> Featured Women

> Women A to Z

> Women by College

See also:

> Women in Medicine and Dentistry

> Women in Science and Engineering

> Women in Arts and Humanities

Carol Rivas studied Zoology from 1978 until 1981 at Queen Mary College. Before she arrived at QMC, she took a gap year, which was not the norm at the time, and travelled around Europe and the Middle East.

During her Zoology degree, she went on field trips, including one to the Pyrenees on plant geography, and did a library project on "Washoe", a chimpanzee, who did sign language. Rivas also took courses in Computing, Ancient Greek and Roman History and French.

Rivas recalls the excitement of Freshers' Week, and wanting to join everything. She settled, however, for Archery, FilmSoc, PhotoSoc, and some cultural societies, including IndiaSoc and CyprusSoc. She was the only female member of the PhotoSoc, and became chair. During her time in FilmSoc she helped make a movie about a nuclear holocaust, which was a big topic of the day.

She participated in various political activities, including, picketing against Ronald Reagan, protesting against Margaret Thatcher's education cuts, and marching with the the CND. She recalls Tony Benn coming to speak at the Student Union.

During her student days, she shared a tiny house in Stratford , and remembers how there were few amenities on the QMC campus, which was much smaller at that time.

In 1985, her WWF-funded research in the South Atlantic made her world expert on the St Helena wirebird. She then became research assistant to Professor John Henry at the National Poisons Unit.

Following a period of childbirth and medical writing, and obtaining an MSc in Cognitive Neuropsychology in 1992, she rejoined Professor Henry at St Mary's Hospital. She was his quantitative researcher for eight years, and worked on peer-reviewed papers, expert reports and book chapters on depression, suicide, and drugs of abuse.

Rivas is currently a Research Fellow at the Institute of Health Sciences Education. In 2003, Rivas joined the Domestic Violence Research Group and in 2007, she began a project in another area of research, that of complex interventions for organisational change within healthcare. She is also working toward her PhD, which is on domestic violence.