Working Scientist

Epizodes

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  How jazz boosts my creativity in physics 29.05.2026 20min

  Theoretical physicist Stephon Alexander was 12 years old when his father bought him a saxophone at a garage sale near their home in the Bronx, New York. Soon after he heard Ornette Coleman, a pioneer of free jazz, on the radio. “There was this saxophone playing that was completely out there, completely wild,” he recalls. “You could just play whatever you want and make up whatever you want.” Alexander, a jazz saxophonist who now directs the Brown University Center for Theoretical Physics and Innovation, in Providence, Rhode Island, says: “I would not be the physicist I am today if weren't for my practice as a musician, especially as an improvisational musician.” He credits it for making him “more fluid and flexible mentally in terms of approaching and attacking physics problems,” some of which he ponders while watching performances in New York jazz clubs. In the final episode of Creativity in Science, a six-part podcast series, Alexander also lists his former high school physics teacher Daniel Kaplan as a key influence. He says that Kaplan, a professionally-trained jazz musician, taught him that “intuition is the lifeblood of a good physicist.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Hit a lab project glitch? Thinking about your thesis title like a storyteller can help you focus 22.05.2026 16min

  Frances Brodsky believes that writing her three mystery novels set in the world of bench science has improved her scientific writing. “I love making up titles for my books and chapters,” she says. “One of the best ways to train someone in the lab to focus on their project is for them to come up with the title of a paper that they want to write. That tells them where they're going. Also, when I interview people, I ask them: ‘What is the title of the thesis you plan to write?’​​​​​​​”Brodsky, a cell biologist at University College London, writes under the pseudonym B. B. Jordan. Her books feature Celeste Braun, a virologist in San Francisco, California, who uses her scientific expertise to solve mysteries and fight crime. “Sitting down to write these novels, my scientific writing became markedly better,” she says. “The exercise of fiction writing helped me put my work into a narrative.​​​​​​​”In the penultimate episode of this six-part podcast series on creativity in science, Brodsky says the discipline of writing a novel has also taught her perseverance, adding: “When you start a writing project, you have to stick with it to get it to the end. Sticking with something and having faith that it will work out is a really good quality to have.​​​​​​​” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Running a farm, pursuing a research career: what’s the difference? 15.05.2026 14min

  Brandon Brown “fell into farming” after tiring of city life during the COVID-19 pandemic and now tends more than 150 fruit trees alongside his research into HIV and public health ethics at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine. “I had to look at farming the same way that I look at my academic career, and to take it one day at a time with my eyes towards a goal,” he says.Brown says it took him a while for the realization to dawn. “My PhD taught me that the work is never done, and there’s always a new research project to pursue, more students to collaborate with, more policies to work on,” he says. “And since research builds on research, the fun never ends.”Mornings spent outdoors also gives him time to think about work priorities. “I have lots of free time to think as I do the farming, and many times I write down notes as I’m working, because ideas and kind of reminders and goals and deadlines pass through my mind,” he says.There are other benefits. Brown says he now falls asleep to the “beautiful” sound of howling coyotes, alongside possums, racoons, skunks, squirrels, lizards and gophers.This is the fourth episode in a six-part series about creativity in science. Previous episodes featured a researcher who draws parallels between her research and sewing, another whose pursuit of baking and fermentation revealed fresh career opportunities, and two researchers who follow the concept of “day and night science” to distinguish between routine tasks and reflection. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  How a passion for baking fermented a fresh career move 08.05.2026 16min

  Baking bread during Covid-19 lockdowns provided Chantle Edillor with some career inspiration. “I knew I wanted to do something different and an exploration in sourdough presented an opportunity that I felt uniquely able to pursue,” she says. In 2022, after completing PhD research into metabolic diseases at the University of California Los Angeles, Edillor began a postdoc there, where she researched the anti-inflammatory properties of fermented foods. She now works as a fermented food scientist at Microcosm Foods, a non-profit research organization that maps connections between fermented foods, microbes and human health, a role she combines with assay development at the Astera Institute, a similar non-profit based in the Bay Area, San Francisco.  In the third episode of a six-part podcast series about creativity in science, Edillor says fermentation techniques re-ignited a childhood interest in cooking: “I have early memories of sitting and watching the Food Network with a metal bowl full of egg whites in my lap, holding a whisk and attempting to make stiff peak meringue, but also to understand how proteins capture air to create volume and texture.” Edillor’s culinary and scientific creativity extends to adding kombucha to leftover dinner party wine to make red wine vinegar, and making miso from blue tortillla chips. “Because the chips had been deep fried and fat does not necessarily ferment super well, it had this off flavour, kind of oxidized fat. I​​​​​​​’ll not be commercializing that anytime soon.”Summing up her career to date, she says: “I​​​​​​​’m a human geneticist masquerading as a yeast geneticist, masquerading as a microbiologist. There are certain areas of science that are less competitive and more collaborative. Those are the spaces I like to occupy.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  How sewing can set you up for failure and success in science 30.04.2026 18min

