earth science – Earth Sciences blog

14th May 202514th May 2025

A Field Journey through the Messinian Salinity Crisis and Beyond

During the Easter holidays, 31 Part III Earth Science students and 8 demonstrators travelled to southeastern Spain (Almería) for the students’ final fieldtrip. The region’s complex geology offered something special for everyone. Over six days in the field, we moved through geological time and explored the diverse environments—from metamorphic basements and Miocene reef outcrops, to orbitally paced sedimentary cycles and gypsum beds, and on to turbidite deposits, volcanic centres, and strike-slip fault zones.

16th February 2023

GeoVarsity competition back after 4 year hiatus

4^th Year Earth Scientist Ellie Austin reports on the GeoVarsity games

Perhaps spending your Saturday afternoon falling around in mud and losing football matches to people who refuse to refer to you as anything other than a “Tab” isn’t your cup of tea. But it must’ve been someone’s*, since the tradition of GeoVarsity football has been running almost every year (bar the pandemic) since 2006 (with the concept of GeoVarsity running back until the 1990s!).

GeoVarsity football began as a simple idea: invite some academics from ‘the other place’ round for a friendly game of football and see who has the best sporting ability (which is of course completely correlated to academic standing).

11th January 2022

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.

17th November 2021

The Sedgwick: Museum on a mission – Part II

In part 2 of our series on the Sedgwick Museum and its role in reflecting new perspectives, Rob Theodore, Exhibitions and Displays Coordinator, discusses the greater role of representation in the Museum.

27th October 2021

Corals on climate, and why they are even cooler than you already think

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.

18th October 2021

The Sedgwick: Museum on a mission

In this series of blogs we interview Rob Theodore, Exhibitions and Displays Coordinator, and Sandra Freshney, Museum Archivist, and hear more about how the Sedgwick is shaping visitors’ experiences: exposing the stories behind the collections and challenging our perceptions of Earth Sciences as a subject and its researchers.