Fieldwork Diaries

We’ve turned Fieldwork Diaries on its head for Episode 7 - it’s the creators of the podcast being interviewed this week! Matt Kent, star of Episode 1 has been drafted in as our guest host and he is quizzing Eleni Wood and Stacy Phillips, the team behind this very podcast. We both work on the geology of the Himalaya, and were out on fieldwork together this year in Bhutan where we were investigating mountain building processes. We chat to Matt about the amazing people we met, the wildlife we encountered, and the food we ate whilst out in Bhutan. Telling stories is why we created this podcast, so we hope you enjoy our ones!

David Pettifer is a primatologist and behavioural ecologist at the University of Birmingham where he studies how chimpanzees age and how ageing affects their musculoskeletal health. As part of his PhD research, he recently headed out to the wilderness in Uganda to observe wild chimps and their behaviour. Whilst faced with the challenge of trying to find an elusive group of the primates, David was treated to a series of close encounters with Ugandan forest fauna both big and small. Make yourself a brew, get comfy and have a listen to this episode to find out about all the incredible animals he got up close and personal with!

Frances Butcher is a PhD researcher at the Open University who combines her love of astronomy and glaciology to study glaciers on Mars! But how can you study glaciers on Mars if you can’t go on fieldwork there? Listen to the episode to find out the ingenious ways in which planetary scientists can study these space glaciers by using the resources available to them here on Earth.

Putting on your big boots, escaping the office and exploring new environments ; these are just some of the reasons why researchers love fieldwork! At the 2017 CENTA conference, we asked PhD researchers to tell us why they love their fieldwork. Their fieldwork has taken them everywhere from limestone grasslands in beautiful Oxfordshire to the remote Antarctic circle. Listen to find out more!  This episode features the voices of Tessa Driessen & Richard Mason from Loughborough University; Melaine Stone from the Open University; Jonathan MacKay, David Pettifer, Doris Wendt & Jesamine Bartlett from the University of Birmingham.

Geologist Anna Bidgood, from the University of Oxford, takes us on a journey to the top of the highest mountain range on the planet: the Indian Himalaya. Anna works in Ladakh, a region where the air is thin, the wildlife is rare and interesting commuters pass through her field area. She is investigating how the edge of India was forced deep beneath the Asian continent in a subduction zone, formed when the two continents collided. The clues she needs to understand this geological history are encoded in the minerals of rocks that have been down to extreme depths, where high pressures transform them before they find their way back to the surface. Listen to hear all about her adventures!

Kerry Reid is a volcanologist and PhD student at The Open University. In this podcast, she describes her fieldwork in Central America, where she studies the volcanic degassing of Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua. Her work helps to predict future activity at the volcano, and is crucial to the health and livelihoods of local people in the path of the toxic cocktail of gases. Listen to hear all about her adventures, as she recounts the surprises and challenges of working on an active volcano!

Open University biogeochemist Matt Kent transports us to the peatlands of Indonesia, the land of the orang-utan, and a critical carbon-store. Matt studies tropical peatlands, investigating water-air greenhouse gas emissions and what dominates these processes. Listen to him cover everything from the joys of fieldwork, working with local field guides to deploy his “space hats”, to the fragility of peatland environments, which face the threat of devastating forest fires.

Hello there! You’ve found our brand-new podcast series. We’re very excited to share the interviews from Fieldwork Diaries with you. But, just before we get going, here’s a little taster of what’s to come.