You find yourself wondering what makes a society work and why this society is different to another one. - Patricia Kingori

As a black woman from a single-parent, working-class background I’m very conscious that diversity is sometimes skewed to a very narrow interpretation – it’s generally gender diversity, so racial, social class and other forms of diversity get put on the back foot. That is changing, but it’s changing very slowly.

I left friends and colleagues behind, not sure whether they were going to be OK. I didn’t want to leave, I didn’t believe what I was seeing. I didn’t ever think that I would see dead people in the streets, or face threats of physical violence. It was a very, very dark time.

I was fortunate enough to work on two long-term projects which gave me quite a lot of security. I did try for PhDs in that time, but either there wasn’t anything that I was overly interested in, or the things I was interested in I wasn’t successful in getting.