{"id":1190900,"date":"2026-09-07T06:03:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T06:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1190900\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T06:03:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T06:03:17","slug":"bristol-academic-shares-rags-to-riches-story-in-new-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1190900\/","title":{"rendered":"Bristol academic shares rags to riches story in new book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Etor&#8217;s first break came whilst doing a kind of national service in Nigeria, when he realised lots of locals were being hospitalised with food poisoning, because they were trying to preserve things by drying them in fields.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">To solve the problem, he designed and built a kind of &#8220;solar oven&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It worked incredibly well,&#8221; he said, which led to an award from the state government and a job.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He then completed an undergraduate degree at Newcastle University and a PhD at the University of Durham, before securing his current job in Bristol.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sir Steve Webb, the former MP and Pensions Minister, who got to know Etor through the church in Bristol, called his achievements &#8220;remarkable&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;David&#8217;s message is very much that people shouldn&#8217;t be defined by their upbringing or their background,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They shouldn&#8217;t be written off.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I was pinching myself on my way here this morning,&#8221; Etor added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Nothing good was supposed to come out of me.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Etor&#8217;s first break came whilst doing a kind of national service in Nigeria, when he realised lots of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1190901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":["post-1190900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bristol","tag-bristol","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117228247891588381","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1190900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1190900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1190901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1190900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1190900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1190900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}