Katerina Koutsantoni

Object one: projector

My job as Education Manager at the National Heart and Lung Institute involves a little bit of everything. I'm responsible for taught programmes and research programmes across NHLI and making sure that they run efficiently. I act as a conduit between professional services staff, which is my team, and the academics. I bring these two sides together, so each party knows what the other is doing. I really believe that we would be able to deliver our programmes even more efficiently if we didn't have the divide between different staff groups that seems to exist at all universities. That's what I aim to work towards – working together and efficiently – knowing what your colleagues’ role involves helps us all to work better together.

The other thing I try to do is make sure that the staff in my team are trained well, so they update their skills regularly. They’re kept informed on relevant matters, and I try to help them progress, so that they are strong as individuals, which in turn makes us stronger as a team. I know I've got other people around me to ensure we collectively have good oversight of education across NHLI. It becomes a shared responsibility thanks to the skills and attributes of my team.

I've got able people in my team that cover the day-to-day operational delivery of work, so I now have more time to work on developing proposals, or reviewing programmes, or working on partnerships, which gives me a lot more experience. I’ve gradually moved away from the day-to-day work onto doing bigger projects, which I’m really enjoying.

Long term I don't think I'll move away from education. I've been doing it for a long time now and I really enjoy it, so I don't see much point in moving. Ideally I would like to have either a Faculty role with a wider remit, or work in central services within education. Basically having oversight of programme delivery, management and strategy, but on a wider scale, so that I could have  greater impact, and use my experience and skillset to make more of a difference.

Object two: picture of Greece

I speak very quietly, everyone tells me that, and I really do think it is because of my parents being profoundly deaf. Growing up I can’t remember our telly ever being turned up loud, our house was very quiet. Being Greek you'd think I would know a lot about Greek cinema and film, and I just don't because Greek programmes never had subtitles. So my parents, because they couldn't hear, only watched British or American TV. So I know more about that rather than anything Greek, which is a bit unfortunate. It’s only in the last couple of years that I've started seeing subtitles in Greece. My parents’ deafness has therefore contributed to my quiet tone.

I also feel that I grew up very fast, because my parents are deaf my sister and I had to do a lot. As in, call doctors to book appointments, sort out bills, go with them to appointments to resolve any issues. I did that from a very young age, in primary school, and I still do it. It's a lifetime of doing things for my parents, which I don't regret. It's really great that I can help them, but my childhood was possibly not too playful, but it wasn't unhappy either.

Greece can be discriminatory, it is quite a narrow-minded society, offering no resources and facilities for people with disabilities. There was no equal access to people with disabilities when I was younger, and there still isn’t. Although with limited education, both my parents are extremely creative. My dad paints wonderfully. The picture I am holding was painted by my dad and is of a Greek island. His profession was designing and making shoes, handbags - working with leather. My mom has always tailored and sewn clothes.  I'm still amazed at what they manage to sort out themselves - texting, talking to us on camera, email. I taught them a little bit, but not a big deal.

My parents, especially my dad, have always felt frustrated at the barriers posed by Greek society so have been eager for me and my sister to get out. Moving to the UK for further study and work made them happy. Now both octogenarians still living in a highly discriminatory, ableist, society is a concept that continues to bother me a great deal. I have tried to vent about this in a short article I wrote about my experience as a child of deaf adults (CODA) entitled ‘Being a CODA: Lived Experience of Ableism’ published in SSRN.

Object three: book

After I completed my PhD in 2005, within about two or three years, I pitched a proposal to a publisher. I wrote my thesis into a book which is a condensed version of the full doctoral study at Birmingham University on Virginia Woolf’s essays. My thesis was specifically about two volumes of essays that she'd written and put together herself. The majority of essay collections by Woolf were put together posthumously but I wanted to focus on the only two volumes – The Common Readers - that she personally arranged, and explore issues of impersonality, anonymity, and dialogism in those essays.

I still publish something every couple of years. The subject matter has evolved, my work is not on Woolf necessarily anymore, I am however still interested in women writers. While working at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London for around 8 years I got involved with people that were working on mental health conditions, and specifically bipolar disorder, and this grew to be a personal interest. So at the moment whenever I do write an article it is usually about a woman writer, and a mental health condition she might have had, looking at how that affected her, but also her work and creativity. You can find a couple I had published below:

Manic depression in literature: the case of Virginia Woolf | Medical Humanities (bmj.com)

Laura Makepeace Stephen: What Was Wrong with Woolf’s Half-Sister?: English Studies: Vol 99, No 3 (tandfonline.com)