  Yasmin Proctor-Kent likens sewing to science. “I find them really hard to separate them in my brain. I don’t think I can sew without engaging the same part of my brain that I do science with,” she says. For Proctor-Kent, a research and development scientist at the cancer diagnostics company Leica Biosystems, based in Melbourne, Australia, the two pursuits require similar approaches, relying on her own and others’ prior knowledge and expertise, reading papers, or reading from other people who have sewn a similar garment. “It’s about applying theoretical knowledge to something tactile, something practical that you’re doing,” she adds. In the second episode of a six-part podcast series about creativity in science, Proctor-Kent recounts how she honed her sewing skills during the Covid-19 lockdown before applying to The Great British Sewing Bee, an annual TV competition, reaching the 2025 finals. Kit, a semi-finalist and mathematician, was similarly creative. “Mathematics and spatial reasoning and 3D plotting and all of that mathematical brain that Kit has, really did apply to the Bee,” she says. “When we were given a sewing pattern and told to make it in two hours…Kit already knew exactly how every single pattern piece fit together.” Finally, Proctor-Kent urges other scientists to take up a pastime, even if it feels risky. “You get to a point in your career where you have success…you have a fear of being bad, at trying something new. We should all sit in that fear. Allow ourselves to be wrong. Allow ourselves to be bad at stuff. Allow ourselves to be embarrassed.”  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Hit a glitch in your research? Some ‘night science​​​​​​​’ thinking could move it forward 23.04.2026 22min

  The French biologist and Nobel prizewinner François Jacob talked about day and night science as part of the creative process that underpins research. The former, he argued in his 1988 autobiography, is a “cold, orderly logic” leading to a conclusion of the kind that gets covered in seminars and papers. Night science, in contrast, is a “stumbling, wandering exploration of the natural world.​​​​​​​”In the first episode of a six-part series about creativity in science, Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher describe how they apply the day/night science concept in their own research and collaborations. Yanai, who studies gene regulation and cellular plasticity at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, recalls telling his lab colleagues to change tack when they get stuck: “We need to snap out of this. We need to zoom out. We need to pop out into the world of night science, into the world of ideas, where we’re going to have to use abstract thinking. We’re going to use every trick we got, And that’s going to give us the way forward.”Yanai and Lercher, a computational cell biologist at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf, Germany, co-host the Night Science podcast and run workshops outlining the tools required to make science more creative alongside the “executive” process such as running experiments, applying for grants and writing papers.The two compare performers that pivot between musical genres (Bob Dylan from folk to rock, for example, and Beyoncé from R&B to country) to scientists who change disciplines, bringing the fresh thinking of a “beginner’s mind” to a particular challenge. “You hold no allegiance, no loyalty to any particular idea. Everything is on the table,” concludes Yanai.Future episodes will explore different approaches to cultivating creativity in science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  How to thrive in science when you move abroad  09.04.2026 36min

  Among the barriers faced by researchers who move abroad to develop their careers is a so-called “hidden curriculum,” says Sonali Majumdar, whose book, Thriving as an International Scientist, was published last year.Navigating these unwritten rules that cover social norms and cultural expectations, both in the lab and outside work, can feel particularly daunting to scientists who, like her, were born elsewhere, she adds. In addition, international scientists often have restrictive funding arrangements that tie them to a particular lab or Principal Investigator’s research focus, she says.US visa restrictions can often mean missing family events back home. Majumdar, for example, who gained a biochemistry and molecular biology PhD from the University of Georgia in Athena in 2014, could not return to India to attend her parents’ funerals. “It was probably the biggest sacrifice I’ve had to make in my life,” she says.  In the final episode of a six-part podcast series covering books about the scientific workplace, Majumdar, who is now assistant Dean for professional development at Princeton University in New Jersey, tells Holly Newson that having a “growth mindset” can help international scientists to thrive abroad.  This means not focusing on problems, but on possibilities and solutions, she says, supported by advisors, mentors, and sponsors. The US, she says, has a reputation as a melting pot of different cultures, a place to meet colleagues with a shared passion for science and solving problems. But in the last decade the climate for researchers who relocate there from abroad has become more difficult, she adds.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  How procrastination can rob you of career fulfilment in science 01.04.2026 29min

