Wanted: Lego professor, no time-wasters please

Alan Martin June 15, 2015

Hands up if you love Lego! Okay, too many. Hands up if you don’t love Lego. Yep, that’s easier to manage.

Wanted: Lego professor, no time-wasters please

Most of us have wondered if we might be able to turn our love of small plastic bricks into a career, only to be beaten down by the real world and the need to make rent payments. But now one lucky academic is going to make it his or her calling thanks to a $6.2 million donation (around £4 million) to the University of Cambridge from the Lego Foundation.

Yes, “academic”. Unfortunately, simply being a Lego enthusiast won’t be enough to land you the job. The position – “director of the research centre on play in education, development and learning” – will be filled by someone whose work has previously fallen “within the general field of the title of the office”. lego_scientist

More will be revealed when the full details of the post are revealed by the university in October.

The Lego Foundation owns a quarter of the toy company, and proclaims its mission statement as being “to make children’s lives better – and communities stronger – by making sure the fundamental value of play is understood, embraced and acted upon”.

At the very least, providing an excuse to look through Lego photos to accompany this article has made this “child’s” life better – so from this sample of one, it’s certainly meeting its goals. Thanks, Lego Foundation!

Images: Ben Dalton and Yohanes Sanjaya used under Creative Commons.