Bigg

 

The quiet defiance of Dr Torill Bigg

There is a certain kind of heroism that rarely attracts headlines. It does not shout, posture or seek validation. It works steadily, often invisibly, through systems most people only notice when they fail. Dr Torill Bigg’s career — and life — belong squarely in that tradition.

A chartered engineer and chartered member of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, Bigg holds a PhD in wastewater engineering from Cranfield University, a field whose very name hints at society’s ambivalence towards it. Wastewater is what we flush away, mentally and physically. Yet it is also where public health, environmental protection and climate resilience quietly converge. To work in this space is to accept responsibility for the unglamorous foundations of civilisation — and to understand that progress is often measured not in spectacle but in prevention.

Bigg’s academic and professional credentials are formidable. She is the author of multiple peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals, as well as published, peer-reviewed contributions to industrial literature. She has spoken as an invited expert at conferences, shaping discourse in a sector that urgently needs rigour, evidence and ethical clarity. None of this comes easily, particularly in engineering disciplines where women — especially those who do not conform to narrow expectations of confidence, background or patronage — are still required to prove themselves repeatedly.

But to describe Bigg only through her professional achievements would be to miss the deeper significance of her story. She is also a single parent who has raised her son alone, owns her own home, and has done so without the safety nets that are often assumed but rarely guaranteed. Her success was not scaffolded by privilege or stability. It was built, piece by piece, by someone who learned early how to survive.

Bigg endured an abusive and neglectful childhood. That experience, too often treated as a private misfortune rather than a public failure, is the unspoken backdrop to countless adult lives. What distinguishes her story is not the trauma itself — tragically common — but the resourcefulness with which she navigated it. She found ways to thrive in systems not designed for her, to claim space in institutions that still struggle to reckon with inequality, and to transform resilience into expertise rather than bitterness.

In an era obsessed with “role models” packaged for easy consumption, Bigg represents something more challenging and more useful. She is evidence that structural barriers are real, that survival is not meritocratic, and that achievement does not erase harm — but can coexist with it. Her life complicates the comforting narratives we tell about success. It reminds us that talent is universal, opportunity is not, and that the work of engineering — like the work of parenting, healing and endurance — is often about making broken systems function anyway.

If Britain is serious about valuing science, engineering and social mobility, it must learn to see figures like Dr Torill Bigg more clearly. Not as exceptions to be marvelled at, but as arguments for why support, safeguarding and access matter. Quiet defiance, after all, is still defiance. And society is built on far more of it than we care to admit.