And something I have faced, not with my own research group, they are all aware and supportive and make the accessibility adjustments I need.

But you kind of, there's an association of if you ask for your need or an adjustment that then you, that's related to your intelligence somehow. Yeah. And I think that's also
a problem within STEM as well, that kind of putting yourself in that position where you have to ask for help or a change, then you kind of have, I always feel that you're kind of like judged a little bit that you're like, oh, she can't contribute or how can she train me? Or how does she know about this? Because she needs me to do something.
Like I don't know. Which is difficult.

JACKIE: Can I jump in on that, Richard? Sorry to take your spot.

I think you've touched on something that's incredibly important. And one of the reasons for having this series of conversations is to demystify what it means to have a long-term condition or a disability by talking about our lived experiences, which is what we're doing now, but also to enable others, because we talked about being disabled
by society and that includes people, enable others to support us or have tolerance or patience.

So the whole purpose of this sunflower lanyard scheme that we have on campus this week is really to go beyond the, what does that mean?

This person's wearing a sunflower lanyard, what does that mean?

It's to, first of all, to show and exemplify the fact that some of us do have disabilities
that are hidden that you can't see, but also to enable people to come and say, is there anything I can do? Just like we did at the start of this conversation, what do you need from me?

But the more we do that and the more we normalise doing that, the more hopefully we will overcome these perceptions that just because a person has a hidden disability doesn't mean that they can't be a fantastic scientist or a future leader.

Is there anything else, Jessie, from your perspective that we could be doing collectively as an institution?

JESSIE: Yeah, I think there's a lot to do on making every single event accessible.

So I think there is, I would love to see the labs as well.

I would love to see more consultation on our teaching lab spaces and other experimental spaces like that being designed to be accessible.

So I would love the University of Manchester to have an accessible lab space that they've designed for teaching and that they bring schools into as well and regionally give that space.

So that's something I'd love to see, which I know is not easy to implement.

So the other thing I think would be nice, and I'm sure you've probably had this experience as well of, I'm just thinking about going to conferences and every time people don't use microphones, and this is one of my bugbears. I'm sure you've probably had this as well.

RICHARD: I know exactly what you mean.

Yeah, because how my voice is loud enough you can hear me or whatever.

JESSIE: Yeah, exactly.

And I always remember that I think someone stood up and was like, I don't need to use a microphone. I'm fine. Everyone can hear me and I was presenting and they were asking me a question. And obviously I could lip read him, but I was a little bit like, I can't actually hear you.

So I was like, I'm not going to answer your question until you use a microphone and was really, really stubborn about it. And it got a little bit awkward, but it was fascinating to me, this kind of thing of, to me it came across as almost arrogance.

RICHARD: I think that's a big part of it.

JESSIE: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's good. Yeah.

RICHARD: And obviously many in the audience are probably wishing that that microphone would be used.

Yeah. I've seen that too often and I think there is some weirdness about it. Some weird arrogance.

JESSIE: Yeah. I think that's something that we can try and do locally is if we have like events where people are coming in or like our teaching spaces or kind of, you know, I am thinking about outreach, STEM outreach, people coming in like events like that.

That is something I think we could have accessible things of meeting a microphone using it.

I do think the university has got some guidelines actually for how to make accessible events.

JACKIE: Oh, they do. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

JESSIE: But I would love to see them actually being put into practice and mainstreamed. Yeah. And like, I think like some of the kind of, I guess the big events that you probably organise, right?

Where it's kind of big kind of we're engaging the entire university. We're making massive announcements. I'd love to see BSL on all of those and subtitling remote captioning everywhere, microphones used and really thinking about that so that I don't have to come and ask it.

RICHARD: It needs to be routine, doesn't it?

JESSIE: Yeah.

RICHARD: And technology makes it so much easier than it used to be too. So in a sense, I think there's less excuses than there ever was if there wasn't an excuse.

JESSIE: Yeah. Yeah. I remember lockdown being hard because Zoom captions were not a thing and they were really awful.

But now like PowerPoint, you can put live captioning on the bottom. I was showing you the app the other day. That was lovely.

So I think technology has come such a long way that we can put this into practice.

