As the EGU Tectonics and Structural Geology (TS) Early Career Scientist (ECS) Representative, and with the outlook of a second virtual general assembly, I take the opportunity to: (i) provide in two following blogposts, some general guidelines and advice to EGU TS attendees, presenters, and conveners, as recently informed by several blog posts in the EGU-Wide blogs, and (ii) highlight some of the activities and news of the ECS TS team, below.
The ECS TS team has been extremely active all year round between last year #shareEGU20 and the upcoming #vEGU21 General Assembly. None of the activities that the ECS TS has done and does would be possible without the voluntary effort of a group of tectonic and structural geology early career researchers. This group of extremely dedicated and proactive researchers should be acknowledged, even more so in these complicated times. They create and sustain valuable, engaging activities that bring value for other early-career scientists, the TS community, and EGU as a whole. The ECS TS team is always looking for new members for the blog, media and activities team, and ideas for activities to do and/or about regular series on our social media are always welcome, so get in contact!
The new structure of the EGU ECS TS team allows independent but interweaved actions to take place in three sub-teams, blog, media, and activities team, each led by a sub-team leader, and coordinated by the TS Representative.
TS Blog Team – Led by Hannah Davies. The TS Blog Team works like a swiss clock thanks to the wise hand of Hannah Davies. Her excellent editorial work and diligence for a sustained publication of valuable and top-quality blog posts is reflected in the number of blog posts the team publishes, 46 this year, and the number of visitors that the TS Blog receives each week, which commonly ranges between 800 and 1000. The TS Blog Team publishes articles that are written by a small group of authors and invited authors in the frame of several blog series. Some blog series have been running for years now. In the past 12 months since the last GA, each of these series’ has been featured. Features from the field (6 posts, authored by: Samuele Papeschi, and Sandra McLaren); Mind your Head (4 posts, authored by: Anne Pluymakers, Elenora van Rijsingen, Derya Gürer, Simone Pieber, and Jean Holloway); Geology in the city (2 posts authored by: Derya Gürer, Elenora van Rijsingen, Nalan Lom, and William Elder); Beyond Tectonics (1 post; Derya Gürer, and Luca Magri). Some started this year, and have become very popular; TS Must-Read (19 posts, by the Must-Read Papers team, see below), Influential Women of TS (9 posts; Anouk Beniest, Rita Solá, Derya Gürer), and our new series that has just started, #OnTheRocks (1 post, Silvia Brizzi – and for which we are looking for editors to help with). On top of all this, we had two invited posts by Ágnes Király and Jonas Ruh.
TS Media Team – Led by Silvia Brizzi. The team has scaled up its dissemination power to keep the information relevant to the TS community always available on different social media outlets. All the magic has happened thanks to the lead and coordination of Silvia Brizzi. She coordinates the team to share content and activities online across various social media platforms (Twitter and Facebook), where she communicates, together with Arnab Roy, everything related to our division. Two specific activities that are also maintained by the Media Team are the “Monday paper”, where freshly-published papers by TS ECS researchers are promoted, and the “Friday Jobs” post, where… well, jobs for TS ECS are announced! The first activity has taken place for the last 3 years thanks to the superb work of Sudheer Kumar Tiwari, and the latter has been sustained without a hiccup by Gino de Gelder over the last year. These activities will now receive a stream of new energy by the hands of Xiong Ou and Sonny Aribowo, respectively. I would like to also acknowledge the participation of Giulia Tartaglia and Grace Fitzgerald in the group.
TS Activities Team – Led by David Fernández-Blanco. The TS Activity Team coordinates all other activities of the ECS TS team. The Tectonics and Structural Geology field-class that the division commonly has prior to the General Assembly can not take place, once again. Fortunately, the “TS Must-Read” activity, which is dedicated to the telematic discussion of must-read papers relevant to the tectonics and structural geology community is on full speed on Reddit, and we believe that this community engagement activity may help cheer up the community these days. A community-wide forum for discussion of these papers receives the visits of readers interested in commenting about the contribution, and now also regular visits by the authors of those papers too! I coordinate, alongside Gianluca Frasca and Silvia Crossetto, a 12-person team responsible for this activity as we promote, discuss and write blog posts about a different contribution, out of the 48 articles selected by the community, every two weeks. The team is composed by (in alphabetical order): Adriana Guatame-García, Armin Dielforder, Benoît Petri, David Fernández-Blanco, Gianluca Frasca, Gino de Gelder, Marta Marchegiano, Pan Luo, Patricia Cadenas, Silvia Crosetto, and Utsav Mannu. Akinbobola Akintomide has substituted Folarin Kolawole to make sure we got our expertise in rifting and salt tectonics covered.
Together with the incoming TS president, Paola Vannucchi, I have designed a new rotation system (rota) for Early Career Representatives. This rota will allow the coordination of the TS team activities by two persons while a third person learns about the ins and outs of the group, as is already common for other EGU divisions. The rota will also allow a more dynamic rotation among posts, with a main representative, an incoming representative and a shadowing representative that increase their involvement in the group on a yearly basis. To make this rota successful, I (David Fernández-Blanco) will hold the position of main representative for one more year, and upon voting in the division meeting, Silvia Crosetto will become the incoming representative, and Gino de Gelder will hold the post as shadowing representative.
Finally, I would like to highlight short courses, networking and educational activities by members of the ECS TS team, and events of general relevance for the TS community outside the scientific sessions:
Tuesday, 20th April – 19:00–20:00 CEST – NET22. TS ECS Networking event (David Fernández-Blanco)
Thursday, 22 April – 09:00–10:30 CEST – GDB5. Bullying in Academia: towards creating a healthy and safe working environment (Anouk Beniest, Derya Gürer, Simone M. Pieber, Elenora van Rijsingen)
Friday, 23 April – 10:30–12:30 CEST – MAL23. Division Medals Presentations [Stephan Mueller (Dietmar Müller & Mathilde Cannat), Arne Richter (Carolyn Boulton) & Outstanding ECS (Christoph von Hagke)] (Claudio Rosenberg, Paola Vannucchi)
Monday, 26 April – 12:30–13:30 CEST – DM22. Division meeting for Tectonics and Structural Geology (TS) (Claudio Rosenberg, Paola Vannucchi)
Wed, 28 Apr, 14:30–15:30 CEST – SC4.1. Geology 101 – The (hi)story of rocks (Richard Wessels, Anouk Beniest, David Fernández-Blanco, Francesco Giuntoli)
Wed, 28 Apr, 12:30–13:30 CEST – NET41. TS-wide Networking event for all division members (Paola Vannucchi, David Fernández-Blanco)
Thank you to all our readers and members of the EGU TS division for supporting EGU, this blog, and the wider ECS activities.
