Heather Handley

The 2025 Katia and Maurice Krafft Award is awarded to Heather Handley for contributions to science communication in different media, and especially through her role in the foundation of the Earth Futures Festival and the Women in Earth and Environmental Sciences in Australasia (WOMEESA) Network.

The 2025 Katia and Maurice Krafft Award is awarded to Heather Handley because of her innovative approach to scientific outreach and the exceptional breadth of her contributions to science communication in different media, and especially through her role in the foundation of the Earth Futures Festival and the WOMEESA network (Women in Earth and Environmental Sciences in Australasia).

Heather Hadley is being recognised for her exceptional contributions to geoscience communication and outreach. In addition to Hadley’s research focussing on volcanic rocks, she has put her commitment to outreach at the centre of her career. In addition to leading tens of geoscience outreach events and talks, giving numerous TV and video interviews and contributing to several TV documentaries in leading networks, she has written outreach contributions reaching to hundreds of thousands of people.

Among other outstanding contributions, Heather Hadley is Co-Founder and Director of the Earth Futures Festival: an international film and video festival uniting the arts and science to showcase and raise awareness of how geoscience and long-lived cultural knowledge of the Earth provide solutions to pressing global challenges that reached an estimated audience of over 1 million people.

Heather Hadley’s commitment to diversity and inclusion and the role of women in STEM is demonstrated through her publications on gender equity in geoscience and numerous invited conference talks on diversity, equity, and inclusion and most noticeably as she was Co-Founder and Inaugural President of the Women in Earth and Environmental Sciences Australasia network (WOMEESA), a network raising the visibility of women in geoscience and addressing gender inequity.

The EGU recognises with this award the already outstanding contribution of Heather Hadley to geology outreach. This award also wishes to inspire her to continue her endeavours in reaching a diverse audience and strengthening the role of women in geosciences