Authored by Aimee Murray

Fresh from my degree as a first-generation undergraduate, I had no idea what to expect from a PhD programme when I joined the Centre in October 2013.

But I certainly wasn’t thinking about the implications of working in a relatively new research environment, with all of the teething problems, institutional inertia, and funding pressures that my more senior colleagues were having to navigate.

Those issues weren’t even on my radar. I was mostly questioning how I’d got here, trying my best to do a good job, make a good impression, and fit in.

I was in the second cohort of postgraduates – the first had joined right at the Centre’s inception back in 2011, so they seemed well established when I arrived. But what I found totally perplexing at the time was how everyone worked on completely different research areas to my own!

Social sciences and the multitude of ways the environment could affect human health were completely novel to me as a biologist and, back then, budding microbiologist.

But as our director, Prof Lora Fleming, repeatedly used phrases like ‘interdisciplinarity’ and ‘transdisciplinarity’ in meetings and conversations, I gradually began to appreciate the ethos those words embodied. Even now I can’t think of any other centres than span so many different types and topics of research, and in such a comparatively small group.

I was based at our laboratory on the University of Exeter’s Penryn campus near Falmouth, whilst the main Centre offices were at the Knowledge Spa in Truro (long before everyone made the move to Penryn), but we always knew we were firmly a part of the Centre.

One of my first memories is presenting at one of the group’s many research events, probably only a month or two after starting. Afterwards, Prof Mike Depledge asked me a pretty tough question in front of the audience – yet the support of my new colleagues gave me the confidence to answer coherently and marked a shift in how I saw my place within the Centre.

And that’s the thing: once you’re a part of the European Centre for Environment & Human Health, you remain a part of it, even if you end up elsewhere.

Take Richard Sharpe, for example, one of the first PhD students to leave and who now works for Cornwall Council but is an honorary associate professor for the Centre.

Like myself, others including Sarah Bell, one of the first cohort, and Anne Leonard, my PhD and office mate, have stuck around, too, progressing from PhD student to research fellow to lecturer and senior lecturer.

Having now supervised my own PhD candidates, I can reflect upon how important my early days at the Centre were, the ways they have shaped my research, and my desire to pass those lessons on to my own students.

Back then, the Centre was something new, daring – even a little risky. Now, the European Centre for Environment & Human Health is a blueprint for how to create a vibrant transdisciplinary home for everyone, no matter their discipline.