Maria's story

"I'm very proud that I'm here."

I’m inspired by lots of things and many people. I’m inspired by a couple of people in the academic community that have been working, sometimes not in ideal conditions, and have been pursuing their dreams and goals, this has been my motivation for me to pursue my career in academia.

From my small experience, as I only joined in September, Essex is a place that I believe is here to give opportunities to a lot of people. It is a community that is opening itself to a lot of new people, and is building a vivid community. It also offers a lot of opportunities for us junior academics to grow.

I’m very proud that I’m here. I started in a very small town in Greece, and I’m proud of my achievements. I studied for my undergraduate and graduate degrees in Greece at the University of Patras, I then did my post doctorate at the University of Oxford. Now I am here at Essex as a lecturer.

I’m part of the Women in CSEE group, which is a very new group of staff and students. We are still figuring out what we want to do with it, which I think is the most fascinating part. There isn’t someone telling us what to do and how to run it, it’s just us trying to think of initiatives that might help to establish women’s presence in science and create a better everyday environment of us in the school. For the time being we’ve started organising events and expert speakers, and it’s mostly a collaborative effort.  It’s been really fun working together, we have lots of ideas and hopefully we’ll get the chance to implement some of them. It’s mostly an informal group; we wouldn’t enjoy it as much otherwise, if something comes to mind we share it with other members. We will see how it goes, for the time being, we do as we feel and consider everything that comes to mind, we are open to suggestions from everyone!