Anna never imagined that she would go on to university, let alone become a Professor. In fact, she describes herself as a “just about average” student at school and, due to health issues in her teenage years, she says that she “scraped through with two A-levels.” It was thanks to the encouragement of her family that she thought she might as well apply to university.
I never thought about going to uni but I was encouraged to apply and then I got in. I never planned anything, it just sort of happened. Looking back, family were key, I didn’t realise that at the time.
Anna then went on to study Psychology and Physical Education and remembers struggling with the fact that her peers were all much more serious athletes than she was. However, this apparent disadvantage in fact sowed the seeds of Anna’s lifelong research interests. At the sports centre where many PE students worked, she recalls taking a keen interest in the children’s activity club:
Whereas all my colleagues were interested in training up elite performers, I got interested in the kids who just couldn’t catch a ball at all.
However, she didn’t know where this spark would take her. After spending a year working in a big psychiatric hospital, when she was about to embark on a clinical psychology course, Anna saw an advert in the Guardian for a PhD at the Institute of Education, University College London which would allow her to research her passion: children with movement difficulties. She successfully applied for the place and this was to be the beginning of an illustrious research career in the field.