Next week is Freshers’ Week and across the country, universities will be welcoming enthusiastic students into their departments. These students will be equipped with notebooks, lever-arch files, reading lists and text books.

But there is more that you can do to prepare for university. Here is my own recommended reading list. These are popular science books that I love. You won’t find them on your termly reading list, but they are well written by science advocates, and they may just remind you of your love of science after a particularly dull lecture. Further, they will broaden your horizons, going beyond the scope of your lecturer course and tying together many different concepts.

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So, in September I’ll be moving on again. I’m leaving the Department of Meteorology at the University of Reading to take up a lectureship in Physical Geography (Quaternary Science) at Royal Holloway, University of London.

I haven’t been at the University of Reading for long, but I’ve been impressed by their progressive attitudes, by the friendliness of the Department for Meteorology (including their croquet games and daily seminars with cake!), and by their generally well-run, well-organised attitude. I enjoyed working on my research project and enjoyed working with my PIs. I’m very sad to be leaving.

But I’m also delighted to be starting at RHUL, to be joining such a dynamic and exciting department, and to be taking charge of my own research and teaching. It’s the next step in my academic career. I’m excited and can’t wait to start.

There is a lot in the media at the moment about the ‘collapse’ of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. See my previous blog post for more information. But when we talk about ‘ice sheet collapse’, what do we actually mean? When we talk of people ‘collapsing’, they fall down right in front of us in the street. Buildings collapse. Bridges collapse. It’s a very bad thing. Right? Continue reading →

As part of GeoWeek, students and staff from Aberystwyth University Department of Geography and Earth Sciences discussed women in Geography and Geoscience. We wanted to know what challenges are faced specifically by women in science and by Geowomen, and how they can be overcome. We discussed our motivations and inspirations, gender balance in different research networks, challenges faced specifically by women in academia, and the importance of role models. Continue reading →

The top-down navigation structure of AntarcticGlaciers was becoming difficult to use due to the amount of content added to the site, necessitating numerous levels of nested drop-down menus. A top-down navigation scheme works well for up to say, 30 webpages, but once a website grows larger than that, it ceases to be user-friendly. Continue reading →

It’s one year almost exactly since AntarcticGlaciers went live at the start of July 2012. One year since I fumbled my way into this complex world of science communication. When I started out, I had little idea of what I was doing. I had never Tweeted (I viewed it rather as a waste of time), never made a website, and had never written for anyone other than academics and my peers. Continue reading →