A social scientist, a geographer or an Africanist? Researcher profile by Elsbeth Robson

Hi, I’m Elsbeth and I describe myself variously as a social scientist, children’s geographer, Africanist or development geographer depending on who I’m talking to. And that’s just at work – I juggle various identities in the rest of my life too. I joined the Department of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at Hull in summer 2013 as a Lecturer in Human Geography. Hard to believe it’s already been almost a year! As a geographer, I have special interests in Africa having had the opportunity to work there on and off thoughout my career since a gap year in Kenya in 1987 straight after my A-levels. My expertise in children/youth geographies and feminist/gender geographies emerged later but can probably be traced back to doing babysitting as a teenager and early exposure to feminist ideas. In my research I embrace qualitative, participatory and quantitative research methods. So how did I get here?

Well, I began with my first degree (BSc Hons) in Geography at Durham University (1990) where I thrived in an all-women’s college (Trevelyan, now sadly mixed but still with intriguing hexagonal architecture). 

Durham Cathedral – awesome to be a student living in a village with a Norman cathedral in the middle used as the University’s gathering place for matriculations and graduations

The Durham years included a year studying as an ERASMUS student at Tübingen University, Germany, and an independent research project in Kenya on peri-urban land-use transformations back where I’d volunteered in an orphanage on a former sisal/cattle estate now a resettlement zone. My doctorate (Oxford University 2002) focused on the work of rural Hausa women in Northern Nigeria using feminist theories of empowerment applied to socio-spatial mobilities and inequalities. It was quite a cultural shift being a graduate student and working in West Africa. To be honest without a Masters degree as a stepping stone it was a bit of a struggle and I always advise students now to do a Masters before a PhD as it gives you time and training to be a better researcher. After five years wrestling with my doctorate in Oxford and Nigeria it was time to get a job. After 25 applications and 5 interviews I landed 2 job offers, turned the first one down and ended up as a Lecturer in Development Studies (within Geography) at Keele University. I was there for a decade after that (1995-2005). The best bits were leading regular undergraduate fieldtrips to Kenya and developing research on young people’s caregiving work within the AIDS pandemic in Southern Africa. I also undertook an MA in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (Keele University 2006) – it was fun learning to teach alongside lots of other young new lecturers from across the university.

The splendid Keele Hall – where I once enjoyed sherry at a round table on gender issues hosed by the then Vice Chancellor Prof Janet Finch

Then prior to moving to Hull I spent more than nine years living in Malawi engaged in a mix of research and consultancy that gave me chances to work on a variety of projects including a year as social research officer in Malawi’s leading theatre for development NGO called Nanzikambe Arts. Now that was even more fun – working with drumming going on outside my window, attending performances, being involved in the trials and tribulations of an expatriate-established NGO going through change to being wholly Malawian-led. My major research engagements in Malawi involved managing the in-country component of three large multi-country, inter-institutional and inter-disciplinary ESRC-DFID research grants focussed variously on children/youth, transport, mobility, mobile phones, food security and AIDS. There’s more detail about my research projects on my web page http://www2.hull.ac.uk/science/gees/staff/robson.aspx . While in Malawi I also had the chance to leading the occasional fieldcourse for UK geography undergraduates to Africa.

Royal Holloway University of London students and guides at end of a fieldcourse in Malawi, 2013

I’m trying to maintain my strong ties with Malawi and strengthening connections between Hull and Malawi. So already I have three PhD students starting research in October 2014 on colonial childhoods and caregiving youth in Malawi. A departmental Malawi fieldcourse is being revived to a field studies centre in the Likhubula Valley at the base of Mount Mulanje with a batch of third years heading off there in September this year. Other courses I teach include Children’s Geographies for final year students and Geographies of Development for first years. For the World Cities course I’ve also enjoyed preparing a couple of lectures on Nairobi in Kenya where I spent my gap year in 1985/6 and have visited many times in the intervening decades.

For the last year or so in my last lecturing post at Keele I was the only woman academic staff member in the School of Geography and Earth Sciences. So it’s nice to join a department in Hull with a better gender balance and current focus on responding to the lack of women in senior positions through the University’s engagement with Athena Swan and Aurora initiatives to promote greater gender equity in higher education. Things have changed a lot from when I was an undergraduate when there were only four female professors of geography in the whole of the UK. Now there are single departments with more than half a dozen female professors……….ours is not one of them L So there are still glass ceilings in academia for women but if we don’t tackle them they won’t crack. There are probably less stressful and easier jobs in the world than being an academic but there’s still plenty of flexibility, academic stimulation if you like reading and ideas and finding out. Oh and still a few battles to fight as well.

