I got into science because I went to an all-girls grammar school and I found it really exciting, really interesting.
I knew I wanted to do something that was science based
so I ended up going off the
first time round to be a dentist.
I had always been interested in archaeology, I wanted to have a look at disease in the past.
So I wanted to use my dental skills alongside
the anthropological and archaeological skills
and came to Bradford to do a master’s degree and stayed on to do a PhD.
My current research is based around
looking at the diet and health of children
and their mothers around the time of birth.
So we discovered that if you take samples from milk teeth
that some of them are actually formed while the baby is still in the womb
and that means that we are not just getting dietary values for the baby, but we are getting dietary values for the mother as well.
And even more exciting, if the mother or the baby are under nutritional stress or any kind of stress, that changes the values that we get as well.
We know that with modern children those that are born with a low birth weight
so they’ve had some kind of problem while they were in the womb, are much more likely to develop diseases like diabetes and heart disease.
So if we can find markers for that stress in the same way as we have done in the children from the past,
then we can potentially find markers for modern children that are going to be at risk of those diseases.
There are two areas of interest in my research that I would like to apply for grants for.
One is to look at childhood health in the past
teeth from lots and lots of different periods in the British history and prehistory to do all the analyses on them that I’m doing at the moment.
I’d also like to have a look at people who were transported from Britain
as convicts to maybe Australia or New Zealand, while they were still quite young and still growing teeth;
and I would be really interested to see what effects it has.
I decided to I decided to participate in Soapbox Science because
I think it’s really important that women can see other women doing science.
And I think in my particular case it’s great for people to see that
mature students can get involved with science.
I plan to engage with the public on the day by dressing up as the 'Bradford Tooth Fairy'.
And I know from experience in the past that even small children will talk to me if I do that.
