Arran 2022: best bits, as chosen by staff and students!

I can normally be found writing news stories or running outreach events for the Department, but this year I decided to dust off my walking boots and tag along to Arran with our first years to find out what makes this fabled Island so geologically exciting. Let’s just say it didn’t disappoint, and in the post below I’ve managed to condense down what — according to our students and demonstrators — makes this trip so special.

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The Sedgwick: Museum on a mission – Part III

In Part III of our blog series, we talk to Sandra Freshney, Museum Archivist, about the work she is doing to bring to light women in the Sedgwick collections.

Sandra authored Women in the Archive, an online exhibition featuring documents and photos depicting the experiences of women studying geology from the 1880s until the end of the First World War. Sandra’s work challenges assumptions about what geology and geologists traditionally look like, whilst allowing quieter voices in the department’s history to be heard.

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Arran 2021: reporting on the successes of running a field trip in Covid-times

Nicholas Barber, 4th Year PhD Student, tells us about his experience as a demonstrator for this summer’s first year field trip to Arran – the first since the pandemic started.   

Covid-19’s impact has touched each and every one of our lives. While the impacts of the pandemic have been devastating, in a much smaller way Covid-19 has completely reshaped what it means to study Earth Sciences at Cambridge. Traditionally, our students would spend a week over the Easter holiday tramping through the bogs and heather on the Isle of Arran – this would be their first taste of fieldwork and would be “the best revision any Cambridge undergraduate could ask for.”

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