Ann Louise Kinmonth

Fellow and Director of Clinical Studies at St John’s College, Ann Louise’s research interests include the prevention and management of diabetes and heart disease.
 

It felt as if I had to fight to exist as a thinking person. My family life was middle-England and, although I was fortunate in many ways, the education of the women in my family wasn’t taken as seriously as that of the men.

While my brother was offered a good education, I was sent to an inferior boarding school. Since then I have always had to push against the notion that men do the serious things and that somehow women are just playing at what they do.

I have often found myself to be the only woman at a table of grey suits and had to learn how to deal with that. Even when I was on the Council of the Academy of Medical Sciences, I remember consciously deepening my voice, in hopes of being better heard. When a man was credited for a comment I had made I wasn’t too bothered. I was most interested in getting my point of view incorporated. The purpose of being there was to be part of making something good happen, so actually I was pleased enough.

“It’s not about separating women out and doing something different, it’s about bringing them in.”

My experience of Cambridge is that people are very serious about their work, and if they see that you are too, and that you have something to offer intellectually, you are welcome. In that way it’s gender neutral. At the same time we need more bright women coming through and at my college we have been listening to students through an admissions working party which I chair.  We heard that these women don`t really want special measures, just to be visible along with everybody else. They want to see more senior women walking around the college; images of women up on the walls; for it to be commonplace to hear women speaking in a variety of arenas. It’s not about separating women out and doing something different, it’s about bringing them in.

My own visibility largely comes from what I have been able to achieve with my work and particular perspective. I am a specialist in Generalism. Throughout my career I have worked as either a Hospital Doctor or a General Practitioner and my academic work is grounded in this broad experience. Specifically, I have addressed research questions about preventive medicine, contributed to developing academic primary care and enabled the career path of young clinical academics in ways that were not available to my generation. This work matters to me and I have a strong legacy commitment. It’s good to see how young academics that started out with me, from epidemiology to the social and behavioural sciences, are now running the show. I had no biological children, and in some ways I regard them as my ‘academic children’. It is good to see my lines of work taken forward by others and the findings making a difference. I had to learn how to hand over to others and it became easier when I stood down from my chair; part of success is letting go.

I believe that success and failure are so close that perhaps one should not be too excited by either attribution. If I think about my achievements, I suppose what I value most is when I’ve managed things on my own terms, when I’ve not compromised my integrity and when I’ve brought original ideas effectively to the table. Success is perhaps a life well lived, and so when you act you must act absolutely wholeheartedly. If you’re wrong it will soon become clear and you can change direction, but it’s no good fiddling about at the margins. You are unlikely to do your best work if it is chosen for expediency rather than from passion. As my riding teacher used to say, throw your heart over the jump and the pony won’t refuse.

No academic career is a walk in the park and I have had to deal with mine while managing the depression that began when I was a teenager. I have handled this with a mixture of grim determination and a realisation that different moods fit different parts of the research cycle. I declared this illness before I was appointed to my first chair in Southampton and my record of achievement won through. This is part of who I am and my resilience, such as it is, comes from working with that reality.

“I believe that success and failure are so close that perhaps one should not be too excited by either attribution.”

There’s seldom a moment when I’m not thinking that life is short. I am very interested in and curious about the world. We are lucky to be alive and we should use the time that we have well. When I talk about retirement with my husband we discuss the things we want to do before he or I die. I married relatively late in life and it suits me; with John came five stepchildren and five step-grandchildren. I carefully avoided being the wicked stepmother and being part of this family is an important part of my success.