JACKIE: I'm going to jump back on that for both of you because we've talked about technology now and how it's sort of caught up. But that effort, I mean, everybody talked about Zoom fatigue during lockdown. Do you remember we were on Zoom all day. Everybody was tired for a deaf person or a person who's got cognitive challenges or disabilities.

At the end of the day, it's very, exhausting to be putting that extra effort in all the time. And I agree with you, Jessie, I try to be the voice in the room that I would want to hear.
So I, and I know you do the same, we advocate on behalf of others who may not feel that they can sort of put their hand up and say, please ask that question with a microphone. So all of that is a way of coping with having a hidden disability.

But what you're talking about here and why this conversation is really intriguing is what can we do to make it mainstream? So it doesn't become the sort of extra, the add-on, the bit that we didn't think about at the beginning.

And if one thing has come out of these conversations that is a common theme, it's I never thought about that all the way up to the previous vice chancellor. Oh, I never thought about that until it was brought to my attention. So I think there's something that we're talking about here is how can we design inclusively from the start, but then how can we bring people in, you know, including people from outside the university.

We were talking about FE colleges before you arrived so that when they walk in the door, they feel immediately they can belong. You know, they don't have to share or disclose perhaps that they have a hidden disability because we're making it accessible to them from the start.

So with all your work in STEM, Richard, with your position of influence, what could we, we're ambitious as a university. We want to be the most inclusive university and it's going to be baked into the 2035 strategy.

What can we do to really build on the experiences that we've got, the networks we've got and what we want to do?

RICHARD: Yeah, I think, yeah, huge amount we can do. And I think, you know, it's really right to couple that to our work in the community. I think, you know, I'm very committed to STEM outreach among other types.

You know, I think it's been really important to me in my career to go out and talk to people and to have those conversations. And so I think factoring that in right at the start, I think is really important.

Can I just turn to something else about the life of a kind of, the life of a STEM person, as it were? You know, we think it's all, we think it's all marvellous because we're in the lab fiddling with things.

But the sad reality is that quite a lot of the time we're in the office trying to get money and stuff.

JESSIE: Yes.

RICHARD: Well, what's your sense of, the world of, getting grants, writing proposals, generating a profile, all the things that you have to do as a young scientist to make a success.

And as I say, it's not something that we'd like to talk about because we like to say it's, we like to talk about the exciting stuff all the time.

But, you know, that stuff's important as well, isn't it?

JESSIE: Yeah, I think that's a great question. Actually, I found it really difficult getting research funding in terms of the process. And this is something I was quite passionate about.

So a couple of years ago, I actually consulted with NADSN and got feedback from a lot of disabled researchers who were in a similar boat to me. And there's actually a lot of barriers to accessing research funding. I can give you an example that happened to
me literally this year that I wrote a grant.

It was kind of a big grant. I wrote it as PI and it was with international collaborators in Toronto and it was focused on quantum technologies. And within the kind of formatting of the research proposal, there was a section for additional information. That was where you put your references, plus you put any accessibility requirements and needs. And on this research proposal, I had to share that at the moment, I can't do long distance travel because of flying with my ears at the moment. So I'm on a kind of travel ban for long distance. So the Eurostar is my friend. So that is a challenge if you've got collaborators in Toronto, because all of the kind of meetings will have to be hybrid and things like this.

So I wrote about this in terms of those kind of accessibility requirements in that additional information section. But there was like a 500 word count. So obviously, if you put your accessibility needs, you then don't have time to put the space, sorry, for the references. So I put the references tagged on to the case for support and said, look, the case for support is matching the format guidelines. I don't have space. I've put my accessibility. Here we go.

And the grant got rejected before going to peer review because of that formatting guidelines. So I was obviously not best pleased. And I did appeal it. And I was surprised because I thought, look, if I raise this and just say, look, this is kind of part of UKRI, you've got an EDI plan. Here's literally a report I wrote that this is a barrier. Please, can you think again?

And it went up to the head of that particular research council and still no. And the response was, we're overwhelmed already for this call. It's not getting in. And that was like a direct, up until that point, there was other barriers in kind of that research
funding process that I'd kind of encountered.

So, you know, interviews don't have BSL interpretation. Interviews don't have captioning. So in person, I need those things in the room to support.

There's like barriers like that, but that was the first time it was an ultimate rejection because of something that felt so easy to solve.

