My research blended my business and real estate backgrounds and, over the last 25 years, there were probably three or four of us around the world who created Corporate Real Estate Management as its own sub-field.

I also had a passion for teaching and learning and, having designed and led programmes, became one of the first Faculty Directors of Teaching and Learning in 2002. This was a start-up role and very wide ranging, and I realised that I loved to fix or recreate something.

The role of Deputy Dean at Henley Business School was another chance to make a real impact. Over the last seven years, we have recreated a truly world-class business school — more than doubling its size and re-establishing its profile.

Being at Reading has given me so many opportunities to do new and different roles and projects - from starting the Henley Women in Leadership Forum to leading the review of Senate.

The Forum was set up to address issues facing women, who make up a significant proportion of our 70,000 alumni across the world. The events we run consider how organisations can develop a more inclusive environment, from tackling unconscious bias to implementing effective flexible working practices.

My advice to anyone is to grab opportunities as they come along — they will enrich your life.

It's brilliant when teaching and research merge, and Reading is a very good institution for marrying up these two elements. I'm interested in digital reconstruction and have been working on a 3D model of the entire city of ancient Rome.

It won a teaching award from the Guardian, has had national and local recognition, and gets lots of interest on Open Days.

I also take undergraduate study groups to Rome. We tend to go in early spring and stay at the British School of Rome, where I've done a lot of research work; it's good to share that experience with students.

In addition, I'm the University's Director of Open Online Courses and have been running our massive open online courses (MOOCs) programme for two years. We've made 15 courses, which have been accessed by over 800,000 people worldwide - which is fantastic. It's a really exciting programme to run, and it's been a very positive experience for me.

We've made an online course, Rome: a Virtual Tour of the Ancient City, which has just gone out to 13,000 people. Knowing it reached 190 countries around the world (including people in Rome!) is really satisfying. Public outreach and impact work is important to our department.

It's particularly satisfying to make a custom piece of glassware for researchers and get involved in the design process, which can involve multiple iterations to achieve a successful result.

I've got a very friendly working environment. Diversity and inclusion is something the University wholeheartedly embraces, which is great.

I'm asexual and have been involved in visibility work for AVEN (the Asexual Visibility and Education Network), of which I'm a member. This has involved TV and radio appearances, and contributing to newspaper and magazine articles.

When the University was applying to become a Stonewall Diversity Champion, I went to meetings to raise awareness of the asexual community. This resulted in the Staff and RUSU LGBT Plus organisations holding an Asexual Awareness Week, to which I was happy to contribute.

Asexual people are thought to make up about 1% of the population, which means there could be somewhere between 30 and 40 asexual people working at the University, even more in the student population.

I think it's important there's visibility for asexual people, and those who think they may be asexual, in particular, to have someone to talk to who is asexual.

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.