The lecture will take place in Room WPT003, West Park Teaching Hub, on Tuesday 5 March, 1.30pm-2.30pm and will be followed by an opportunity to ask questions and discuss the lecture over tea, coffee and cake.
The annual Claudia Parsons Memorial Lecture Series promotes the achievements of women in STEM by providing a platform for inspiring individuals to share their work and career journeys. The Claudia Parson’s Memorial Lecture 2024 will be given by Professor Ksenia Chmutina from the School of Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering.
Staff and students are invited to attend this exciting event where Professor Chmutina promises to offer insight into her career and professional experiences:
“‘But you are so young!’. ‘But you don’t look like an engineer!’ [Disclosure: I am not an engineer…]. ‘YOU are Prof Chmutina?’ [Disclosure: yep, that’s me…]. ‘You think like a woman.’ [Disclosure: I am a cisgender woman]. Can you relate to any of these? And what do these remarks mean for building a career in STEM?”
In this lecture, Professor Ksenia Chmutina will reflect on her personal journey, from a little girl who wanted to be a cosmonaut to a Professor of Disaster Studies at Loughborough University.
The reflection will be focused on three themes: failures, friends, and a fight for justice. Ksenia will discuss why these three themes are often invisible when we talk about academic successes – and why making them more visible is important because they give a perspective on what ‘success’ really is (and is not) and help break the status quo of what ‘academia’ and ‘STEM’ are perceived to be.
Claudia Parsons studied Automobile Engineering at Loughborough College from 1919-22 and was the first woman to circumnavigate the world by car. The lecture series in her name is now part of the institution’s Athena Swan activities, which contribute to the progression of gender equity at Loughborough University.