So I do think there is challenges and there is a leaky pipeline for disabled researchers staying on.

So undergrad, I had great support. It was kind of in praise, we had the disabled student's allowance. PhD, there was some support in place, but it kind of what they weren't really sure what they were doing. Like how do you support a PhD student who needs to go in an experimental lab with conferences?

It was kind of outside the normal remit for what was going on.

As a postdoc in Germany, no support at all.

And then coming back to Manchester as a staff member, it was different again.

And there was kind of less support for navigating that research funding landscape.

I also think when you're starting out, you're quite nervous as an early career academic because I felt there was like, if I put my hand up and say, look, I really need some BSL for this interview, will they just reject me outright?

You're kind of afraid that you're going to get that type of direct discrimination.

So I think there is massive challenges in that kind of research funding.

And I'm really glad you asked the question because we kind of, we do forget about it in terms of that is a big aspect of managing the research group.

And yeah, there are massive challenges to getting funding in the first place.

RICHARD: I think it's really one of those massive barriers in the early part of your career, isn't it?

It's make or break in some ways isn't it? It's that example you gave of the last year, that's really quite shocking.

And you have got a fellowship, so it's kind of-

JESSIE: It's worked out for me.

RICHARD: It's worked out for you, but had that happened to you as your first grant
going in as a young lecturer, that would be, that's the sort of thing that can be really-

JESSIE: Yeah, I think I would have probably fought again if it had happened to me for the very, very first proposal. I think I would have probably gone academia is not for me. And I would have done something else, I think, and would have probably also not remained in active research. I'd have probably look for an alternative career because I think it would have been a, you're not welcome here. That was kind of the message that I was kind of thinking about.

And I do worry about also thinking about PhD students writing their first fellowship.

What support is there specifically for those disabled researchers?

So tips and tricks like, how do you ask for additional costs to travel that you might need?

And we were talking about, you might need a support worker to go to conferences. I might need a BSL interpreter to go. Giving people the confidence to apply for that, but also that engagement with research councils to go, how do we cast for that, I think is important.

JACKIE: This is such a timely conversation because we know that the latest announcement from government is that the cost of supporting and adjusting for disabled staff will fall, the burden will fall increasingly on institutions, not on the government.

So the access to work scheme is currently up in the air in terms of it's overloaded.
There are too few people. There's at least a six-month long waiting list, longer in most cases.

And there was an announcement from government last week that the pressure is to put it back onto institutions to support.

So I think as a university, you've picked up something really important here, Jess.

One is that the research councils need to address their processes and ensure they're accessible and inclusive. But the other is us as an institution that wants our young early career researchers to be successful, we need to think long and hard about what support we need to put in place for those staff who do have a disability in order to give them the best possible chance of securing funds.

And I think that for me, that's certainly something that I'm going to take away from this conversation to work with Colette and her team and Melissa Westwood to think about.

We're doing a lot around supporting disabled PhD students and early career researchers.

But I think from what you've just said, I've never really thought about it from a grant application process before. I think there's more we need and can do in that space.

I don't know how you feel, Richard, but seems like a very practical way to progress.

RICHARD: It's very kind of unglamorous. But these are the things that really make a difference in career progression. Visibility and conferences is another thing. Travel, I mean, I kind of, to be honest, I think science culture depends too much on travel, actually.

I think we could all do with traveling a bit less, but that's another story.

JACKIE: And then again, one of the things we're trying to do, so I'm part of, so Jess has mentioned NASDN, which is the National Association of Disabled Staff Networks. And I'm part of a subgroup that was formed from NASDN, born of NASDN, that is looking at a suitable disability inclusion framework for the whole of UK higher education.

So the framework we currently use is Disability Confident, which was designed for public sector organisations, doesn't really fit well with universities because of the nature of what we do. So this new framework called Ride Higher, Realising Inclusion for Disabled Staff in Higher Education, is all about coming together and sharing those stories and what works across the sector.

So we're not all doing it individually, we're pooling knowledge and building on that. And I'm just thinking what you've shared there.

I don't know whether there's a case study or something we could take at the University of Manchester from Jess's experience and think about building on so others don't fall foul of the same process.

