Given time to dwell on the pros and cons of an academic career several themes occur as of significance, hence the obscure quasi-mathematical title of this autobiographical blog. Serendipity suggests events that crop up fortuitously and incur advantage; reflexivity denotes active agency; happenstance brings contingency to mind; career and cv are more straightforward. I will not separate things by these categories in what follows – that would be tedious – but their salience for my own progression (if that’s the word) should be clear.
I collected a decent crop of O-levels before taking two shots to secure a decent crop of A-levels. Had I succeeded with my A-levels first time round, I might well have headed for Nottingham University to study economic history. It was travelling to Nottingham for interview, incidentally, that I first acquired and smoked a pipe, a habit I maintained for many years. So my re-sits gave me time to think, and rethink. The resul was a decision to turn down an offer from Hull University to accept an offer from Surrey University in 1968 to study psychology, sociology and philosophy (one of which would be dropped after the first year). My plan was to drop philosophy, but I’m delighted to say that philosophy so applied to me that it was psychology I discontinued. It was at Surrey also that I met Annette and by 1970 we were sharing lives and accommodation.
Philosophy became my first love and in 1971 I graduated with a 2.1 from Surrey and was accepted for and began an M.Phil/Ph.D in Philosophy under David Hamlyn at Birkbeck College, University of London. I enjoyed the seminars and met some interesting people, staff and students alike: to take one example, Roger Scruton was an excellent philosopher, notwithstanding his outspoken conservatism. However, no stipend was attached to this period of study, and with a young family starting up I felt obliged to look for paid employment.
Jobs were then a great deal easier to land, and certainly more plentiful in sociology than in philosophy: I think I only applied for three or four jobs during my whole career. In 1972 I was in the event appointed as a research assistant in ‘sociology as applied to medicine’ to Anthony Hopkins, a consultant neurologist at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School. The brief was to conduct a community study of adults with epilepsy with a particular focus on stigma. Reluctantly, I formally postponed my philosophical studies, intending to return to them at some expedient point in the future. I never did. Who needs two Ph.Ds?
As a direct consequence of this appointment were several changes of direction. First, I was now on track for a career in sociology rather than philosophy. Second, I was now perceived by others – not unreasonably, though I have never seen myself this way – as a medical sociologist. And third, a major theme in my ‘medical sociological career’ had been established: the stigma associated with mong-term illness. So accepting this first paid job skewed all my thoughts for my future.
I enjoyed my epilepsy study under the watchful and protective eye of George Brown of Bedford College, University of London, eventually knocking off my Ph.D – external examiner David Robinson left it up to me whether or not to correct 15 typos – in only eleven years (you could then)! By 1975 I was seeking further employment, and the most straightforward option was to present as a medical sociologist.
I applied for a half-time lectureship in medical sociology at Charing Cross Hospital Medical School, having been alerted to this post by George Brown. And here’s a thing: the post had not been advertised, but rather Margot Jefferys and George Brown contacted directly to see if they knew of anyone suitable. This was not uncommon and reflected the fact that Margot and George, both of whom I came to know well, pretty much ‘ran’ medical sociology in London and further afield. One potential rival for the Charing Cross position, another of George’s Ph.D students, was talked into withdrawing her application by George. I found myself sitting in front of the Dean of Charing Cross Hospital Medical School being interrogated, not on medical sociology and my neophyte cv but on the number of foxes to be found around Epsom, then my base. He hadn’t a clue. I got the job, joining David Blane in the autumn of 1975. I recall my youthful wonder at becoming a university lecturer and actually skipping past the pond in Roseberry Park Epsom on the way back from the interview.
Shortly after I managed to land another half-time post, to make up a full-time income, researching women’s experiences of menstruation – illness or not? – in the Department of General Practice at Guy’s Hospital Medical School. I there met David Armstrong, who had pioneered an intercalated B.Sc in sociology as applied to medicine that London’s medical students could opt to take between their first two pre-clinical years and the start of their clinical education/training. Teaching these groups over the years was an eye-opener. They were super-bright and had chosen to study sociology for a year, often against the odds, including overt parental opposition. It was the best teaching I have ever had the privilege to be involved in. I recall one seminar beginning at 10am and ending in a nearby pub at 6pm. And fairly rapidly I met and became familiar with a handful of medical sociologists teaching at London’s dozen or so medical schools, largely operationally independent though all part of the federal University of London. The Todd Report of 1968, underwritten by the GMC, made the teaching of sociology and psychology (all but) compulsory in medical schools. We met to attend the Special Advisory Committee in Sociology Applied to Medicine (SACSAM) in Senate House and were able to support each other, politically as well as morally, when one of us came under attack from our home institutions, a not irregular occurrence those days.
In 1978 I was appointed to my first full-time lectureship at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School and in the Department of Psychiatry headed by John Hinton. I joined Ray Fitzpatrick, who was half-time at Bedford College, and two psychologists. Ray and I had a 30 hour + sociology course with the 2nd year medical students, including lectures, two sets of seminars and topic options available to students. Students who failed sociology’s assessment had to re-sit the exam in the autumn. It is worth pointing out that nothing like this has survived as sociology’s input into medical education has become increasingly shrunken and fragmented.
