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Joanne Paul, an acclaimed renaissance historian, is leaving the ivory tower of university academia this summer. A Canadian in her early-30s, she has lived, studied and worked in the UK since arriving in 2010 to do her PhD with eminent historian Quentin Skinner at Queen Mary, University of London. Despite this opportunity, life hasn’t always been easy - burning the midnight oil, surviving on limited funds and never knowing where her next short term university contract will take her.

With 70,000 lecturers and researchers facing insecure contracts and casualisation, Joanne acknowledges that she is one of the lucky ones, eventually securing a coveted permanent position as a senior lecturer at the University of Sussex. But now, after nearly six years there, she has decided enough is enough and leaving is the only way she can regain control of her life.

Joanne wants to restore a work-life balance, which had been swallowed up by long unsocial hours of planning, delivering lectures, marking, targets and university admin, and is eating into her time for crucial academic research and writing. She wants to put down roots, spend time with her partner who she marries this year, run yoga classes and walk her dog on the beach in Worthing where she lives. But most of all she wants to create time and space to think, research beyond the ‘restrictive hamster wheel' of the academy, and write. Her recent book The House of Dudley – A New History of Tudor England is published this month.

In this episode of My Name Is…, Joanne looks at why others like her are leaving or thinking of leaving university academia. She starts on the picket line of the recent strikes, hearing from disillusioned colleagues and union officials about their well-documented grievances. She hears about bullying and ill health brought on by overwork, competition and toxic environments. She challenges the university authorities on the way higher education is going - and looks at how things could change for the better.

Presente3r: Dr Joanne Paul
Producer: Sara Parker
Executive Producer: Katherine Godfrey
Sound Engineer: Tom Brignell
A Novel production for Â鶹ԼÅÄ Radio 4