A 'fight'. A 'struggle'. 'Cut-throat'. The need to 'smash the glass ceiling'.

Do you have what it takes to make it in academia?

In a world in which academic culture is so dominated by stereotypical and unrealistically 'masculine' behaviours, biases and figureheads, why would you want to?

This event invites men, women, and people of all genders, from graduate student to established academic, to come together and talk about how we might build an academic culture that welcomes people regardless of gender identity. Speakers include Corina Logan, Charlie Bell, Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, Sucheta Nadkarni and Jane Clarke.

This event is hosted by the Graduate Union, and is followed by a drinks reception.

Biographies of Speakers:

Charlie Bell came up to Cambridge in 2008 to read medical sciences at Queens’ College as part of the MB PhD programme. He undertook a PhD investigating the mechanisms responsible for the development of type 1 diabetes with Professor John Todd in the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, with involvement in clinical trials and driving in vivo and in vitro laboratory studies. It was during this time that he found a passion for supervising undergraduate medics and natural scientists. He has been doing so since then, in subjects ranging from reproductive physiology to biochemistry. He is currently completing his medical degree and plans to pursue an academic medical career in oncology, and was recently an Exchange Scholar at Mt Sinai Hospital, in New York City, characterizing the role of the immune system in melanoma. Outside of Cambridge, he chairs the national Medical Student Committee for the British Medical Association.

Jane Clarke FRS, FRSC, RMedSci is Professor of Molecular Biophysics and a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and incoming Master of Wolfson. She began her career in science as a teacher in a comprehensive school. She later moved with her family to the USA, where she took a master's degree that kick-started her new career in research.

Corina Logan is Bye-Fellow in Zoology at Murray Edwards College; after finishing her PhD she was Junior Research Fellow at the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California Santa Barbara, before returning in 2015 to take up a Leverhulme Early Career Research position in the Zoology Department at the University of Cambridge.

Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe read History at St Hugh’s College, Oxford (1995-8), before coming to Cambridge for an MPhil in Political Thought (1999), and a PhD in Late Antique History (2004). She took up a Research Fellowship (2002-4) and then a College Lectureship and Fellowship in History at Peterhouse (2004-6). From 2006-16 she taught Roman History in the Classics Department at King’s College London as a Lecturer and Senior Lecturer, before returning to Cambridge and Peterhouse in 2016.

Sucheta Nadkarni is the Sinyi Professor of Chinese Management and head of the strategy and international group at the University of Cambridge, Judge Business School and a professorial fellow at Newnham College. She is also the director of the Wo+Men's Leadership Initiative at the Judge Business School. Her primary research interests include women and leadership, particularly women's rise to corporate boardrooms. She has published extensively in leading academic journals in management. She is an associate editor of the Academy of Management Journal and Journal of Management and sits on the editorial of three other leading academic journals. She has worked on research projects and grants with companies such as Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton, Newton Asset Management and BNY Mellon. Her research on female rise to boardrooms has been featured in global media outlets including New York Times, Forbes, CNBC, Huffington Post, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Economic Times, Times of India, Herald Tribune, Borsen, O Globo, The Times (Kuwait), Business Standard and Folha De Sao Paulo.