Prof Helen Williams joined the Department of Earth Sciences in 2016 and is currently Professor of Geochemistry. She reflects on her life and work with Erin Martin-Jones.
Continue reading “In Conversation with Prof. Helen Williams”
To mark International Women’s Day (8 March), we reflect on and celebrate the role of women within our organization.
International Women’s Day is a time to reflect on achievements and progress made, recognize challenges and focus greater attention on women’s rights and achieving equal opportunity status in all walks of life.
We look back over a year of research news and blog posts from women in our Department; from graduate students to lecturers and staff at the Sedgwick Museum. Through their stories, and in their own words, we hope to reveal the breadth of research and educational activities that women undertake across our organization.
Continue reading “Celebrating International Women’s Day 2022”
PART IV of our blog series explores how the Sedgwick Museum is challenging perceptions and changing experiences, continuing with a peak into the archives.
Sandra Freshney’s work aims to bring the archive closer to the public and challenge assumptions about what geology and geologists traditionally look like. Her work includes allowing quieter voices in the department’s history to be heard. Here she gives us a greater look into the work she is doing.
Continue reading “The Sedgwick: Museum on a mission – Part IV”
In this blog post, we bring together stories from women researchers across our Department to highlight the variety of roles within Earth Sciences.
To mark this day, we asked our researchers what pieces of equipment or items they rely on for their everyday research – whether they spend most of their time collecting data in the lab, field or via computer models.
Continue reading “Celebrating International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2022”
My last blog about the WACSWAIN project was in February 2020. We had just started the chemical analysis of our 651-metre-long ice core from Skytrain Ice Rise (Antarctica). The theme of this article is time – the first aspect being that a lot of time has since passed. Soon after I wrote last, our labwork was completely shut down by the pandemic, some of the team went back to their families in other countries, and we all learnt what Zoom meetings were.
Continue reading “WACSWAIN: Time and ice”
Nick Tosca, Professor of Mineralogy and Petrology, is a member of the core science team for the Mars Perseverance 2020 mission. In this blog post Erin finds out how Nick has adapted to life as a researcher with NASA and gets the inside scoop on the first tantalising results.
Continue reading “Updates from Nick Tosca and the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission”
There is a lot to be said about corals: their diverse beauty, their importance for marine ecosystems and, of course, their plight against climate change and warming oceans. And yet this only begins to scratch the surface of these complex, mesmerizing and somewhat alien animals.
Continue reading “Corals on climate, and why they are even cooler than you already think”
Nuclear energy is a low-cost and reliable source of energy with a very low carbon footprint, and for these reasons is likely to be a key player in the green energy transition. But, in order to include nuclear energy in our investment plans, we need to ensure the small amount of nuclear fuel waste generated can be stored safely. I am halfway through my PhD project, which is looking at how nuclear waste, stored in geological disposal facilities hundreds of metres below the surface, dissolves when groundwater seeps in through multiple barriers of protection.
Continue reading “Emma Perry zooms in on the hidden depths of nuclear waste breakdown”