Environmental Microbiology and Me!

Researcher profile: Karen Scott (@DrKarenScott)

As an environmental microbiologist with a biological background I didn't think I would end up working in a geography department. In fact thinking back to my childhood I never thought I would end up in academia, or geography come to that - to be honest my only memories of geography from my school days involved writing a news article on the Exxon Valdez oil spill and drawing a cross section of the Earth! Having always been fascinated by animals, I grew up wanting to work with them in some way or another (once my dad had burst my bubble about a career in bricklaying not being like an episode of ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Pet’!).

I got a place on a BSc Animal Behaviour and Science course at Bishop Burton College in the East Riding of Yorkshire, which I thoroughly enjoyed. However, I found studying animals less engaging than I expected and instead was drawn towards modules assessing the impact of the environment on them. Developing my skills in this environmental sector made me re-evaluate the direction of my career.

Anaerobic workout in the lab

Once I’d completed my degree I got a job working in a microbiology laboratory testing a wide variety of samples ranging from fresh food to environmental water samples. It was a demanding job with long hours but it had its perks, such as free turkeys for the family at Christmas! After a year of working there I’d managed to save up enough money to cover the fees for a Masters degree. I joined the University of Hull Biological Sciences Department and spent a year assessing the effect of contaminated water on shore crab behaviour.

Thoroughly enjoying my year researching and writing I decided the research route was for me, and that’s when I started looking for PhDs. I picked up another microbiology role, similar to the previous one, while I hunted for a PhD and after a few months of looking I found one back at Hull based in Geography. The project investigated the ability of organic matter to decompose within the drainage system in the City of Hull, in particular studying the microbial community, and assessing if it could be increased in some way (outlined in my earlier blog post). Although the project was out of my area, it was cross disciplinary with biology so with a bit of extra background reading before starting, I was able to hit the ground running.

Nice day for fieldwork at Winscar 

After I completed my PhD, I commenced a six month research position in the department where I was split between two environmental projects. I'm now based in the School of Geography at the University of Leeds for the next 13 months working in moorland management and hydrology. The project enables me to expand my skill set within the environmental area, while allowing me the opportunity to get my teeth into some research within the department, which remains a great passion of mine. While I'm not sure if after this project’s completion I will take my career into industry or remain within the academic sector, I am excited by the opportunities for both that come my way.

How I Got To Be An Academic

by Jane Bunting (@DrMJBunting)

Time for my 'researcher profile', and particularly timely as Jacqueline Gill over at the wonderfully named "Contemplative Mammoth" blog has just announced a call for a blog carnival of posts about people's post-PhD-training careers, whether in academe or elsewhere.  I WILL begin my story with my training, but as I defended my PhD in 1993, it will cover 20 post-training years as well.  I'll try not to go on too long...

I'm currently a senior lecturer in the Department of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences at the University of Hull.  I'm a palaeoecologist (I study long term ecological systems using the remains of plants and animals preserved in stratigraphic order in lakes and bogs as my 'time machine' to look back and see how things have changed), using mainly pollen analysis, with a particular research interest in the uncertainties and limitations of our methods.  I teach biogeography, environmental change, Quaternary Science and 'skills' type modules, mostly, with a bit of environmental archaeology or landscape history some years.  Being an academic suits me because I like both teaching and research about equally (unless I'm asked the question in Marking Marathon Week).

Pond behind my childhood home (outlined in blue) - googlemaps

As a kid, I liked to know how things work - but not in a taking-apart-and-rebuilding-gadgets way, more in a systems and connections way.  Although I was raised in a really rather dull suburb of Manchester, our identikit suburban semi had an old field pond at the bottom of the garden (one of a series along a recharge zone in the clays in the area).  My parents had thoughtfully made a hedge between the tidier garden and the pond, which gave us kids privacy, and it was our own little bit of wilderness (more mine because my sister was scared of frogs and more averse to getting muddy).  I fell in it (quite a lot), fished creatures and plants out of it and identified them with the aid of a variety of books, made dens of various kinds, dug clay out of the banks and made pots, spent months of summers reading under the willow tree, collected and pressed the wild flowers... muck can be magic! I was also an obsessive reader of anything, history enthusiast, talked a lot, and played 'school' endlessly - I didn't like school, exactly, and liked it less the older I got, but I liked being the teacher and explaining stuff.

 Well into my teens, what I wanted to be when I grew up varied between an explorer, an English eccentric or a part-time hermit (I wanted two social afternoons a week, and a cabin in the hills the rest of the time.  I had it all worked out!).