  Simon May describes his 2025 book Jump! as a new approach to conquering procrastination. Unlike self-help manuals that urge readers to break tasks down into manageable chunks with clear deadlines, May digs into the philosophy of why we put things off. He also explores not only why we fear career failure but also (more mysteriously, he says) career success, and why boredom and regrets are a “phenomenal wake-up call” to be learnt from. The modern cult of work, May tells Holly Newson in the penultimate episode of this podcast series about books covering the scientific workplace, forces us onto a productivity treadmill that can sap our motivation. “If something becomes cold and alienating and simply production-oriented, it ceases to engage,” he says, highlighting some scenarios: “I need to get this out by Monday morning. My competitor in the next lab has produced three papers this year, and I’ve only produced one.” But how do you make an important personal or professional goal less important, less intimidating, and so more achievable? May, a visiting professor of philosophy at Kings College London, offers some strategies. This includes how he conquers his own procrastination as a book deadline looms, describing himself as someone who feels “paralyzed” by the importance of the project. May concludes with a warning about the “mirage of fulfilment”  felt by the 19th century Russian author Leo Tolstoy. Aged 50 and at the height of his fame, Tolstoy felt his life was meaningless. “One other thing to avoid is this sense that the destination is the key, that, once reached, will provide a sense of lasting fulfillment.” Instead, he argues, it’s the journey that counts.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Why labs need a napping room to help you work, rest and play 26.03.2026 39min

  Joseph Jebelli believes burnout and overwork has reached pandemic levels, telling Holly Newson that it kills 750,000 people annually, with three out of five workers struggling to maintain a healthy work-life balance.  His 2025 book, The Brain At Rest, proposes that regular bouts of doing nothing can change your life. Finding time to let your mind wander and take a daily 30-minute nap can make you more creative and efficient, he argues.  In the fourth episode of a six-part podcast series focused on books about the scientific workplace, Jebelli describes the "productivity guilt" he felt during his neuroscience PhD at University College London, where he studied the cell biology of neurodegenerative diseases, followed by a postdoc at the University of Washington, Seattle. "It's the guilt in which you equate your worth as a human being with your output, with how many hours you're in the lab. If it were up to me, there would be a napping room in all laboratories. We have to get it out of our heads that we’re switching off, shirking, or being irresponsible or reckless. We’re actually helping our brains produce our best work.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  ‘Be a problem-solver, not a job-seeker:’ how to pivot from academia to industry 19.03.2026 39min

  Gertrude Nonterah helps researchers step off the academic hamster wheel and seek opportunities beyond their specialty. She does this by tapping into her personal experiences of losing a postdoctoral position when her lab leader’s funding ran out, followed by a role at a biotechnology company that ended after two months. Nonterah now works in medical communications and career counselling through The Bold PhD, a consultancy she set up in 2021, and a podcast, which she launched last year. Her 2025 book, Navigating the Pivot, promises strategies and insights to power career transitions from academia. In the third episode of a podcast series focused on books about the scientific workplace, Nonterah, who is based in San Diego, California, tells Holly Newson how to tailor a CV or resume for industry employers. Instead of focusing on publications, she urges industry job applicants to show evidence of problem-solving, a highly-prized skill in the sector. Another thing to include are examples of communicating their research to people beyond their academic specialty. Nonterah then emphasizes the importance of networking, describes strategies to counter imposter syndrome, and offers advice on how to talk about career setbacks.Finally, she talks about how to bounce back from being laid-off, based on her own experience. She tells Newson: “How do I turn this into my comeback? How do I turn this into a time where I rediscover myself, my skills, when I rebrand and reinvent myself.”  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Nervous networker or conference presenter? Care less, says speech coach Susie Ashfield 12.03.2026 38min

