The circle of academic mamas:
Mirta Stantić
Meet Mirta, a (at the time of creating this post: soon-to-be) mother of two, a lecturer at the University of London, and a strong role model for women both inside and outside of academia.
I invite you to read this inspiring and beautifully written insights into Mirta's life, covering motherhood, stubbornness, academia, and many more.
Being an early career professor, a mom of a beautiful daughter, and expecting another little human to join you soon. Woah! How are you feeling today? How is your day going so far?
I am now continually feeling as big as a whale and quite excited. It’s really different being pregnant this time around with a toddler around, and I think, despite the difficulty, that I am preferring it to my first (covid-lockdown) pregnancy. It’s been physically more challenging because of a lengthy commute and running after a little human all the time, but the little human has also given levity to the situation that was difficult to find in the mayhem of the world last time around. My first was a slightly more complicated pregnancy in an unprecedented disarray of the world, so it was really difficult to find any sort of constancy to hold onto. This time around, in the chaos that is life as a family of three, I am weirdly finding the sanity more easily.
Tell us about your academic career. How did everything start?
Serendipitously! I was doing an internship in Germany at a Max Planck Institute, and this was where I first heard of developmental prosopagnosia. The idea that humans could be perfectly cognitively able and yet unable to recognize faces of others was fascinating. I HAD to know more, so I went back for my second year of university, joined a lab that would have me research it, and the rest just followed…
I graduated from Harvard with a BSc in Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience but then took a break from academia to work in industry. I always recommend people do this, and consider them some of my most important years – going back for a PhD after a few years of a fast-paced and well-paid industry job had not only material security benefits, but also gave me the certainty that this was the right choice when things got hard.
It was after a few years that it became clear that I yearn for the freedom of academic pursuits, and we moved to the UK for me to take up a position at Oxford. The pandemic threw a wrench into any semblance of plans I had harboured, but a series of lockdowns and one maternity leave later, I finished my PhD and now hold a Lectureship at Royal Holloway here at the University of London.
It's been a pretty crazy change from a student to a PI of my own lab, but the aspect of this job that I’ve always liked best is working with students and researchers at the beginnings of their career, so I enjoy that being a large part of my new role.
What would you say are your main qualities that keep you going during difficult times?
I am stubborn as a mule, sometimes beyond reason. All parents supposedly aim to raise resilient children, but mine sometimes tell me they wish it had worked a little less well. It’s certainly sometimes a difficult quality for people around me, but it’s also probably one that underpins most of what I’ve managed to do.
Four things that you are proud of.
Balance. Finding balance between jobs, a kid, and relationships has been a difficult and continuous exercise in the last few years. I am quite proud of this place I (we) have found, and while obviously this continuous exercise is never finished, I feel better equipped to find my happy place than ever before.
Reading. Reading for pleasure was an incredibly important aspect of my identity growing up, and it was around college age that I stopped, maybe because of the amount of mandatory class reading I was doing. I’ve found my way back to reading for pleasure in the last few years and it’s been a very important part of feeling like myself even in the midst of (baby) chaos.
Perspective. These last few years have really made me question the idea that I am in control of what happens to me. Where that shift would have really terrified a slightly younger version of me, I am finding it freeing now. The pandemic, changing jobs, the chaos of small children – they’ve all helped me find perspective on aspects of life I can and should be influencing, and others that I ought to truly let be.
Community. Finding strong, lasting friendships in big cities you move to as an adult can be challenging (and a pandemic doesn’t help). I am proud of the community we’ve built – near and far – and while I will always want to have more friends close to me, I am acknowledging that feeling any level of belonging abroad is a privilege. I am particularly jolly about a small group of friends with kids about the same age who often save my sanity, help me find my ground, make me laugh on difficult evenings and don’t judge even when we disagree – motherhood with them is more fun and less lonely, careers more celebrated, difficult choices shared.
Did you always know that you wanted to pursue a career in academia and be a mom?
The academic career was a bit touch and go for a while, but being a mom wasn’t. I knew that I wanted to raise a kid (or kids!) more firmly than anything else I knew about myself. I also don’t remember questioning this lifestyle that combined a demanding career with motherhood until after college. This was when loads of people seemed to want to dissuade me from this idea. But I grew up as one of three children of an academic mother, so that these things go together seemed absolutely normal to me. I am grateful for many colleagues at RHUL who now show me that this is true.
What have you learned about yourself since becoming a mother?
Motherhood has humbled me in more ways than I care to count. The most important lesson has probably been that I have a patience tank that is more spacious than I realized (the above-mentioned stubbornness does not generally correlate with a lot of patience), but when it’s empty, it really needs replenishing. The crucial thing has been to learn what it takes to replenish and to ask for it (neither being still nor asking for help are my strong suits, so this was an adjustment).
And also, unexpectedly for someone so staunchly feminist, I did not expect that having a child would give absolute clarity to my priorities. I expected it to make choices between career and home lives more difficult, but that has not happened – instead, I am now finding it a little easier to say no to things that I don’t want to do (something I previously found nearly impossible).
Eight things that make you happy.
In no particular order:
1. Park outings / long toddler walks / ice cream dates with my daughter
2. Adult dates with my husband
3. Iced coffee weather (short supply in England this year)
4. Coffee dates with my siblings (or maybe that we are adults who go on coffee dates)
5. The pace of life at the Croatian coast in the summer
6. Witnessing my daughter’s senseless giggles with my parents (and vice versa)
7. Phone catchups with friends who live far away
8. Seeing my team at work succeed
And for the last question, what would you say to yourself as a first-year PhD student?
Literally nothing will go to plan, and it will all work out, nevertheless. Perhaps that’s the biggest lesson of any journey, PhD ones included…
Thank you, Mirta, for inviting us into your world. May this new chapter bring you boundless joy, resilience (or maybe this one won't be needed 😜), and inspiration – both in the beauty of motherhood and the journey of academia.