thank you

[Annette Karmiloff-Smith]

So many of you have sent lovely congratulatory messages re the Latis
prize that I wanted to make sure I thanked you all for your kind
words.  As I said, I consider this a prize in honour of the
developmental approach.  But I want to use this opportunity, if I
may, to raise some other issues and questions.

1. In your country/university, are professors obliged to retire?
2. If so, at what age?
3. As a retired person, can they still apply for grant funding for research?
4. Are there conditions on such applications?

I am asking the above because of my situation in the UK.  Next year I
am obliged to retire because of my chronological age (ignored is my
biological age: I did a half-marathon for the WSFoundation and work
out three times a week, as well as my intellectual age: I feel at the
peak of my career, not at its end!)  If I apply for a grant, I need a
"minder" as PI.  This cannot be a simple figurehead such as a head of
university, but nor can it be the person with whom I have
collaborated closely both theoretically and empirically for the past
four years because he is "too young" in his career (in his mid
thirties) - a catch-22.  Moreover, even if I found an appropriate
"minder" and the grant were to get the very highest rating, I am told
that retired workers' grants are very low on the priority list.  So,
despite all that I can offer to science and to the training of
graduate students, I am obliged to retire.  My retirement salary will
drop to 26% of its current UK rate (and alas top-up funds I've paid
in for 20 years have plummeted due to stock market) so I need to find
some work.  Is anyone looking for, say, a 3-month-stay-professor to
give a graduate seminar on foetal and early postnatal normal
development, developmental cognitive neuroscience, genotype/phenotype
relations, and the like, and/or start up collaborative research on
topics of mutual interest?
Please all answer the four questions above.  I intend to contact an
MP about the whole issue of obligatory retirement and would like to
have the facts about other countries at hand.
many thanks
Annette


--
________________________________________________________________

Professor A.Karmiloff-Smith, FBA, FMedSci, MAE, C.Psychol.
Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit,
Institute of Child Health,
30 Guilford Street,
London WC1N 1EH, U.K.
tel: 0207 905 2754
fax: 0207 242 7717
http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/ich/html/academicunits/neurocog_dev/n_d_unit.html
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