  Learning to care less about how you come across in a conference talk, funding pitch or networking event frees you to communicate more naturally and confidently, says Susie Ashfield.In the second episode of a podcast series focused on six books about the scientific workplace, Ashfield, whose 2025 book, Just F**king Say It, includes real-life case studies of both good and bad communication, says scientist interviewees are often burdened by the “curse of knowledge.” This means they include too much detail instead of focusing on telling a simple story with a beginning, a middle and an end.Ashfield, an actor-turned-communications coach based in London, tells Holly Newson that presenters often fail to rehearse a science conference talk sufficiently. They also default to listing their academic achievements rather than focusing on the messages that their audience needs to hear. In the case of an investor pitch, this could mean focusing on a technology’s potential to save lives, not a detailed description of the underlying science, she argues.She also offers advice on how to approach networking, including tips on how to introduce yourself, keep conversations flowing, and how to politely move on to speak with other attendees. Finally, she offers advice on how to say no, handle difficult supervisors and pay negotiations.Explaining why she named her book Just F**king Say It, and why people should care less about how they come across, she tells Newson: “We are all desperately, concerned about what other people think of us. When we overthink how we walk into a room, we put levels of pressure on ourselves that just shouldn’t be there. The ethos is to just care less. Let it go. See what happens. Enjoy it.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Women in science are not a ‘problem to be fixed’ 05.03.2026 39min

  In the first episode of a podcast series focused on six books about the scientific workplace, Cordelia Fine tells Holly Newson why she wrote Patriarchy, Inc: What we Get Wrong About Gender Equality and Why Men Still Win at Work.Fine, a psychologist and workplace gender-equity researcher at the University of Melbourne, Australia, offers a blueprint for a fairer society that does not single out women as “a problem to be fixed.​​​​​”Describing the gender pay gap as largely a “motherhood pay gap,” she outlines how employers can support staff who return to work after a career break, without fostering resentment among colleagues. She also explains why many workplace diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, including unconscious bias training, are ineffective and can sometimes be offensive to the groups they aim to support.Fine also draws on historical examples of women being pushed out when men enter professions in larger numbers, and the effect this can have on the workplace culture. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Why an industry career move is a taboo topic in academia 26.02.2026 27min

  In his role as research director at NielsenIQ, a consumer intelligence company based in London,  Josh Balsters helps global brands drive product innovation.Balsters relies on expertise he gained in psychology and neuroscience, both during his PhD and as an assistant professor at Royal Holloway, University of London. But when he made the decision to quit full-time academia in 2020, Balsters struggled to tell his colleagues because he worried that he had let them down.“There’s a feeling...that you’ve taken up a space, taken an opportunity away from somebody else who would have wanted it more,” he says. “I felt much more comfortable talking to people who had done it, who had already left.” Ashley Ruba took a different tack. After completing her PhD in psychology at the University of Washington, Seattle, she spent three years as a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, before doubling her salary in an industry role.  After sharing her story on social media, Ruba was bombarded with messages from early career researchers who felt they couldn’t share their misgivings about remaining in academia with colleagues. “It seems like there’s a lot of shame, a lot of fear,” she tells Adam Levy in the final episode of Off Limits: an eight-part podcast series exploring topics that are often perceived as taboo in the workplace. Previous episodes have covered religious faith, alcohol dependency, bereavement, fertility challenges, and coming out as a transgender scientist.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Academia’s parent trap: the struggles faced by researcher mothers 19.02.2026 30min

  Alison Behie was approaching 40 when she underwent multiple rounds of IVF, enduring the mental and physical turmoil of miscarriage and uncertainty along the way. How good is the academic workplace at supporting women like Behie, a biological anthropology researcher at the Australian National University in Canberra? “The primary feeling was just this guilt that I had prioritized trying to get where I was in my career over my family. That’s not a way anyone should ever feel,“ she says. Behie is joined by Karen Jones, whose research focus at the University of Reading, UK, includes women’s career advancement and gender equality in higher education. Jones says the precarity of research careers is often most pronounced at the point when many researchers are contemplating parenthood, telling Levy: “It’s not uncommon for people to be employed on one temporary contract after another possibly for several years. And this often coincides with the age at which people are making decisions about having a family.”  Finally, Wendy Dossett, a professor emeritus of religious studies at the University of Chester, UK, describes the pressures facing women in academia to juggle career and family ambitions, saying: “I suffered a bit from the assumption that I must be a child-free career woman, when, in truth, I was a broken-hearted, childless woman.” Off Limits is a podcast series exploring topics that are often perceived as taboo in the workplace.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  When a colleague dies: exploring academia's "death-denying culture" 13.02.2026 36min

