A former epidemiologist who was recently named bishop of Hertford had to push for the flexibility to pursue a career in the church in parallel with one in research, and says that gaining experience of both areas helped him to choose between them.
During his time as a researcher working for the Partnership for Child Development at Imperial College London, Michael Beasley conducted epidemiological research in developing countries such as Chad and Zambia. While in Africa, he also worked with policymakers to implement evidence-based health interventions.
However, that was only part of his tale. Since finishing his undergraduate degree in the early 1990s he has swung back and forth between the lab and the church. His love of science developed when he started his degree in applied biology at Imperial. “Roy Anderson’s group was really fizzing along in epidemiology and its mathematical understanding. There was a very good parasitology department at Imperial at the same time.”
The problem was that he couldn’t make up his mind on whether to go into research or Christian ministry—until people in his home diocese in Lichfield advised him to try out both. He spent a year working in a church in Liverpool, and then did a PhD back at Imperial, which involved running clinical trials in Tanzania.
Once he had completed his PhD, he started a three-year theology degree at St John’s College at Durham University. Beasley says he had to push to keep both his scientific and church careers going, but he asked Imperial whether he could combine the two. “Imperial knew me really well and said yes, but the church needed to get its head around it a bit,” he recalls. He rose to direct the Partnership for Child Development at Imperial from 2003 to 2010, and only after that did he decide to move into a full-time job with the church.
The two jobs informed and supported each other, but Beasley says he never used prayer to try to get his grant applications funded. “It’s good to be in communication with God about what’s foremost in your heart, but I don’t think prayer is a great shopping list in the sky—even for grants!”
However, he remembers applying the parable of talents to the grant application process. The parable, which appears in the New Testament, says that people who use their gifts well are given more gifts and are thus able to do even more.
But Beasley’s own parable comes from his mentors in Lichfield who encouraged him to work out what he wanted to do by experiencing it all. Does their advice still hold for junior researchers? “Yes, I think it does,” he says.
This article also appeared in Research Fortnight