JESSIE: Yeah, I was actually thinking about this and I think that's something that we could do with the lovely research support services team because they always help us with grant proposals and things like that.

And I think having a session with joint, because I also don't think it needs to, I don't think academics can solve this problem. We need our beautiful professional services staff, but I think the research support team actually could be a great help and having kind of workshops together to think about how could we support a disabled kind of researcher.

And also I think the research support services probably have better links to the teams like EPSRC. I know they talk a lot directly with kind of the EPSRC project managers who are the people that are kind of the side of that grant application.

So maybe kind of engagement there and more discussions about if I have this situation where we need to put this extra cost or I need to write this, where would it go?

So it's kind of being signed off earlier might be something that we could do here.

RICHARD: No, absolutely. I mean, we do have we have good relations with
the research councils and executive chairs show up and I think we've got Charlotte Dean coming in shortly and we probably ought to just drop it into the conversation, shouldn't we really? It'd be a good thing to do. Yeah, because they, I was on EPSRC
council for a while and I kind of, I think it's a good organisation. I think it is a listing organisation. It has its own troubles to deal with and it's not always in control of things like formatting its forms.

JESSIE: It wasn't EPSRC, by the way, don't worry. EPSRC were good. They've been very supportive.

So I won't mention the one, it was not EPSRC though. So Charlotte Dean's safe. So yeah, when she comes to visit.

JACKIE: I think you're right there, Richard, bringing to the attention of a funding organisation, research council, these sorts of aspects that are yes or no, black and white is really important because they won't necessarily know.

You know, I know you appealed, Jessie, but had you not, that would never have gone up to the top of the chain.

JESSIE: They wouldn't know.

RICHARD: Absolutely. You know, it is about helping the research councils live their mission. Their mission is to deliver great science and if great scientists are excluded from that for entirely preventable reasons, that's just an avoidable mistake, isn't it really?

JESSIE: Yeah, because I think the other thing that I was also quite aware of coming back to kind of being a STEM academic as well is I think for me, I felt that once my disability was disclosed and I'm very, very proud of it and I think I celebrate it and I'm happy to kind of share it and happy to share stories and things like this.

But I did notice that the focus was then less on my scientific elements and the scientific research. So when I was engaging with people, it's getting more requests for being an EDIA lead on their grant.

And that just was winding me up a little bit.

You'd start on a grant for your scientific credentials and then they kind of find out about your hidden disability and they're like, great, you can lead it now. And that was difficult. And I think you're right that discussions with EPSRC would be great because I think they're best placed to spot that as well.

So sometimes you might not necessarily know about it because if you think you're on the ground and you've seen the proposal and it's all about your scientific and then you don't necessarily with the new funding system see the end, what's submitted and then it will change. But I think they will see that.

And if this same person is becoming an EDIA lead on every single grant that they see their name on, then I hope that would raise a red flag a little bit and they could come back and chat about it.

RICHARD: Exactly. You want to be a terahertz spectroscopy lead, don't you?

JESSIE: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Exactly. Terahertz spectroscopy.

No, that's the lead I want.

Yeah, exactly.

JACKIE: Feedback is so important though, isn't it?

And so joining the dots. We've talked a lot about the challenges and some of what you can't do because of your hidden disability your hearing.

But I want to focus now, I want to come back actually to celebrate your success as well because these conversations are not just about what disabled people can't do. It's also about recognising the value of having a very diverse population across our university and staff and student body.

So you're clearly very excited about your research.

What is it you'd like to share in terms of to be a future leader or your next plans? I would like to hear that.

But Richard, is there anything you particularly want to hear?

RICHARD: No, that's great.

JESSIE: Research focus?

JACKIE: Anything at all about achieving what you're achieving, celebrating your success.

JESSIE: Okay. Yeah. So Future Leaders Fellowship was so pleased about that. But also I think what I'm very, very excited about is that we really, really have the entire my research group have built this facility, which we call Custom. And I think Charlotte Dean is going to see it on her visit. So I'm very excited.

But that has really been blood, sweat and tears to actually build that facility and have it operating. And something that really excites me about that is because there's a whole team that supports it, the PhD students, the postdoc, beautiful technical specialist.

But it's actually now open to the UK. And this is something I really am passionate about because I think if we want to hit these kind of, you know, innovate technologies of tomorrow, right, the five technologies of tomorrow, then we need these kind of national facilities that everyone can use this state of the art kit.

