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<div>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<i><b>
developmental</b></i> approach. But I want to use this
opportunity, if I may, to raise some other issues and questions.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>1. In your country/university, are professors obliged to
retire?</div>
<div>2. If so, at what age?</div>
<div>3. As a retired person, can they still apply for grant funding
for research?</div>
<div>4. Are there conditions on such applications?</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>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?</div>
<div>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.</div>
<div>many thanks</div>
<div>Annette</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
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<div>________________________________________________________________<br
>
</div>
<div>Professor A.Karmiloff-Smith, FBA, FMedSci, MAE, C.Psychol.<br>
Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit,<br>
Institute of Child Health,<br>
30 Guilford Street,<br>
London WC1N 1EH, U.K.<br>
tel: 0207 905 2754<br>
fax: 0207 242 7717<br>
http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/ich/html/academicunits/neurocog_dev/n_d_unit<span
></span>.html<br>
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