I am planning on retiring this summer, and many people are asking me what I plan to do after I retire. One thing is that I really want to travel more. In the broad sense, which could include visiting family and research visits as well as tourism. I also want to stay involved in academic life and research, and would like to do some writing.

I want to travel again!

When I was in my 20s and early 30s, I loved to travel. I spent an entire year backpacking around the world, and also spent 1-2 months travelling most summers. It was an important part of my life, and I wrote some travelogues about my trips; you can read a few of them at the bottom of my resources page.

In my mid 30s, I got married, became a father, and started a career as a university lecturer. This of course meant less travel, but I was still looking forward to sabbaticals, research visits, and taking my children to interesting and exotic places. But then my son was diagnosed with major special needs (non-verbal autistic). Of course this was a huge tragedy for my family in all sorts of ways; it also made travelling very difficult, because I had caring responsibilities for my son. So sabbaticals were impossible, and tourist trips were limited, and also I could not be away from home for more than one weekend.

However in 2024 my son started at a special-needs residential home, which meant I could travel again! I reduced my hours to 80% so that I had more holiday, and took many more trips. But I was still constrained by academic responsibilities and teaching commitments. I am also getting older, and while my health is still OK, I see many friends getting sick or even dying. So if I am going to travel again (as I did in my 20s), I want to do this soon, while my wife and I are still healthy.

Places to visit

I don’t have a fixed “bucket list” of places to visit, but below are some of the things I hope to do over the next few years.

Extended visits: One frustration of the past few years is that I go to an interesting place (such as Vietnam for INLG2025), but am unable to see much of it. In the future, I want to properly look around such places. For example, I am likely to go to Israel and Japan in the 2026-27 academic year, and I want to spend several weeks (a month?) looking around them.

Visiting family: My children are scattered around the UK, and I also have family in USA. I’d love to have more time and freedom to visit them. I do not have grandchildren yet, but if they appear then I am sure I will spend a lot of time visiting them!

Research visits: I’ve never been able to spend more than a few days visiting other labs, which is frustrating. In future, I hope to be able to spend 1-2 months on such visits. I am also keen on working in USA for a month, because this would qualify me for a US social security pension (I’m close to qualifying, just need another $7.5K in US salary). I am already discussing above with a few people, let me know if you are interested in having me visit!

Cycling: I love to do cycle touring trips, and this is definitely something to do before I get even older. I’ve done a fair bit in UK but would love to do more cycling in Europe, including parts of the North Sea cycle route. So definitely take some longer cycle trips, maybe for a month or so each.

Tourism: There are loads of places I’d love to visit. I’ve alwats loved going North, and would like to go again to Scotland’s Northern Islands, Norway (Spitzbergen?), and Iceland; and maybe visit Greenland for the first time. I’d also like to go South, and visit bottom of South America and NZ’s South Island again, and maybe try to see a bit of Antartica. In the tropics, I would love to spend some time in Indonesia, which I’ve never visited. Etc.

Academic work

I will become emeritus when I retire, and definitely plan to stay involved in academic work and research. I’ll still be involved with some projects and students after I retire, but as co-investigator or second supervisor. I’d like to continue working on include:

• AI to support patients: I think we can make a radical difference in healthcare by using AI to directly help patients, perhaps via personal health assistants (blog) which help people stay healthy and manage illness, and also make informed decisions. Many of my current projects are in this area, and I hope to continue some of this work.
• Experimental rigour: As readers of my blog know, I am very frustrated by the low quality of experimental rigour in NLP and AI. This is hard to change, not least because its part of the AI research culture (blog), but I will continue writing about this and trying to encourage people to be a bit more rigorous.
• Supporting others: Many students and early-career researchers have asked me for advice and help. I think I can sometimes “add value” because of what I have seen over a 35-year research career. I look forward to having more time to help people, even if I am not formally supervising or collaborating with them.

Writing

I’d also to do some writing after I retire. I’ve written lots of academic papers, and of course this blog, but I would like to try my hand at writing popular science and/or science fiction. I think I have good writing skills, but of course it will take time to learn about writing in these other genres. But it would be fun to try.

Final thoughts

In the UK, an average 65-year old man can expect another ten years of “healthspan”, ie healthy life where he is able to freely do things. I want to make the most of these ten years. Absolutely do more travelling, as I did in my 20s and early 30s, especially after having done so little in the past 30 years. I also want to stay involved with academia (and do things myself again, instead of being a research manager), and perhaps do some writing. Should keep me busy!