Patricia Kingori

"I think academia is just still very conservative in the way that people are hired and promoted."

"The idea that there is bullying in academia isn’t new to anybody, but the discussion of it is new and the idea that you don’t have to put up with it is new. It’s important that students and junior members of staff know that because they are often the most vulnerable."

"Attitudes are changing, but there are still pockets in academia that definitely see having children and a successful career as incompatible."

"It really matters that you work with people who have the same values as you, and who are genuinely interested in creating a good working environment."

"We can try and manage our own careers, but it’s very different to trying to manage other people’s."

"I’m very conscious that diversity is sometimes skewed to a very narrow interpretation- it’s generally gender diversity, so racial, social class and other forms of diversity get put on the back foot. That is changing, but it’s changing very slowly."

"I left friends and colleagues behind, not sure whether they were going to be OK. I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t believe what I was seeing. I didn’t ever think that I would see dead people in the streets, or face threats of physical violence. It was a very, very dark time."

"You find yourself wondering what makes a society work and why this society is different to another one."

"Everything started to feel like it was falling apart. Kenya was the main location for my PhD and it didn’t look like I was going to be able to go back safely."

"My time away on maternity leave had really been seen as writing me off. ‘That’s it now, we might never see her again,’ that kind of attitude. I found that very difficult."

"I was fortunate enough to work on two long-term projects which gave me quite a lot of security. I did try for PhDs in that time, but either there wasn’t anything that I was overly interested in, or the things I was interested in I wasn’t successful in getting."

"I was going into people’s houses where there were really challenging social problems. Those kinds of challenges really made me question the data I was collecting and why."

"The wheels came off completely. I felt like I had to start from scratch."

"I was trying to find other places in Africa to continue my work. Wellcome were supportive – 'If you need to go to another location, if you need to have interruption of studies'. At the same time I felt like I really should go back [to Kenya]. I owed it to the people I was working with who had spent hours of their time with me. Then Wellcome were really helpful in supporting me to find another supervisor as well."

"It really matters that you work with people who have the same values as you, and who are genuinely interested in creating a good working environment. I think some academic institutions and departments can be quite dysfunctional, with egos and difficult personalities, and nothing creative can grow in that environment."

"And that’s the key thing, you can have a great institution with great policies but a line manager who absolutely doesn’t recognise that you are human, and that you are capable of having a family and doing your research well."

"It sounds all really easy, but actually I didn’t have a plan for any of this. I don’t have academics in my family, so I had no example of how this is supposed to work. It’s very difficult for me, but I’ve been really fortunate to do something I genuinely like. I can put in the extra hours, and I don’t mind doing lots of reading or teaching because I genuinely like it."

"As a black woman from a single-parent, working-class background I’m very conscious that diversity is sometimes skewed to a very narrow interpretation – it’s generally gender diversity, so racial, social class and other forms of diversity get put on the back foot. That is changing, but it’s changing very slowly."

"I’ve had all sorts of horrible experiences where I’ve tried to speak to a head of department and they’ve just said, 'This is part of what you have to deal with.' I don’t think anybody would ever be so blasé about it now. I think it’s changing, but I don’t know to what extent or whether it’s changing quickly enough."

"It was a huge leap up,but I didn’t think about it too much because I would find a way to talk myself out of doing it."

"I thought 'the worst that can happen is that they say I’m not ready', which is fine. For me everything was about the idea – if the idea is strong then you can find ways to provide the infrastructure for it."

"I didn’t want to just launch into something and reinvent the wheel, I wanted to find out some of the issues they had, so that I could try and set my project up in the best possible way. That’s been really helpful and people were really generous with their time."

"Most academics don’t have a lot of management experience or training. We can try and manage our own careers, but it’s very different to trying to manage other people’s. We can try and manage our own careers, but it’s very different to trying to manage other people’s."

"This is an exciting time, and that’s what gives me energy. "I’m really happy that I’ve stuck with sociology. I love what I do and I have done since I was 14 years old and I picked up my first sociology book. The idea that I can do this for a living is just so wild."