I dropped Biology as soon as I could at school (didn't like the teacher, didn't want to dissect an eyeball which was the highlight of the next year's syllabus), but did get an O-level in Geography (one of the teachers was gorgeous - oh, the things that shape students' choices at 14!).  I wanted to take History, Latin and Double Maths at A-level, but when that couldn't be accommodated rather grumpily took the more conventional Double Maths, Physics and Chemistry, and realising that I wasn't good enough at maths to be a mathematician (I got A's, but there was a lad in the class who was just So Much Better than me...) applied to university to do natural sciences with a physics focus (my back-up choices were physics courses).  I messed up my first interview at Cambridge royally, was 'pooled' to Newnham College which kindly took me on, and went up in 1987 to study Natural Sciences.  Oh, the joy of a 24/7 library in the building I slept in!  But Physics quickly became my least favourite part of the course, as the theory went fine but the practicals did NOT - electronics and I are not good friends.  I soldered a lot of things together but rarely got anything to work.  I realised that the two topics in physics I most enjoyed in theory, sub-atomic and astronomy, required extensive electronics and optics, so came back for my second year not knowing what to do.  I took theoretical chemistry, history and philosophy of science and botany (chosen on the grounds that you didn't have to cut up animals or remember the names of biochemicals - despite my lack of school biology, the university sent me off with a summer reading list and let me switch), switched to the 'ecology' route in the second term which happened to include one lecture from Professor Richard West on the Quaternary History of the British Flora and that was it - I'd found my academic field.  I spent my final year in the Botany department, did dissertations on a historical topic (my first paper!) and on a pollen record from Star Carr in Yorkshire, got my first and got a NERC 'Framework' PhD studentship to continue in the department working with Dr (now Professor) Keith Bennett (sounds so tidy - hides a LOT of stress, panic, sweat etc. etc.).

Ring of Brodgar, Orkney - pic from Orkneyjar.

The topic we came up with was the Vegetation History of Orkney, and I spent three mostly happy years visiting one of the most beautiful and addictive places in Britain, reading masses of archaeological and historical literature alongside the palaeoecological stuff, counting challenging pollen samples and learning a huge amount about Geography and Environmental Change (by auditing classes, reading, listening, arguing, going to seminars, volunteering on other people's fieldwork...).  Keith gave me some very good advice on day one: "the chances of you getting an academic job are not zero, but at this point they aren't statistically distinct from zero.  If you get to the end of your PhD, can't get or don't want an academic job, and are starting out in a graduate career three years after your friends, will you regret the time lost?  If so, you should think very seriously about carrying on."  I never expected to be able to carry on after my PhD - I had vague ideas about teaching or accountancy (with a view to working for an environmental charity or the like, since they'd all need to have their books kept) - so I made the most of my chance to do nothing but learn (and row and sing, hobbies are important, but the learning was the point of it all).  At the end of my second year, Keith suggested it might be worth me applying for funding to do a year or two of post-doctoral work.  I liked the idea of spending some time overseas and being a typical near-monoglot Brit wanted to go somewhere English-speaking so contacted a few people in Sweden and Canada.  I put in a few (maybe 4?) applications for funding, then got on with my PhD, thinking of them more as a lottery ticket than a career plan.

picture borrowed from tourist board web-site - can't find my photo folder!

 But much to my surprise, I got one - and became a NATO Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Wetlands Research Centre, University of Waterloo in Canada, with Professor Barry Warner for the next two years.  In short order, I learnt a lot about sub-zero winters, the importance of air-conditioning in humid summers, coffee shops, TimBits, black flies, bug jackets, the relative lack of slang in Canadian English and teaching in the North American system - oh, and wetlands.  I enjoyed the landscape ('fall' was as amazing as the tourist brochures promised), the people, the wildlife (a chipmunk raised babies just outside our office window, SO CUTE), I missed pubs, people who talked fast and crisps in single-serving packets, and got very frustrated by my project.  A lot of things went wrong and I actually spent about half my time working with surface samples rather than on lakes as planned... in the end that turned out to be a Good Thing, but at the time it was very stressful!

