Profile

I’m a scientist interested in how people think and talk about geology, in particular geothermal power. I use a combination of psychology, science communication, geography and geology in my research and spend a lot of time talking to people about their relationship with the Earth and ideas about future energy resources. In my spare time I like to read sci-fi and fantasy books, watch far too much TV and sing in an acapella close-harmony group. To get out and about, I enjoy running along the seafront and walking up on the moors near Plymouth. I also love to crochet, quilt, sketch and bake cakes (although all my cakes are egg-free as I grew up with an egg allergy). I have even won a competition with my volcano themed cake and still compete in crazy geology baking challenges every year that I can! I am an avid social media fan; Twitter is still my favourite (sorry Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr and YouTube) and I have made many friends there over the years. One of my favourite parts of my job is discussing people’s ideas and questions about science, particularly geology, and I can often be found making any conversation into a chat about something incredible, surprising or funny that science has discovered.

I am an interdisciplinary scientist, which means that I combine more than one subject together in my research. Because I am particularly interested in how people think and talk about geology – particularly geothermal power and other new geological technologies that have the potential to solve some of our big energy crises – I combine science communication, psychology, sociology, geography and geology together. This makes what I do a bit difficult to define as I like to mix together subjects that are interested in people and the social side of life, with subjects that are concerned with the planet and the scientific side of life.

So my work involves asking a lot of questions such as: ‘how does the way we use certain geological words impact the ideas we have about geothermal power?’ and ‘how do you picture what exists under your feet right now?’. I love geology. It was my first subject and I am always happy talking about rocks, crystals, fossils, volcanoes, tectonics and all those fun things, but I’m also convinced that if we want to solve big problems in society then we need to combine human ideas and opinions with scientific research. I also really like combining art with my work, as I think that the way that people share ideas using art is really useful for talking about geological ideas, which are often invisible as they exist under the ground where we can’t see them. I believe that when it comes to science, social science and art, you can have your cake and eat it too!

Being a scientist who is interested in the relationship between people and geology I don’t get to do any experiments in a lab or using complicated scientific equipment (sadly). So my typical day does involve spending a lot of time in front of the computer. Like a lot of scientists though I do spend a significant part of my time preparing for collecting data, though my data collection involves using surveys and interviews to find out what people are thinking. As I work with people I spend a lot of my early planning time on getting ethical approval. This is where the University checks my ideas to make sure that no-one who takes part in my study will be hurt or upset by what I am doing. This is because when you are doing a study that involves other living things, you should be careful to not cause any harm. Ethics is something that is starting to come into the way we do geology research too, but mostly focuses on the way we respect the environment and people from other countries we visit to do our research, as we want to make sure that we are as careful and respectful as we can be when we are doing research. Apart from that I spend a fair amount of time both reading and writing scientific papers, which I will admit I struggle with sometimes – it can be tricky to get your thoughts out on paper in way that is easy to read and yet makes your point clearly.

When I get to go out and collect my data I tend to do interviews with people who are affected by certain kinds of geology or geological industry; like geothermal power. These people will tell me their ideas about geothermal and I will have to study the answers of lots of different people to look for patterns and similarities as wells as differences. Then I will build a survey based on those patterns to test how much a large number of people also think the same things. By asking a small number of people their ideas, then testing those ideas on a larger number of people I can try and make sure my science is good and measures what people ACTUALLY think, and is less influenced by my own thoughts and opinions (called bias).