So I'm very, very proud that this is working. It's also unique to the UK. So it's the first facility that does low temperature, nanoscale lamp scales and visible to terahertz.

And yeah, I've had too many sleepless nights getting it to work, but it's actually working and people are using it.

And we've had people come from Germany and Canada to use this piece of kit.

And it's really operating now as a national facility. And that's something I'm very proud about. And also it's supporting MPL's work now. So the National Physics Laboratory, quantum technology, it's really instrumental into that and funded by DSIT.

So I think what's nice is kind of looking at that bigger picture because I'm sure as academics, we can stay in our own little experiment, right? A lot. And you're nodding. You're like, definitely. Like, yeah, we've done that and play with our little kit. But actually kind of seeing it now being used by others and in the UK landscape has been particularly quite exciting.

JACKIE: I wish the readers could see the joy and pride and enthusiasm on your face because it's just sort of emanating, radiating positivity. Wonderful to hear.

And I got excited for Richard there because you started talking about a facility that could be used across the UK and innovation and everything that's in your space.

RICHARD: Absolutely. I'm boringly obsessed about productivity and translating the great research that we're doing into new products that kind of make industries, that give people jobs and drive prosperity.

So it's fantastic to see that.

JACKIE: Look what we'd have missed. If you'd have gone, if you hadn't come into Manchester and been able to sort of facilitate what you've just told us about, look what we would have missed out on.

And that whole thing about the talent pipeline, the leaky pipeline, whatever you want to call it. I don't like the pipeline metaphor because people have squiggly careers. They don't always go in a straight line. And what we were talking about earlier, Richard, about bringing in local talent, inspiring children who are currently studying in schools who might become future researchers.

It just feels like we've got this great opportunity.

This conversation is so exciting.

You can see.

JESSIE: Yeah. Because I was going to ask you something on that, Richard, because I was also like a big part as well is our graduates going into kind of local industry as well.
And I know there's an employability gap specifically in things like nanotechnology and quantum technologies. So do you think that they are aware of this need for accessibility from your experience?

And also do you think there's something that Manchester can do to also ensure that once they get employed, that they can thrive there as well?

Because that's all kind of, for me, it seems that researchers and then going into industry and other kind of world of workplaces is an important kind of journey.

RICHARD: Yeah, it's massive and actually underrated. We kind of think as scientists that our contribution to the world is some great discovery we've made or some great
paper, but that's actually not mostly. It's we've trained a whole bunch of great graduate
students who go into the world. And so I think. I think it's important. Yeah, I think it's really important that we need to perhaps kind of look after them, you know, a bit of aftercare and that as well.

And I think, yeah, so hearing their stories from their workplaces, yeah, that probably is pretty important, isn't it?

JACKIE: You're alumni, aren't they? And you'd want to sort of fold them in and, you know, find out what they did next.

JESSIE: Because I'm also I was thinking about whether there's also a difference in spin out companies that are kind of smaller size SMEs compared to big companies as well, because from my perspective, in STEM, there's a lot of these smaller spin out companies that a lot of our STEM graduates might go into.

And sometimes in a smaller company, they can kind of thrive and it's easier to make adjustments.

But then in a bigger company, there's the legal requirements of so-

RICHARD: it goes both ways, isn't it?

Yeah, I think, you know, big companies that have processes and procedures and that they probably will have thought more.

So, I can imagine, a big company, say AstraZeneca or something as a kind of, you know, one of the largest science based companies we've got in the UK.

I suspect they huge amount. But as you say, small companies, they're constrained by cash, they probably are struggling in not wholly adequate surroundings.

I mean, of course, one of the things I mean, that's a great point, actually, because, you know, we are thinking about how we create incubation space. And so thinking about how we build that in is probably quite important.

And you're right, I hadn't thought of that.

But it's a good point.

JESSIE: So is that like building incubation space in Manchester for new spin out companies?

RICHARD: Yeah, exactly.

JESSIE: Okay.

RICHARD: Yeah. So for example, we've got SISTER on the old UMIST. Yeah. You know, so as that gets developed, building that in, that's an important point.

And since yes, I'm on the board, I should mention it to people.