View from the city of Stirling towards the university - a lovely place to live

After two years of that, I came home with a few more papers on the way, spent a few months living at my parents (we all deserve medals for surviving that) and applying for everything that came my way, a six week stint in Sheffield doing some lab work, then got a six month contract at Stirling University on an environmental archaeology related project.  Relocating to Scotland and working on environmental archaeology was exactly what I wanted to do, but the scarcity of jobs was getting me down, even as I began to get some interviews.  Richard Tipping, my boss in Stirling, kindly helped me sort out an unpaid affiliation to the university after my contract ended which gave me a desk, library access etc., and passed little bits of contract work my way when he had them, but I got depressingly familiar with the whole process of signing on, proving you're looking for work every week, applying for housing benefit cycle.  Throughout 1996 and 1997, I applied for post-docs and academic jobs across the UK, and when my first contract in Stirling ended I also developed an exit plan and set myself a timetable for either getting another academic contract or stopping the academic jobhunt altogether.

And then, just like London buses, two jobs came along at once.  I took the one in Hull because it had the longer contract, despite not knowing anything about the place, and I've been here ever since.  Most days, I think that's a good thing!  Palaeoecology definitely lets - nay, encourages! - me to get muddy and to explore how the natural world works, I get to read archaeology and history books and have it count as work, and I get to teach as well.  You'll have to ask my students how I'm doing on the English Eccentric career path... but I don't despair of achieving that goal one day too.

Of gribbles and fish oil: plants and future security

By Lindsey Atkinson (@LJA_1)

In the week that the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was issued (31.03.2014) with its emphasis on risks and the importance of adaptation, the UK Plant Sciences Federation  (UKPSF) held their 2014 conference ‘Plant Science – Sustaining Life on Earth’ at the University of York.  This conference brings together a wide range of plant scientists from ecologists to molecular biologists and gives them the opportunity to share their knowledge across disciplines.

A key theme of the conference was food security¹ and how plant science may help to meet some of the challenges we face.  The conference was opened with a keynote lecture from Prof Tim Benton (University of Leeds) on ‘Feed, food and fuel: plants and future security’ where he gave us an overview of some of these challenges.  Drivers of change include the growth in global demand for food, globalization and the changing climate.  Combine this with soil degradation and these things add up to make future food supplies look very uncertain!  On the other side of the coin, it’s not just about food supplies, but also about waste.   Some of these themes were echoed in Prof Peter Gregory’s (East Malling Research/University of Reading) talk in which he looked at the importance of sustainable agriculture and reducing waste and loss. 

Some of the headline figures from the recently published UKPSF report Status of UK Plant Science: Current Status and Future Challenges include:

•  ‘There will be 2.4bn extra people to feed by 2050’
•    ‘Global food production must increase by 60-110% to meet this demand’
•    ‘Up to 40% of global crop yields are lost to plant pests and diseases each year’
•    ‘Agriculture accounts for 70% of the world’s fresh water use’
• ‘By 2030, global energy demand is predicted to rise by 40%’

At one level these challenges need to be tackled through politics and economics but plant scientists are using their knowledge and creativity to contribute too, which brings us back to gribbles and fish oil…

Gribbles are small, marine, wood-boring crustaceans and wouldn’t normally make an appearance at a plant science conference.  However, understanding and using their digestive enzymes may increase the efficiency with which we can break down woody materials to produce biofuels (read more). 

We also learned that fish oil isn’t made by fish – yes, you guessed it – it is made by plants (in this case marine algae) and accumulated by the fish.   Using fish as a source of these fish oils for fish farming is not sustainable but using transgenic crops could be… (read more).  

There were many more examples of how plant scientists are working to improve crop yield and yield stability, water and nutrient use in agriculture and the nutritional value of crops.  There is also a lot of current research on using plants as factories to produce additional nutrients and biofuels.  You can find more details of all the topics covered at the conference at http://plantsci2014.org.uk/programme/

The future for plant scientists in the UK was the topic for a debate chaired by Dr Sandy Knapp of the Natural History Museum.  Although great strengths were recognized in the plant science research community, it was noted that it has an ageing population and skills shortages are predicted.  The importance of inspiring students from an early age was emphasized with calls for greater inclusion of plant science in the curriculum at both school and in higher education.  The next challenge is once inspired, providing the opportunities to keep scientists in this area.

The panel (from L to R): Sarah Gurr (University of Exeter), Jim Beynon (University of Warwick),  Sandy Knapp (Natural History Museum, London),  Mark Chase (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew), Mike Bushell (Syngenta) and Dale Sanders (John Innes Centre).

The conference closed with a final talk from Prof Jackie Hunter, Chief Executive of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), who gave her view of a 21^st Century Vision for Plant Science to tackle challenges in sustainable crop production.

¹Food Security was defined at the World Food Summit of 1996 as occurring “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life” (http://www.who.int/trade/glossary/story028/en/).