I’m starting over again – this time at one of the oldest universities in the world.

Friends and colleagues know I’m on sabbatical this year from my position at Whitman. For once, I’m the trailing spouse: my husband has long-standing collaborations with faculty at the University of Cambridge. I came here with a need to reboot my research and an open mind about what form new collaborations might take.

While on a scouting trip to Cambridge in June, we happened to drop by the Computer Lab, where my husband already had an office and where I would be an academic visitor. I saw a poster for the Eighth Annual Cybercrime Conference, and found myself curious enough to attend. It was an inexpensive, one day meeting, in a city I was already visiting. The motivation: at Whitman, I see a steady trickle of students who want to learn about cybersecurity. By learning more about the area, I would potentially contribute a new area of study and research to the department.

The conference was invigorating. A surprise talk by Kieron Ivy Turk – not on the conference agenda, but pinch-hitting for a presenter with travel troubles – showed me that my HCI research skills could contribute to work on emerging harms in cybercrime and cybersecurity. Ivy reprised their SOUPS 2025 presentation, “Spy-oT: Understanding How Users Learn to Use Internet of Things Devices For Abusive Purposes.” The study uses participatory design workshop methods to understand how non-experts discover malicious secondary uses for IoT devices – not a context in which I’ve used participatory design, but it resonated.

So I reached out to Cybercrime Centre director Alice Hutchings about joining her research group this academic year. She has been most welcoming. I’ve been attending Monday status meetings and Friday journal club meetings. I’ve been invited to read grant proposals and other work in progress. During the Michaelmas term, I sat in on the graduate Cybersecurity course, and during the upcoming Lent term, I plan to sit in on the graduate Cybercrime course. The area is brand new to me, and I’m definitely still ramping up, but I see many connections to my broader knowledge of computer science.

I’m not sure yet what direction my research with the Cybercrime Centre will take, but I have a few ideas – and I have time. During our move to the UK, my husband applied for and was awarded a two-year research grant. I applied for and was awarded an additional year of unpaid leave from Whitman. So my family will be in Cambridge at least until the end of the primary school year in July 2027.

Two years would have been a long time to be away from teaching. But with Alice’s encouragement, I applied for the open position of College Teaching Officer (CTO) at King’s College, Cambridge. My first day at my new job was one week ago.

I’ve struggled to understand the position – and to explain it. While CTO is a teaching-oriented faculty position, it’s not centered on teaching courses the way a US faculty position is. It’s hard to understand without explaining the Oxbridge model.

Cambridge is a federated university; the Colleges are autonomous legal entities. (I understand that Oxford is the same, and what I write here will apply with some changes to terminology.) The University is responsible for setting the curriculum, organizing lectures, assessing students, and awarding degrees. In turn, Colleges are responsible for admitting students, monitoring their progress through the degree program, and organizing small-group supervisions (called tutorials at Oxford).

My job is primarily to serve as Director of Studies (DoS) to a cohort of King’s CS students, and to supervise students in some of their lecture courses. This term, I’m taking over as DoS for Part II students. In CS, this is the third and, for most students, the final year of their undergraduate degree. I’ll also be supervising pairs of students in three courses that my colleagues struggled to find other supervisors for: Operating Systems (Part IA), Computation Theory (Part IB), and Prolog (Part IB).

Here are some tasks I completed during my first week at King’s:

• I met with the Senior Tutor and an HR officer for an orientation to College roles along with two separate tours of the College that showed me quite different things, but nonetheless all useful;
• I got my keys from the Porters’ Lodge;
• I submitted a headshot and short biography for the web site and Fellows induction ceremony;
• I picked up my new MA gown from Ryder & Amies across the street, because I will need it for said induction ceremony;
• I met with the colleague whose position I am taking, who has taught me many things he had to figure out on his own;
• together we arranged start-of-term meetings with the eight Part II students;
• I met with all my new King’s CS colleagues to discuss various start-of-term issues;
• I mapped out the lecture schedules for the courses I am supervising (spending a surprising amount of time with timetables and spreadsheets);
• I worked out feasible supervision dates and times for those courses;
• I found the course materials, which I have yet to study in depth;
• I completed an online (2 hours) and an in person (3 hours) training on conducting supervisions, both of which were very informative;
• I applied for CamCORS and CamSIS accounts, and scheduled a training on the latter for this week (which I may regret);
• I visited the CS Undergraduate Teaching office to gain access to a Moodle site (but I had to go back again this morning to gain access to all the Moodle sites I needed);
• I asked for an extra chair for my ROUND table (hooray!), started organizing office supplies (I need more), and bought tissues and flowers (the true essentials);
• I retrieved my first package from the Porters’ Lodge;
• I sorted and disposed of several piles of papers that had been left in my office;
• I took a walk around the Fellows’ Garden;
• I started writing this blog post, but did not have the time or energy to finish it. Last week was the hardest I’ve worked since the end of the spring semester at Whitman.

That is a lot.

What I did not do: this is my first ever term of teaching where I will not be writing syllabi, assignments, or exams. It’s very strange, and I’m of two minds about whether I’m getting the best parts of the faculty job as I’m used to defining it. On the other hand, I’m entirely grateful to be exempt from committee work: while King’s Fellows are subject to the usual expectations of institutional service, committee positions were filled for this year just before I joined the College.

There are also the usual expectations to pursue scholarship and to participate in the intellectual life of the College. I have immensely enjoyed sitting down at the high table during breakfast or lunch and having surprisingly wide ranging conversations with Fellows and other senior members of the College. In fact, I hadn’t realized how much I had missed talking to colleagues outside of computer science.

There’s a lot more to say about my orientation to King’s College, Cambridge, but this feels like enough for my first post. More to come!