Crick scientist-turned-Labour MP on supporting academic mothers

In the same week in May 2017 that Lauren Sullivan’s political career took off, she restarted her scientific research journey.

“The week I was elected to Kent County Council I was told I’d won a Daphne Jackson Fellowship,” recalls Sullivan, now MP for Gravesham, on securing the return-to-work fellowship which allowed her to step back into the laboratory – in this case, at London’s Francis Crick Institute.

Recently elected chair of the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (Post), which asks Parliament’s research team to examine diverse areas related to science, it is fitting that one of the tropical disease scientist’s first assignments is leading the unit’s investigation into how the UK’s science talent pipeline can be fixed. That work will focus, in particular, on improving the diversity of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics workforce and the career paths available for early career researchers – an area where Sullivan’s own experience would seem extremely relevant.

Having excelled in her PhD at the University of Dundee – successfully creating a diagnostic test for African sleeping sickness, a parasitic disease which caused 35,000 deaths annually in the 1990s – the Surrey-born scientist was midway through a postdoc in her late twenties when she felt forced to take stock on whether research was a compatible career if she wanted to have children with her husband.

“I was looking for my next move and at other women scientists who’d had children – some had waited and waited until they had tenure and job security. I knew the next few years would mean jumping between short-term research posts. I decided to take a step back for a few years and trained to be a chemistry teacher – I wanted to give something back while I had children,” said Sullivan, who relocated to the Kent port town of Gravesend, where she became involved in local Labour Party politics as she raised her two children.

While she enjoyed teaching, “it wasn’t where I needed to be”, reflected Sullivan, who admitted it was difficult to return to research. “Things had moved on in my field – CRISPR [gene editing] had come along and transformed lots of things in the four years I was away.”

The Daphne Jackson Trust fellowship was vital for providing funding for Sullivan’s position at the Crick, in biologist Jean Langhorne’s malaria research unit, also assisting with the retraining that she needed, Sullivan explained.

“Part of the scheme is retraining and learning different skills – in my case, moving into immunology, which is hard. It’s a completely different language in itself,” she said. “Building your confidence as you come back into science after a few years away is also crucial and Daphne Jackson did a lot of good work in this area.”

Returning to the lab as a mother, however, presented new challenges. “There are days when you have everything lined up for an experiment and the nursery rings to say, ‘Your child has a fever – can you pick them up?’ You end up owing a lot of favours to people. I was baking a lot of banana bread to say thank you to colleagues,” Sullivan explained.

In this respect, the Crick’s policies for part-time staff or those with caring commitments – such as up to six days of emergency leave – were helpful, said Sullivan. “When parents need to get back for 5pm to pick up children, you need working policies to allow this,” she said.

In the current resource-constrained environment in which universities are cutting back on all types of expenditure – notably at Sullivan’s alma mater Dundee, where more than 600 redundancies were announced this month – is there still scope for this kind of additional institutional support for returning parents?

“Obviously there is a need for resources, but it’s important for institutions to say what they value and will support,” she said, urging universities to look beyond research publication lists which, in the case of academic mothers, are likely to be less extensive.

Having flourished in Dundee’s life sciences and pharmaceutical research district – in which her PhD supervisor Michael Ferguson has been a key player – Sullivan is obviously deeply concerned by the financial crisis afflicting the Scottish institution, which is also set to scale back its research activities.

“Dundee has been punching above its weight in science for many years – 16 per cent of the local economy now relates to life sciences thanks to its labs and spin-out enterprise zones,” said Sullivan. “There is so much expertise important to the local economy and economic potential there that we need to consider how to support it.”

In her new role as Post chair, Sullivan is now marshalling the science-related parts of Parliament’s research team. She hopes the office’s reports and the scrutiny of Post’s MP, Lords and expert board members might be able to push the UK government to make positive changes.

“It’s about annoying ministers in in the nicest way possible about things that need addressing – our inquiry will be looking at STEM skills, how we can plug holes [in the workforce] and how we can bring people of different backgrounds into research and STEM industries,” she said.

Sullivan’s own career show this latter goal can achieved with the right support. As the only female scientist to step from the lab into the House of Commons last year, Sullivan seems like a good bet to lead Parliament’s work on this crucial issue.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com