A couple of years later the SACSAM group, encouraged by Margot Jefferys, decided to write a textbook for the medical students. David Armstrong pipped us to it with his own slim volume, but the first edition of ‘Sociology as Applied to Medicine’ appeared in 1982. I was co-editor with Donald Patrick. This mattered, as I realised more fully in retrospect. First, it was an overdue, pioneering and intrinsically worthwhile collective effort. And second, my name became familiar further afield: ‘Patrick and Scambler’ sold well locally and nationally.
In 1987 the Middlesex Hospital Medical School was merged with – for which read taken over by – UCL (in 1998 the Royal Free went the way of the Middlesex and joined us too). This had ramifications for me. I had been appointed to a medical school little known outside of medicine, if admittedly part of the University of London, but was now an employee at one of the leading multi-disciplinary institutions in the world. I’m reminded of the experience of David Kelleher, a colleague much missed, who began his career as a schoolteacher and ended up a university teacher without switching employers: he stayed put while his institution did the moving. Anyway, for all that I was intermittently peeved as the Middlesex was swallowed whole, I adjusted and found myself favourably placed.
In 1986 and 1987 respectively I published an article introducing the concepts of felt and enacted stigma and an edited volume on sociological theory and medical sociology that was a conscious attempt to show that we applied sociologists teaching medical students could do ‘proper sociology’. The first of these in particular has had a significant afterlife: it’s the only one of my publications with 1,000+ citations (whatever that indicates).
I had from the start of my fortunate babyboomer career in academia relished being left to my own devices. I enjoyed teaching, especially undergrads, but I liked nothing more than wandering around the second-hand bookshops of Charing Cross Road and its environs and writing in cafes in Bloomsbury and, across Tottenham Court Road, Soho and Fitzrovia. Things were to change of course as the increasingly metric appraisals of academic performance were ramped up, but they shifted a bit before this. In 1994 Paul Higgs replaced Ray Fitzpatrick (who had previously departed for Oxford). I found myself with a talented colleague of a similar mindset to my own. We got on well (I think), and I began to appreciate the positive side of collegiality. This ‘end to solitude’ was compounded by the appointment of Fiona Stevenson in 2001. Looking back, I couldn’t have been instrumental in the appointment of two more impressive sociologists and colleagues. Their outputs have now far surpassed mine, which, even allowing for a strong dose of scepticism about metric criteria of assessment, is something I celebrate. Learned to enjoy the company of others!
The pressures on academia and academics came to a head for me in 2006, when I was informed by the head of the centre in the UCL Department of Medicine in which I was situated that I’d been selected by Patrick Vallance to be part of a cull of surplus staff. A transition was indeed taking place: I had always been able to ‘confuse’ my assorted managers by being an oddball sociologist in a medical school, but this location now seemed to be counting against me. It was an enigmatic conversation and further enquires on my part found little to corroborate it. I was interviewed by Vallance, who told me to publish in Nature and bring in a small grant of, say, £1 million. No comment necessary. In fact I did two things. I started writing more peer-reviewed papers, rather than books and chapters; and I began to look around UCL for a more amenable base. The consequence of this second move was a transfer to the Research Department of Infection and Population Health headed up by sociologist Graham Hart (I had been on the appointment committees for both his initial lectureship at UCL and his return as a head of department). Graham was both supportive and accommodating, and I saw out my time contentedly enough until retiring in 2013. I would suggest, as it were in my defence, that I remained fairly productive – for my cohort of sociologists at least, if not for Paul and Fiona’s, for all that I collaborated hardly at all and wrote virtually all my publications myself.
Before retiring I was approached by a representative of the Office of the Vice-Provost for Research (the excellent David Price) to test the water for an initiative for a UCL Virtual Institute of Sociological Studies. I was surprised and delighted. I have blogged in detail about the political ins and outs of this campaign, which ultimate failed because the Provost – I would almost say unexpectedly, because we had done our homework – declined to grant us the limited funding we requested. At least we had alerted UCL and each other that the institution was: (i) full of excellent sociologists (the more so of course since the merger with the Institute of Education in 2014); and (ii) began the unfinished process of enhancing the visibility of sociology, and sociology courses and opportunities, at UCL. It was wonderful to attend the excellent lecture by BSA President Gurminder Bhambra this year that announced the rebirth of the UCL Sociology Network, which I founded in 2009 and headed from 2009 to 2013 (when Paul Higgs took over).
I trust that there is sufficient evidence in this rather long blog of the roles of ‘serendipity’, ‘reflexivity’; and ‘happenstance’ in moulding an individual ‘career’ and ‘cv’. Times change – severely so in the transition from the relatively benign post-WW2 welfare capitalism to the rapacious and unforgiving rentier capitalism of today – but I cannot see why these concepts should have lost their traction.