Earlier this month, the Guardian talked to computer scientist Wendy Hall about her career choices, her experience as a woman in a male-dominated field, and her latest project, among other topics. (Hall spoke to Science Careers in 2007 for an article on career frameworks for early-career scientists.)
Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, was named a Dame Commander of the British Empire earlier this year. ("People may knock the honours system, but they can't knock the fact that very few people make it to this level, and to have made it for science and technology is fantastic," she tells the Guardian.) She's the former senior vice president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a member of the Council for Science and Technology, and a past president of the British Computer Society.
She's a visible presence on the women-in-science circuit in the U.K. At the same time, she notes in the Guardian interview, "Every minute I'm standing up talking about women in science or talking to young women, my male colleagues are writing the research papers, getting the grant proposals, getting increases in salary."
She says something few women will say out loud, particularly to a reporter -- she didn't think she could be a mother and a successful scientist: "There was always something more interesting to do than have babies, and I didn't feel I needed a baby to complete my life. But I did always think that I couldn't do both. I'm very in awe of women who do manage to."
Hall is one of the founding directors of the Web Science Research Initiative, an interdisciplinary effort to create the field of Web science. "We're trying to track what's changing with the technology and how that allows people to do things differently," she tells the Guardian. "These are longitudinal studies, which we tend not to do in computing - tracking users over time against the background of what the technology's doing."
Good stuff. Click here to read the full article.
Hall, professor of computer science at the University of Southampton, was named a Dame Commander of the British Empire earlier this year. ("People may knock the honours system, but they can't knock the fact that very few people make it to this level, and to have made it for science and technology is fantastic," she tells the Guardian.) She's the former senior vice president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a member of the Council for Science and Technology, and a past president of the British Computer Society.
She's a visible presence on the women-in-science circuit in the U.K. At the same time, she notes in the Guardian interview, "Every minute I'm standing up talking about women in science or talking to young women, my male colleagues are writing the research papers, getting the grant proposals, getting increases in salary."
She says something few women will say out loud, particularly to a reporter -- she didn't think she could be a mother and a successful scientist: "There was always something more interesting to do than have babies, and I didn't feel I needed a baby to complete my life. But I did always think that I couldn't do both. I'm very in awe of women who do manage to."
Hall is one of the founding directors of the Web Science Research Initiative, an interdisciplinary effort to create the field of Web science. "We're trying to track what's changing with the technology and how that allows people to do things differently," she tells the Guardian. "These are longitudinal studies, which we tend not to do in computing - tracking users over time against the background of what the technology's doing."
Good stuff. Click here to read the full article.
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