Marion Henderson
This profile was originally published as part of the MRC Annual Review 06/07: People behind discovery. The review tells the stories of just a handful of MRC scientists, the work they do and the career paths they have chosen. It is available for reference purposes only.
Name: Marion Henderson
Born: 31 August 1963 in Johnstone, Scotland
Education: BA (Hons), University of Strathclyde; PhD, University of Glasgow
Family: Married to Dr Tony Axon, researcher for the University College Union.
Current: job title Research Scientist
Field of research: Evaluating interventions that aim to improve sexual health in young people
Future ambition: To contribute to the reduction of sexually transmitted infections and unwanted teenage pregnancies
“When I was young I used to read my Dad’s undergraduate psychology books and my parents’ Reader’s Digest magazines. I loved articles about educational psychology and helping children with problems. They were fascinating. I toyed with clinical psychology, but found the idea of helping people with established problems difficult. Now I’m more interested in preventing problems and keeping people healthy. It feels like a very positive way forward.
Contract research can be hard – for the first decade of my career I was based at Strathclyde University and had to keep applying for grants. I found that sometimes you weren’t allowed to apply if you weren’t tenured to a university. It can be difficult not knowing what your next project will be, where you’ll be based and how you’ll pay your mortgage. So I got involved with the contract research staff committee of the University College Union – I ended up marrying the chair! Things have changed for the better now for young researchers. Changes in legislation mean more jobs are now secure.
For the past decade I have been working on a study of the sex education programme SHARE – sexual health and relationships – which negotiated access to NHS data about pregnancies and terminations to remove self-reporting bias. It’s one of the first sex education studies in the world to use objective data like this. I think the study’s methodology and how it was conducted were really rigorous and we managed to do what we wanted to do. Sex education and reducing unwanted pregnancies is a huge task for the government.
I don’t think you can just take 20 lessons in schools and change something that’s a much bigger problem. Poverty of aspiration is an important factor. For people who are third generation unemployed and don’t think they can do anything else with their lives, they might think ‘Why not have a baby?’ at 16 or 17. Getting the final results of the study was brilliant. It was a 10-year investment of my life. In saying that, it’s not over yet – we still have a lot more data to analyse and write up.
If you want to enter into this career you should go for it. You need to be passionate about it. It’s important to persevere, to recognise what your transferable skills are and to believe in them. I’d recommend finding someone who can mentor you and trying to be part of a good team. I’ve been fortunate to have learned from and worked with scientists who inspired and motivated me. My PhD supervisors Patrick West and Gillian Raab were incredible, as has been my team leader at the MRC, Danny Wight. At the end of the day, you can’t do anything on your own.”