Meet the new SSPP Executive Dean Professor Linda McKie

What inspired you to first enter higher education?

On leaving school, I actually went straight into the world of work. In the community I grew up in, staying on for A levels was considered a bit reckless and a university degree surplus to required economic and social capital.

Landing a civil service training post at 18 with the Inland Revenue as a trainee Senior Executive Officer was considered a real success; a secure job which in those days, would last until retirement. Life sorted! I was posted to the Belfast City Centre Enquiry Counter to help people with questions on pay and tax. Friday afternoons were challenging as the workers from Harland and Wolff shipyards (all men) arrived at the counter, many after a drink or two, to raise issues about their weekly pay and had often worked up a head of steam on their queries.

Other days the job involved explaining to retired taxpayers why their savings and pensions were being taxed. This was the generation that experienced the pressures of paying for health care, and secondary education, and subsequently embraced the post-war welfare state. Working across the decades, saving, and paying tax, retirement seemed to bring yet more tax and they wanted to know why.

This ‘school of life’ taught me about the pain, perils, and passions of those living on low levels of weekly salaries or pensions which took them just over the benefit lines; households in which every pound made a difference.

This was also the time of The Troubles, and along with just about everyone else, we were out on bomb scares weekly, experienced two explosions in our building (we had been evacuated) and were also taken hostage at one point when gun men jumped over the counter; political queries rather than taxation. It was frankly a crazy time and the song We Gotta Get out of this Place  by The Animals became a bit of an anthem. By 21, I had got out as far as a local university to study social policy and nurture my fascination with society, inequalities, government and the everyday implications for various communities and families. Further, we were entering an era of European Studies and that meant a lot for Irish and British identities too. That said, any settlement to The Troubles, centuries old, seemed far off.

So what inspired you to remain in academia?

The fascination with social issues and challenges, of how personal experiences and the political intertwine, had me hooked. After completing my first-degree final exams during the hunger strike ensured I left Ireland for a Masters in Public Policy at Bath, studying industrial development in the north and south of Ireland. I became a migrant and never went back to live. My world opened in wonderous and challenging ways. At that time there was a lot of direct and unconscious bias towards the Irish. Further, I found it hard to understand how life evolved in somewhat idyllic ways in parts of England. During this time I learned to explore the values of people and work to connect accordingly; appreciate difference and get to know the person. Ph.D. work followed with a period at EUI in Firenze and then Durham University. At the same time, I was now a single mother and the seeming control over time in academia, along with the potential to research issues of relevance to societal change, drew me in.

As I submitted my Ph.D, I was fortunate to receive my first ESRC grant to study the update on cervical screening among south Asian communities in Teesside. It was incredible to work with women, community groups, local health care professionals and policy makers to address a complex and sensitive issue. Across the decades I studiously avoided any senior leadership roles, preferring to focus on teaching and research. Then I was asked at short notice to step in as Director of Research. I realised that, through this role, I could help to enhance the research culture and processes by offering the user perspective, engaging researchers and exploring ways in which that virtuous circle of education and research might be realised. Suddenly leadership offered opportunities.

Across my working life I’ve been driven by key social problems, evidence gathering, ensuring people are involved in these processes, and on their terms, plus working across groups / partnerships. In recent years, my career has moved in ways I’d never anticipated and I’m learning all the time about the relationship between academe and the wider public and government, working life in general, and ways in which we can promote research to underpin education for our successors.

You have held a number of senior roles in other universities, how will this inform your approach as the new Executive Dean at SSPP?

Across the last decade my senior roles have included Heads of Schools at Durham and Edinburgh Universities and Director of Research at Durham. As already mentioned, I almost fell into leadership roles but soon found they offered the potential to work with colleagues to invest in opportunities and address challenges.

I am also drawn to work with students, colleagues, and external groups to enhance the education, research and the study/work experience.

One challenge we face in social science and public policy is the valuation placed upon our disciplines by wider society and governments. They are popular among students, generate energy and ideas to address key social issues, unlock funding combined with low overheads and the pandemic has illustrated their critical role. Yet we are often dismissed, disparaged and struggle to achieve our worth in terms of societal relevance. At times I’ve found myself disheartened and note how this mirrors societal perspectives on care; needed by everyone, valued by those in receipt, yet often marginalised and not gaining the resources relevant to the potential to enhance our lives. A key issue is how we work to promote the relevance and value of our disciplines within universities and beyond. Lesson one for me is the need to work across faculties, with learned societies, organisations and national and international governments.

