Faces of Reading

For example, there are days when I work at home so I can pick up my five-year-old son from school. My electric car cuts down on carbon emissions but unfortunately not on travel time; I still have at least an hour-long commute each way, so being able to work from home on certain days really helps to fit everything in.

There’s a lot of support for doing things differently at the University, and from my mentor and manager. In addition to flexible working, I also benefit from interdisciplinary research interactions through my work with the Centre for Past Climate Change, and I’m co-chair of the Equality and Diversity Committee in the School of Mathematical, Physical, and Computational Science.

Read more about flexible working in the School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences.

I have been teaching pharmacy students since the Reading School of Pharmacy was established, with our first intake of less than 50 students in 2005. Now I am very happy to see how it developed into a very successful department delivering many undergraduate and postgraduate programs with several hundred students each year. 

Currently, I am Professor of Formulation Science and I teach undergraduate and postgraduate students and also contribute to the Graduate School with a course on ‘How to write a paper’. In addition to my teaching responsibilities, I supervise a large and very interdisciplinary research group, which includes postgraduate students and researchers from many countries. I am also a Programme Director for MSc by Research for 3 different programmes in Pharmacy and in this role, I oversee the delivery of teaching to our taught postgraduate students. 

I widely collaborate with researchers from many countries, which means that each year I travel to different institutions to deliver lectures, conduct joint experiments and attend research conferences and meetings. I am glad that the University of Reading provides a flexible working environment that helps to manage all my academic activities, including teaching, research, administration, and visits to collaborators in many countries. 

In SPCLS, I'm now Lecturer in Clinical Psychology and Programme Director for the MSci Applied Psychology. I really enjoy the teaching element and liaising with the NHS and Mind charity – I set up placements for students and supervise their research.

I've been delivering sexual diversity awareness training at the Charlie Waller Institute since June 2011. It looks at people's understanding and awareness, particularly regarding the barriers and potential prejudice that lesbian, gay and bi individuals may face in everyday life and when seeking clinical support. It directly ties in with students on placements within the NHS.

There is homophobia and biphobia because people are misunderstood. From personal experience, if you're bi, people think you haven't made your mind up if you're straight or gay. They also still use "normal" instead of heterosexual – you're either normal or gay. Therefore, bi is not too well understood, and that's a really important part for me when I'm doing the training.

In January 2020, I started my tenure as Dean for Diversity and Inclusion. This role involves leading on all accreditation frameworks, namely, Athena SWAN, Disability Confident Scheme, Race Equality Charter and Stonewall Workplace Equality Index. The role also involves developing neurodiversity awareness on campus, which is something I am personally very passionate about.

The HR team was really helpful in going through my options with me, and my manager helped to make sure my responsibilities were split between the other Business Partners while I was on leave. Because of this, I was able to help my wife, Khrystyna, but I also had the opportunity to get to know my son.

What I found is that going to work is the easy part. At home, you have to dress and feed your child, bathe them and read to them, make sure they sleep and take part in activities. And just being there for them is integral. That time is very hard to achieve when you’re working: you come home, de-stress, and do all the basic necessities, but just spending time with your child is when you really bond with them and see what type of person they’re becoming. Thanks to the University’s flexibility, I got that time with Luke.

Read more about family leave at the University of Reading.