JACKIE: Fabulous. We could talk all day, I'm sure.

That's a lovely place to wrap up. And I love these sort of penny dropping moments.

I've also got you've given me idea for I do a lot of work with alumni, where I get alumni to tell their stories. And we write them up as stories. And that's those current students
can look at alumni stories and imagine the sorts of roles that they can go into. And I do that anyway. But I'm thinking what we haven't done is anything focused particularly on disability, and how disabled alumni are coping with challenges in the workplace.
I'm bringing that back in. So you've given me an idea. Thank you.
And we now have we now move to the final part of the podcast where we I ask each of you to ask the other a question.

So I'm just going to flip this over.

And Jessie, you start first, you'll guess one. So if you could ask Richard.

JESSIE: So what's one thing will you commit to do as a result of this conversation?

RICHARD: Well, I think I mean, we've talked a lot about outreach, we've talked a lot about innovation spaces. I'm you know, I'm currently I'm spending a lot of time in Rochdale at the moment. And Rochdale is, one of the most deprived boroughs in Greater Manchester, lowest productivity, very low participation rate in higher education.
And, you know, we're involved in the creation of an innovation centre there that will be,
focused on skills, outreach, also, connecting back to the kind a kind of connecting point between industry and community in Rochdale and the Royce and the geek and all the great stuff that we've got here.

So I shall go away and make sure that we've built in these these things that we've been talking about accessibility, you know, both on the labs front, but also on the kind of, you know, invent space, that kind of thing.

JESSIE: That would be fabulous.

Yeah. I mean, I think the disabled staff network would also be very happy to support
that as well in consulting with that.

So I think it would be cool.

JACKIE: Thank you, Jessie.

Richard, you also have a question. I don't know if you want to ask Jessie that question or whether you've got another more burning question.

RICHARD: No, no, that's a great question. But I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, just what's the one thing?

I mean, I think particularly I'm particularly interested in this, you know, the early career researcher going on to become an academic, it's a really delicate moment in one's life, as it were.

It's a place where, you know, spanners in works can all too easily come.

So what would be the one thing that university could do to support early career researchers making that transition to be, you know, a successful academic?

JESSIE: That is a good question. And I think it's mentoring. I think active mentoring, someone supporting them through that process. And I think that mentoring can come from both and professional support staff.

So kind of when we were talking about that kind of the first research grant that you put in, having someone that can peer review it for you, someone that can be your champion going to EPSRC or whatever other research council you might be going to, to be like, OK, this person needs these adjustments. How do we put it on the grant?

So I think having a very, very strong mentor from both academic and professional services style would really, really help early career researchers in making that stage and kind of preparing that first research grant.

JACKIE: That is a great point. Would you see that as being a senior person, somebody who sort of knows the system, know how grants work?

JESSIE: Not necessarily, actually. I don't think it needs to be a senior. I don't think it needs to be a professor, but I think I think that will help. But I think even someone like who's maybe just made probation and gone through the same process as
you can be a really good mentor.

So I think I'm a massive fan of peer to peer mentoring as well at the same career stage. So I think it's more just having that kind of experience that you can support that person. So and lived experiences is great as well as someone to go and chat to, but not necessary either. So I think it can be peer to peer mentorship as well as more senior mentorship.

JACKIE: Thanks, Jessie. That's really, really helpful as an action to take away. And I also think you mentioned the Disabled Staff Network, and we haven't talked at all about DASS, the Disability Advisory Support Service, but we're really fortunate at Manchester to have a very vibrant set of people who are very keen to ensure that accessibility is baited into everything we do. I think there's huge amounts of opportunity to draw other expertise and support into that.

So thank you both very much. I've loved today's conversation.

Thank you. It's been absolutely fascinating to talk to two scientists, one who's focused very much on outreach and engagement and innovation.

Richard, thank you very much for all your wisdom.

Jessie, listening to your in-depth story that I didn't know about, not just the challenges, but the amazing work you're doing and how you're bringing that to bear across the sector.

It fills me with pride to be a colleague.

So thank you so much for sharing. Does anybody want to say anything before we wrap up?

RICHARD: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

JESSIE: It's been great. I've enjoyed it. Thank you.

JACKIE: Okay. Thank you both very much indeed.