I am passionate about engaging with both general audiences and communities living close to active volcanoes. Below is a selection of past projects I have been involved with.
Hazard workshops at Popocatépetl volcanoo
I spent two months doing fieldwork at Popocatépetl for my PhD, where I teamed up with Mexican Civil Protection, the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and local schools to run volcano hazard workshops for kids. To make things hands-on and fun, I worked with colleagues from the U.S. to help the students create their own 3D plaster models of the volcano and learn how valleys and hills affect the way hazards spread. The project got some international media attention, and we shared our outreach work at two international conferences.
Kids epxloring plaster models at a volcano hazard workshop in a school close to Popocatépetl
Mountain Aglow
Mountain Aglow is both a physical exhibition and a digital museum that explores and celebrates how people have responded to the Soufrière Hills eruption on Montserrat since it began in 1995. I joined a multidsciplinary team of scientists, artists, writers, and historians from Great Britian and Montserrat to work on Mountain Aglow. I initiated a collaboration with London-based arts group Output Arts and secured funding to co-produce a series of audio-visual pieces for the physical Mountain Aglow exhibit. We first showcased it at the Norwich Science Festival, and it later made its way to Montserrat, where it is still used by the Montserrat Volcano Observatory to engage school children in conversations about their volcano. I also curated content for the digital museum, which brings together songs, poems, interviews, historical stories, science, photos, and videos about the eruption.
The physical exhibit of Mountain Aglow at the Nortich Science Festival
Science communication
During my PhD, I got involved in science outreach through the Natural History Museum, taking part in events like European Researchers’ Nights in London and Brussels, the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival, Imperial Fringe, and New Scientist Live. One of my favourite projects was creating a 45-minute interactive show that let audiences experience what it’s like to manage a volcanic crisis - something I presented regularly through the NHM’s Nature Live programme, reaching over 1,000 people. I also helped produce short films and contributed to the NHM’s Operation Earth project. Outside the museum, I co-organised Imperial College’s Pint of Science events for three years and blogged about my research and volcanology more broadly for both the NHM and the European Association of Geochemistry. Here is one of the NHM’s short films I was involved with:
British Media Fellowship
In 2019, while I was at UEA, I was awarded a British Media Fellowship by the British Science Association and spent two months working with a digital media outlet. The experience completely reshaped how I think about the media and its relationship with researchers across all fields. Since then, I’ve become an advocate for building better relationships between scientists and the media, and I’ve given talks and written further blogs on the topic.