After a mostly empirical PhD at Liverpool, I held a JSPS Postdoctoral fellowship in the Entomology Department of Kyoto University and a European Union Postdoctoral Fellowship in the mathematical biology group in Kyushu. I then worked in the medical entomology department of the Institute of Tropical Medicine, applying mathematical models to problems in human disease interactions and working on vector ecology in the medical entomology department. I returned to the UK in 2000, on a NERC Advanced Fellowship, and subsequently held Readerships at the Universities of Stirling and Sheffield. I was made Professor of Disease Biology in the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences in Sheffield in 2007, moved to Exeter in 2011, and to UC Berkeley in 2015.