Personal Statement
My first degree was in Botany, studied at Goldsmith's College and King's College, University of London. My PhD, from University College, London, focused on bracken - environmental scourge or promising biofuel (depending on your point of view). After a year as Quain student (a post-doctoral position at UC) during which I taught at Birkbeck College, I joined the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Manchester as a lecturer in cryptogamic botany (1981). After one year of running the second year phycology field course in horizontal rain in Wales, I instigated a Mediterranean field course which still runs today. In 1987 I founded the Biological Sciences Review - a magazine aimed at A-level students studying biology. I was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 1988, and to a Teaching and Scholarship chair in 2013. During that time I had served as the Senior Advisor, Chief Admissions Officer and Chair of the Faculty Student-Staff Liaison Committee. I became Associate Dean, with responsibility for all education matters in the Faculty of Life Sciences, in 2013. In 2016 I was awarded Principal Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy and took up my post as APVC (Education) in the Faculty of Science and Engineering in Liverpool.