‘You are so much more than your productivity’ – this is a tough lesson to learn when you’re sick.
Eimhir is a disabled academic, working part-time as a consultant while also doing research. Before her chronic health condition, Eimhir was an internationally renowned academic, holding postdocs and receiving prizes. Whilst working abroad at a university, she fell ill with a chronic, incurable condition. She comments on the fact that participation in the project is paid – she couldn’t believe it, and finds it moving ‘that my time is valued’.
Eimhir has held a number of fixed-term contracts, with adjustments to work part-time, and now uses the money from consultancy (and occasional grant funding) to do research. She has to do research to get consultancy work. She has ‘given up’ on having an academic career, as she cannot work full time (‘The overtime issue is massive’) nor publish at the rate demanded by contemporary academia. She worries about not getting academic funding, because of exclusionary funding criteria, and the difficulty of applying for funding if not working full-time as an academic, and when not ‘early career’. In her own time she manages her disability: ‘all that has to happen before even sitting down in front of the computer’.
Eimhir’s comic: ‘Impersonating myself’
