fieldwork

Hold my Baby: Improving Institutional Policies of Parenting and Field-based Research

Christine Liang and Tahnee Prior April 14, 2025

Feature image credit: Christine Liang. Description: Rather than celebrating with cake and gifts, the author’s baby marked their first birthday by bravely embracing the chilly Arctic as they joined in fieldwork studying marine and coastal pollution.

We are researchers. Researchers are people. People sometimes have children. These are three simple statements (and fundamental truths) that are often overlooked by institutional and funding policies, leading to a disconnect between the demands of research and the responsibilities of parenthood. Especially in field-based research, which is typical in the geosciences, rigorous expectations of long h ...[Read More]

GeoTalk: #BlackInTheMud panellists reflect on Black in Geoscience Week 2020

Tiara Moore October 16, 2020

Image credit: @BlkinGeoscience, Tiara Moore and Timnit Kefela.

After telling a personal and traumatizing field experience to my fellow colleagues of color, I found that we all had shared similar events! Shocked and outraged, I wanted to find a place to expose and highlight these events thus the #BlackInTheMud panel was created. Display content from YouTube Click here to display content from YouTube. Learn more in YouTube’s privacy policy. Always display conte ...[Read More]

LGBTQIA+ in the field

Hazel Gibson June 19, 2020

Image credit: François Dulac, (distributed via imaggeo)

As a part of any field-based science work, whether it be as an individual scientist, research team or with students, we must first conduct a risk assessment. This often focuses on the physical dangers that you, your colleagues or students may encounter whilst working in stressful and sometimes unfamiliar environments. More recently, field-based risk assessments for physical/environmental scientist ...[Read More]

Travels in Geology: A World Turned Upside Down

Terri Cook March 27, 2020

North Table Mountain in Golden, Colorado (Photo credit: Terri Cook).

Last weekend, with a strict, stay-at-home coronavirus order looming on the horizon, I decided to practice social distancing by escaping on one last hike. Since I’m currently in Colorado, I chose to climb North Table Mountain, the remnant of an ancient basalt lava flow located on the outskirts of Denver. Locally this mesa, along with its twin located a short distance to the south, are popula ...[Read More]