Ivana Bacik

I grew up all over the place. My father was an astronomer and we went where the observatories were. As result, I lived in London and South Africa before I came to Ireland.

We settled in Cloughduv, 20 miles west of Cork City, when I was six years of age. Going to the local national school was a bit of a culture shock. Before that, I'd been living in London, which was very multi-ethnic. With fewer than 100 pupils, my new school seemed tiny. We had a wonderful teacher who was also our headmaster - Pat Kierse. He took a particular interest in myself and a few others. He was very good to us and encouraged us. It wasn't the norm for people from that school to go to third-level, but some of us did from that year. A lot of people went to work on farms.

I won a scholarship to go to Alexandra College in Dublin. Initially, I boarded. Later, my family all moved to Dublin. I found Alex very different. It was a huge culture shock. It was single-sex for a start and the students were from much wealthier backgrounds. The school was very good academically and we had some really exceptional teachers, but, to begin with, I found boarding school difficult. I was only 11 and I found the whole atmosphere rather intimidating.

I liked Alex's strong feminist tradition, though, but I was much more socialist than the school.

If I had children I doubt if I would send them to private schools. I believe state schooling is preferable. Private schools have an unfair advantage. They have more money going in and students tend to do better.

At school, history was my favourite subject, but I wanted to do something that was more applied, so I opted for law in Trinity. It was fantastic. I loved the freedom that university gives you, after the constraints of school. It was totally liberating. Law had - and still has - a culture where the lecture hours are fairly low - eight hours of lectures and two hours of tutorials. You're expected to get on with your own work in the meantime. We had some wonderful lecturers. Kader Asmal was brilliant. He's now Minister for Education in South Africa and he's loving it. He had a very personal style and an enthusiasm and passion for his subjects, which marked him out. He was very warm and did things like writing references, beyond the call of duty. He really enjoyed students. It's because of him that I went to the London School of Economics to do a master's in labour law and social theory. LSE was very stimulating - you had the people who were the very best in their fields, there. The college had a very broad international student population. I loved living in London. I had loads of part-time jobs and made lots of friends. I did the Bar exams in London and practised there for a time, teaching part-time at the North London Poly and the University of Kent. It's difficult to combine teaching and practice in London, so I decided to return to Dublin.

Ivana Bacik, who is Reid Professor of criminal law and criminology at TCD, was in conversation with Yvonne Healy.