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<b><h4>What broader responsibilities, apart from your research, have you taken on over the course of your career, both within your university and externally?</h4></b>

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<b>Dr Peter West-Oram, Lecturer in Bioethics, Brighton and Sussex Medical School</b>

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I think like most academics, I do undergraduate teaching and peer reviewing for journals, obviously. I'm also the course lead for a new master's degree in contemporary bioethics, which we're setting up at the moment, here at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. In addition to those core responsibilities, I'm also the Deputy Chair of the Research Governance and Ethics Committee in the Medical School. I'm the Deputy Director of Student Support. 

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And I've been a member of the Animal Welfare Ethics Review Board at the University of Sussex more broadly. And I've also been a peer reviewer for book manuscripts, and for grant applications. So responsibilities go everywhere from teaching, to research related, to working with colleagues, and all across the whole academic spectrum. 
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<b><h4>What challenges and benefits did you encounter within these roles?</h4></b>

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<b>Dr Peter West-Oram:</b> I think they've always been very rewarding. They're always interesting, and intrinsically valuable for the community, and for myself as a whole. But you learn a lot from doing them. Teaching is great, because you get questions from undergraduates that you wouldn't necessarily of thought about needing to explain something in a certain way, or approaching a topic in a certain way. And then doing things like offering being on ethics committees. You see what your colleagues are doing. So it's very interesting, and it's a way of contributing to your academic community. 

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That said, there's never enough time for everything you want to do. So there's always that sort of time pressure, and how am I going to manage the workload? And the way I tend to do it is try and differentiate between the important and the urgent, and prioritising the former, but sometimes things are both. 

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So sometimes it's the case of, sort of, keeping plates spinning. But it's always interesting. And it's always challenging. And it helps you to develop as an academic, and contribute to the academic community more broadly.
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<b><h4>What advice would you give to new researchers regarding such roles?</h4></b>

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<b>Dr Peter West-Oram:</b> I'd say that they're often very valuable to do. They can be very useful, personally. So in a sort of self-interested way, it's a way of showing that you are doing things for your community. I would also suggest that they can be time-consuming. And they might be perhaps more time-consuming than might be anticipated. But they're an important thing to do to be a good colleague, I would suggest.

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What I'd recommend is talking to people who've perhaps done the job before, talking to people who've got a bit more experience and finding out sort of, what can I expect from this? How much work is it going to be? But it can be a really valuable way of finding out what your colleagues are doing, which is always fun. And you get to meet new people, and contribute to the community, and learn more and develop more as an academic. 