  In the sixth episode of Off Limits, a podcast series exploring topics that are often perceived as taboo in the academic workplace, three researchers describe their personal experiences of loss and how their respective institutions handled it, both practically and emotionally.Krista Harrison, a geriatrics researcher at University of California, San Francisco, recalls colleagues being very supportive when she suffered a spate of deaths in her family. But overall she needed advice, direction and resources and, ideally, a year off from having to think about writing grants. She set up a grief group and wrote articles calling for academia to shift norms and expectations around loss and bereavement leave.In 2023 a colleague of Katie Derington, a cardiovascular researcher at University of Colorado Anschutz in Aurora, died of a chronic illness after being hospitalized for around a month. At the time of her death she was co-author on a series of papers with Derington and other colleagues.Derington describes having to contact her colleague’s grieving widower to complete documentation related to the team’s soon-to-be-published article. This icky” experience also prompted her to write an article ​​​​​​​calling for academic publishers to show more compassion to bereaved authors.But how do you juggle mourning a colleague with a lengthy to-do list at work? Putting off an administrative task for a couple of months is okay, Derington says. There’s very, very few things in academia that are truly the fire is on the house.”Shannon Bros, an emeritus ecologist at San Jose State University in California, says support from counselling team colleagues would have helped when her department chair died of cancer. But seeing people having a good time on campus provided an epiphany. I looked around and went, ‘How many times have I walked anywhere and not seen people in pain? It changed me.​​​​​​​’” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  ‘We need to dismantle the stigma of alcohol dependence in academia’ 06.02.2026 29min

  Wendy Dossett tells Adam Levy why the stigma of having an alcohol dependence in academia can be a huge barrier to seeking help. “We’re supposed to be the brightest and the best, moving the frontiers of knowledge forward,” says Dossett, who has been in recovery for 20 years. “We’re not supposed to be struggling with cognitive issues, mental health problems, damaging ourselves in the way that somebody with an alcohol addiction is doing.”   Dossett, now an emeritus professor of religious studies at the University of Chester, UK, says that as an early career researcher she saw alcohol as the fuel to her academic life, driving her creativity and making the social elements of academic life easier to navigate. When, in her 30s, a colleague suggested she might need help, Dosett says she felt a “mixture of horror and absolute gratitude that somebody had the courage and care for me.” She went on to research the spiritual elements of recovery from addiction, which she says is less talked about in academia than, say, depression and anxiety. Victoria Burns, a social work scholar at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, founded Recovery on Campus Alberta after telling her Dean that she had an alcohol dependence. He told her she was the first academic to disclose in his 26-year career, prompting her to research other Deans’ experiences of faculty disclosing addiction and recovery. This is the fifth episode of Off Limits, a podcast series exploring topics that are often perceived as taboo in the workplace, including religion, bereavement, activism and sizeism.   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Can academia handle my religious faith? 30.01.2026 20min

  Elaine Howard Ecklund, a sociologist who studies attitudes towards religion in academic workplaces, says that scientists often feel they cannot be open about their faith at work.  In the fourth episode of Off Limits, a podcast series exploring topics that are often perceived as taboo in the workplace, she tells Adam Levy: “I would love for academic scientists to recognize that religious scientists can be good scientists, to break down some of their own stereotypes, and to see religion as just one of those identities that sits along other sides, other identities, like one’s social class and background.”  Ecklund, who leads the Boniuk Institute for the Study and Advancement of Religious Tolerance at Rice University in Houston, Texas, says that despite the reticence felt by many religious scientists, many of their colleagues are in fact quite open to their colleagues’ beliefs, based on her research. But some marginalized groups can face particular challenges. Maisha Islam, research culture lead at the University of Southampton, UK, shares her experiences of alienation as a British Bangladeshi Muslim woman. These range from a lack of accommodations to comments made by colleagues. “We almost put a target on our backs for having advocated for them in the first place. We are constantly pushing at closed doors,” she says. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  ‘Bodies like ours aren’t considered in academia’ 22.01.2026 25min