Lesson two is bringing students centre stage. Their experiences and futures are a core reason for our being as a university and students can constitute an ambassadorial force in promoting the value of disciplines in social science and public policy. SSPP is fortunate to have the degree of student engagement with SSPP25 and more generally. But we are aware that COVID has splintered student experiences, and these range from digital poverty in terms of equipment, Wi-Fi and skills to working from different forms of accommodation and experiencing student life in a very different way to siblings and family members. In many ways these mirror the experiences of colleagues too, but for students, the sense of unease at a critical life stage can be over whelming. Listening is critical, as is working on a sustained basis to improve where we can draw upon student ideas.

People, culture, and morale is lesson three and our value base as an organisation and school is critical. Dignity and respect need to imbue all our work as does freedom of expression. So too is a recognition that all too often we fall into unconscious bias. Working on equality and diversity – which enhances the experience of students and colleagues – is a daily enterprise. In each university I’ve worked at EDI has been a priority, and in SSPP and King’s there are some great initiatives within the faculty and beyond. I’ll be working with colleagues to ensure we can underpin, promote, research, and teach on EDI matters. Students too can play a key role here through working with us to developing relevant curriculum and modules.

Being a woman in leadership has its challenges and remains an issue. We are all socialised differently and forms of leadership we are comfortable with can, and does, differ. Class is a catalyst of confidence and so too is gender and race. At a time when we would surely gain from diverse ideas and inputs, we look around at leadership in governments and many organisations and see the stereotypes pertain. I have learnt it’s hard to be a woman in leadership and be active on social media. So I don’t. And I’ve learnt that self-care is imperative. Take time each day to reflect on the positives (and they are there), walk or exercise and chill with that box set.

Social Science and Public Policy is a strong Faculty with a range of courses and research projects relevant to, among other issues, inequalities in education, international perspectives on COVID, politics and tensions in Eastern Europe and Russia, national and international security, I could go on. This is a Faculty rich in educational offers and research work. There is an edginess and eagerness to address issues and at the same time a configuration of disciplines and schools more suited to my research on care. I’m proud to be leading SSPP into the coming years and towards the Bicentenary.

Can you outline more about your research around health, illness, gender and work?

My interests in gender, health and work were evident in my dissertations for my BA, Masters and Ph.D. Further, a seminal point in my research career was working in General Practice and Primary Care at the University of Aberdeen Medical School in the 1990s. There I cut my research teeth on transdisciplinary, cross clinical team projects on smoking, diet, over 75s’ health and wellbeing, and preventing ill-health in urban, rural and island communities.

My current research brings together these various strands and is focused upon Innovate UK-funded projects, including one for which I am Principal Investigator. Healthier Working Lives for Care Workers (HWL) aims to address healthier working lives and ageing for workers in the care sector – developing careers, enhancing continuity, and promoting wellbeing. The programme runs until February 2024. The programme partners with Scottish Care, Creative Venue and Codebase. At its heart it aims to engage care workers, providers, and a range of groups to develop ways to enhance careers in the care work sector.

The other project is Supporting Healthy Ageing at Work (SHAW) on which I’m a co-investigator and this project also runs for three years to February 2024. It aims to deepen our understanding of how work and health are intertwined in older workers’ everyday lives and to design innovative workplace interventions to support older workers (aged 50+).

One factor for me in joining SSPP is to work closely with centres, institutes and networks to feed into policy and practice developments in health and social care.

What are your plans for your first few months as SSPP Executive Dean?

My priorities for the first three months are to listen and learn; to forge ideas for future developments whilst considering ways we can sustain and improve what we do. There is much to learn from colleagues and my hope is that soon we can meet in person, but for now it’s online.

We will continue with the online ‘Ask Me Virtually Anything’ sessions for the Faculty Professional Services staff and academics, and I’ll start ‘open hours’ around Easter. These are blocks of time in which any colleagues can book a 15-minute slot to bring forward an idea, challenge or issue.

Much depends on the pandemic, but we do know that the virus has generated a range of inequalities in experiences of working life and societal experiences. But at this point we remain in uncertain times and building a sense of community and support is key.