From unpaid carer to care researcher: My (not so linear) journey into academia
Featuring Enrico Pfeifer • Hosted by Yuqi Liang
What We will Cover
This seminar shares the story of a non-linear journey into academia, shaped by lived experience as an unpaid carer and professional experience as critical care nurse.
1. A 30-min presentation
Enrico reflects on how caring responsibilities influence education, work, and life choices, and how these experiences motivated his research on unpaid caregiving and health inequalities.
The session combines personal reflection with selected insights from longitudinal research to illustrate how care shapes health behaviours across the life course. Rather than focusing on technical methods, the seminar emphasises career pathways, resilience, and navigating uncertainty.
2. An 1-hour roundtable discussion between the speaker and the host
The talk will conclude with an open discussion on entering academia through alternative routes and building more inclusive academic spaces. We welcome any comments and questions from our audience as well.
Speaker Information
Presenter: Enrico Pfeifer
Research Fellow, Equalise ESRC Centre for Lifecourse Health Equity, University College London
Enrico Pfeifer is a Research Fellow on the Equalise Care theme and recently completed his PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London. Prior to his PhD, Enrico worked as a critical care nurse in Germany and the United Kingdom and also has lived experience as an unpaid carer. His work focuses on generating evidence to inform policies that better recognise and support unpaid carers.
Moderator: Yuqi Liang
PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology and Institute for New Economic Thinking, University of Oxford
Yuqi's research focuses on developing methodologies in quantitative and computational social science, and applying them in life course and inequality studies. She develops two Python packages: Sequenzo for sequence analysis, and GLM Plus for extended generalized linear models.