  Theo Newbold featured in a 2022 careers article about sizeism in science which discussed some accommodations that could make a difference in the workplace. Some follow-up comments on the discussion platform Reddit questioned whether Newbold and other interviewees in the article were suited to a career in academia.Newbold, a PhD student in plant pathology and diversity, equity and inclusion advocate at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, says the feedback made her feel “as someone who doesn’t want to be perceived as the complaining fat person.”They are joined by Katharine Hubert, who was diagnosed by Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder, shortly after starting a PhD at the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2019. The two researchers discuss some of the workplace accommodations and attitudinal changes that could make academia a more welcoming environment.This is the third episode of Off Limits, a podcast series exploring topics that are often perceived as taboo in the workplace.Previous episodes feature activist academics who join campus protests and civil disobedience activities. Future episodes will include the experiences of religious scientists at work, and bereavement. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  Campus protests and civil disobedience: does academia have a problem with activism? 15.01.2026 35min

  In May 2024, Uli Beisel signed what she thought was a fairly innocuous petition. But it led to her face being printed in a national tabloid. This was after student demonstrators at the Free University of Berlin had occupied a lecture theatre in protest at the ongoing Israel assault on Gaza. The university called the police to clear the space.The open letter that Beisel and others signed didn’t take a position on the conflict, but instead called on university leadership to defend free speech and the right to peaceful process. But Uli — alongside several other of the 1000- plus signatories — was named and pictured in the Bild newspaper. There, she and others were labelled a “university perpetrator” complicit in “Israel hate”. Beisel, a human geography researcher at the institution, says the tone of some of the reporting made her fear for her safety on campus. She also worried about how colleagues and students would react. The university responded by offering legal advice and issued a statement that they valued our opinion, says Beisel. After the story appeared it was reported that Germany’s higher education ministry had looked into stripping some signatories of federal funding. In the second episode of Off Limits, a podcast series exploring topics that are often perceived as taboo in the workplace, Adam Levy investigates tensions that sometimes surface when academics become activists. Beisel is joined by climate scientist Peter Kalmus. Kalmus dates his activism back to 2006 when he was midway through a physics PhD at Columbia University, New York, and had just become a father for the first time.  Speaking in a personal capacity, Kalmus, who is now based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, described the arrival of his older son as “a kick in the pants,” making him “think more broadly about the world and what the world was going to be like when he was grown up.” In April 2022 Kalmus and three colleagues padlocked themselves to a JPMorganChase bank entrance in Los Angeles, California, in protest at fossil fuel financing. The two researchers discuss how institutions can better support scholars whose concern for human rights and the future of the planet, often informed by their own research, leads to activism. Kalmus concludes: “I think we’re here to try to make a better world for everyone. Being part of this struggle is in some ways really joyful and really meaningful. I definitely do not want to sit on the sidelines.”  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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  'Coming out as a transgender scientist made me the best teacher I’ve ever been' 08.01.2026 29min

  In 1997 Shannon Bros came out as a transgender woman to students and colleagues. “When I transitioned, everything stopped,” says Bros of her research career. “I had a huge friend base by that time. I was confident, you know, what I was doing. Everything collapsed overnight.”  Bros, an emeritus ecologist at San Jose State University in California, describes the personal pressures that led to the decision and the reservations she had at the time. "I had a perfect life. I had a fabulous marriage. I had kids. I have always been respected in my department. The last thing I wanted to do was transition.”  She describes the support she received, from female colleagues in particular, as she rebuilt relationships. “I spent a lot of energy saying, 'Don’t worry about pronouns, just get to know me again. I’m pretty much the same person.'” As a result, she adds, “I became the best teacher I’ve ever been. I became a fabulous advisor.”   Bros is joined by K Wilson, a computational physics PhD student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Wilson describes the “invisibility/hypervisibility paradox” faced by Black queer female scholars like her, who work in predominantly white, male disciplines.   She adds: “My hope is that the way that we think about how science and academia should be organized, the ideas we have about who are true scientists, and how scientists should look and fit into academic spaces, evolves and expands.”  Off Limits is a podcast series exploring topics that are often perceived as taboo in the academic workplace. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.