STAFF PROFILES

Kate has something of a mixed background, symptomatic of project management. She has delivered events and festivals, curated exhibitions, managed community facilities, designed youth-led music projects, worked with some of the region's most deprived communities and helped develop new FE and HE courses in partnership with industry. She is passionate about art, education and fun and believes there is a place for all three in any project. She is motivated by acts of human kindness, whether received or witnessed. Kate studied English and History at Northumbria University, focusing on the literature of the American Deep South and the work of overlooked British genius, B.S. Johnson. Her dream dinner party guests would be Robert Fisk, comedian David Mitchell, John Pilger, Marilyn Monroe, Patrick Ness and Richard Herring. She loves too much music to mention but surprisingly, only one Beatles song. Kate is vegetarian, loves travelling and will never understand cricket. Kate objects to people talking about themselves in the third person and so found this exercise very disagreeable.

Anna's background is in student recruitment and widening participation where she worked for three years before joining Beacon North East in September 2010. She has a strong belief that everyone has the right to Higher Education, regardless of their background and thinks that a varied student and staff population leads to universities becoming far more interesting places to study and work. She studied Linguistics at Edinburgh University and has a passion for all things language related, in particular good grammar. She has also developed a passion for science after working for a year as Science Recruitment Officer at Newcastle University and is a member of the North East Science Alliance (NESA). She loves reading, going to the cinema and chatting over a cup of tea and a biscuit. She challenges anyone to disagree with her that Star Trek: The Next Generation is the best Star Trek series ever.

Emma’s background is in administration and support for institutional strategy and she has worked for several organisations in this capacity, including the NHS and Durham County Council. She believes public engagement in Higher Education is an opportunity to create a better future for all. Emma studied Marketing Management at Northumbria University and chose to research the global phenomenon of celebrity endorsement. She would like to see celebrities play a stronger role in endorsing social, medical and environmental research to educate the next generation through more accessible and relevant outlets such as TV and magazines. Emma enjoys swimming, films and music. Funeral Party and Kings of Leon are two of her favourite bands and she loves the TV show Lost. Her dream dinner party guests would be Jimi Hendrix, Edie Sedgwick, Edward Cullen, Alan Partridge and Lady Gaga.

Andrew is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and a director of the MSc in Medical Anthropology. He was strand leader for Medicine in the Community, part of the Medicine programme at Queen’s Campus, Stockton, for seven years from 2001-8, where he established an innovative community placement scheme for early years medical students to work in non-clinical health and social care settings on Teesside as part of their course. He became more directly involved in the University’s community outreach and engagement programme, initially as director of Phoenix (a OneNE-funded project aimed at University-based social regeneration and economic development) and as Durham lead for Beacon NE from 2009. The Phoenix project involved establishing a staff volunteering scheme – the first of its kind at any NE University - and a number of other initiatives aimed at enhancing community-university partnerships and engagement. His own work as a staff volunteer is as a member of the Council of Project Trust, the Hebridean-based educational charitable trust that sends school leavers overseas for a year. His leadership role for Beacon NE has involved facilitating the work of the three theme leaders at Durham and supporting the work of Beacon NE more generally. As a Beacon NE Fellow (2010-11), he has been working on bringing an English-language version of an interactive exhibit designed to discourage young people from smoking, from Uruguay (South America) to the UK. The exhibition, entitled ‘Don’t Get Me Started’, has been taken up by W-West, a Glasgow-based young person’s tobacco advocacy group, and the Glasgow Science Centre. This public engagement activity reflects his research interests in public health innovations and behaviour change (specifically in the fields of alcohol and tobacco use). All this is a far cry from his doctoral research (1989-90), which took place amongst the Yakkha, an ethnic group in the middle hills of East Nepal. His most recent major publication, a textbook for medical students, The Social Basis of Medicine (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), won the BMA’s student textbook of the year award in September 2010.

Andy is Special Projects Manager at the Centre for Life, responsible for funding and developing new exhibitions and other engagement projects. A Durham science graduate, he has worked in science communication for over 15 years in organisations such as the Science Museum, the Edinburgh International Science Festival, Eureka – The National Children’s Museum and the Centre for Life as well as a period of freelance consultancy. He has a MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College and is currently Chair of the British Interactive Group, a network of professionals working in science engagement. He is interested in the relationship between active researchers and professional communicators and believes both are necessary for effective public engagement. Blurring the boundaries between science and other disciplines is another interest, having carried out research comparing arts and science communication organisations.