Friends, some personal news – really pleased to say that I have moved from Royal Holloway University of London to Newcastle University. I’m excited to move to a new institution and the new collaborations and opportunities that this provides. I’ll be in the Department of Geography at Newcastle. New email: bethan [dot] davies [at] newcastle … Read more
Hello folks, I’m delighted to say that I’ve been honoured with the 2022 medal for Antarctic Education and Communication by the international body for organising Antarctic research and collaboration, the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research. I’m absolutely thrilled and very indebted to my nominator Huw Griffiths. The medal is awarded for my work in Antarctic … Read more
Friends, I’m really excited to say that I will be joining the University of Vienna for 5 months from September 2022 to January 2023 as the Ida Pfeiffer Professor, a visiting professor position in the Faculty of Earth Sciences, Geography and Astronomy. I’ll be taking research leave from my university to allow me to take … Read more
If you’re preparing for an interview at a university for a lectureship, good luck to you! The UK system tends to involve a presentation, often to the whole department, and then a panel interview with a few senior members of staff. This can be very daunting, but it does get easier with practice. I’ve attended … Read more
Having now been lecturing for a few years, I’ve had the opportunity and time to think about what kind of lecturer I want to be. I wrote this down a while ago but decided to share it now – because thinking about and sharing best practice makes us all better teachers, and because ECRs just … Read more
There is often a lot of doom and gloom in Academia. People discuss the workload, the work-life balance, and the difficulty in taking maternity leave or having a family. For example, this recent piece in The Guardian highlights one professor’s less-than-positive experience of having children as an academic. The Times Higher Ed writes about the … Read more
Last autumn, I had two great pieces of news. The first was that I had been awarded a small grant to conduct three weeks’ fieldwork in Chile. The second was that I was pregnant. I was obviously immediately interested in other people’s stories about fieldwork while pregnant. I could find only a few blogs about … Read more
I’m delighted to have been awarded a £3000 Software Sustainability Fellowship by the Software Sustainability Institute. This promises to be a great collaboration and I’m excited to be working with the SSI to promote sustainable software practices. I plan to use the Fellowship funds to host a Software Carpentry Workshop at RHUL, and to attend … Read more
A position on a funded PhD studentship in the environmental sciences (including Geography and Geology) has never been easy, but in these days of funding cuts and university and RCUK (Research Council UK) reorganisations, it’s ever more difficult to get PhD funding. It’s competetive and every studentship may have hundreds of applicants. Here’s a guide … Read more
Career to date This week (Feb 2014), it’s five years since I had my viva. Rather like finishing my PhD originally, I feel like I’ll celebrate this anniversary several times (five years since submission, since viva, since corrections accepted, since graduation, etc.). I guess this means that I’m no longer an early career researcher, and … Read more
