Uneven Ground: Fieldwork Accessibility for Women

What are the challenges women face when working in the field? What needs to be done to overcome these challenges and make fieldwork safer, more accessible, and more inclusive?

Women encounter a host of challenges when engaging with fieldwork, many of which adversely impact how they navigate science or continue to pursue their career. This webinar features three speakers who will discuss the challenges and the actions needed to improve fieldwork for women: Anouk Beniest, who will provide the perspective of a fieldwork educator, Florina Schalamon, who will discuss how to challenge traditional narratives of what it means to be a polar explorer, and a representative of the “Did This Really Happen?” group, a project which highlights daily sexism in academia.

The audience will hear of the challenges women face when engaging in fieldwork. The negative experiences of women will be shared, including perspectives from the results of study to personal experience. The speakers will also discuss how to approach overcoming these challenges, from communication strategies and challenging harmful perspectives of fieldwork, to identifying and inspiring needed change. Finally, the speakers will share examples of positive change that have worked in improving fieldwork for women.

This is the first webinar in a multi-part of series which examines fieldwork practices and accessibility.

The webinar will last for one hour and conclude with an audience Q&A. This webinar will be recorded and uploaded to the EGU YouTube Channel the following week: https://www.youtube.com/egu.

Speakers:

Anouk Beniest – Anouk is Assistant Professor in Tectonics at Department of Geology and Geochemistry at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands, and former Early Career Scientist Union Representative for the European Geosciences Union.

Florina Schalamon – PhD candidate in Centennial Climate Drivers of Glacier Changes in Greenland at Karls-Frazens Universitat, Austria.

Lucia Perez-Diaz - Lucia is a geodynamic modeller and freelance author-illustrator based in Oxford, UK. Following a PhD in computational geodynamics, she spent time as a researcher and teacher at UK Higher Education, before making the move to industry. Her career as a freelance illustrator grew alongside this, as a way to open up scientific discovery to young audiences and communicate complex topics in engaging ways. She joined DTRH as the project’s illustrator in 2020, and has been creating comics based on the testimonies received by the project ever since.

Nicolas Coltice - Nicolas holds a professorship at Université Côte d’Azur in France. Previously, he served as a professor at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and the University of Lyon. His research focuses on the history and dynamics of Earth's interior and planetary bodies. He is a recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant, and it was throughout a previous ERC grant that he founded the initiative didthisreallyhappen.net with Alice Adenis, Maëlis Arnould, Marie Bocher, Mélanie Gérault, Claire Mallard and Martina Ulvrova, dedicated to fighting everyday sexism within the geosciences.

You can view the online event here (Youtube).

If you have any questions about ‘Uneven Ground: Fieldwork Accessibility for Women’, please contact us via webinars@egu.eu.