A “Mother, Scientist, Climber, Feminist’s” story
by Georgia Avramidou & Nicoline den Hollander
Dieke van Dinther is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research in Madrid. Having already added the prefix “Dr.” to her name, Dieke talks about combining motherhood and science on a daily setting, while conducting Post-Doc-level research and living abroad.
Dieke has passed the challenges in her academic career with flying colours. During her PhD at the VU ľϸӰ Medical Center in Amsterdam, she worked on a vaccine-therapy against melanoma.
She is now investigating the metabolism of immune cells for her Post-Doc research in Madrid.Currently she is the recipient of the Marie Curie and EMBO grants for which she worked hard. However, the road to success was not without difficulties, as her first grant application was rejected. When asked about her plan on the grant writing process, she says: “I asked for as much input as I could from other scientists and former grant recipients”.
Apart from the purely scientific aspects of her research, Dieke’s perception of science is also prominent in several other areas. Dieke was nominated for the VIVA400 award, a prize that honours women from various fields who make an impact. She has also proved to be excellent at multitasking, combining motherhood, science and moving abroad. “Moving to Madrid was crazy; I was expecting my first child, finishing my PhD thesis, and the day after my contract finished, we moved here”. In addition, she is really active on social media, particularly on Instagram, describing herself as a “Mother, Scientist, Climber, Feminist” and posting moments of her academic and personal life. “Once I had my son, I realized that being a mom in academia is quite special. I wanted to show that combining motherhood with academia is possible, and that it’s not harder than any other job”.
I wanted to show that combining motherhood with academia is possible, and that it’s not harder than any other job.
Dieke is not afraid to show her failures to the public. “I think it's important to not only show your successes; that's unrealistic and you don't help anyone. I feel less alone by seeing that scientists I look up to also have bad moments”.
To me, the subject is not that important, but the environment where you're doing your science is.
As a concluding remark, Dieke gives a piece of advice to new mothers in science. “Pick your supervisor well! Don't ignore the red flags, talk to the colleagues, neighbouring labs and understand how someone supervises. You have so much pressure already that you need the support of your supervisor, not extra pressure. To me, the subject is not that important, but the environment where you're doing your science is.”