Describe your work area and its importance. 

I am a Research technician working with the soil ecology lab and N8 Agrofood’s mobile trace gas and stable isotope tracking laboratory (GasLab) which generates data on greenhouse gas emissions and dynamics in relation to grassland management practices. The main part of my job is Outreach which is important to make science accessible to everyone. I’m developing knowledge exchange activities which are suitable for everyone to really widen the participation of science communication.

On a typical day, what do you spend most of your time on? 

I spend a lot of my day developing knowledge exchange activities reading, researching and preparing for the next event or workshop.  This tends to involve a lot of playing games which is fun!

Describe your career path to date, including highs and lows.

My career path definitely hasn’t been linear… I didn’t go to university until my mid 20’s but by that time I really know what I wanted to do. I studied Geography and then completed an Environmental Management MSc. I wrote my thesis on urban soil and community growing projects and then you could say I was hooked on soil.

What drives you?

In my job now I really get to educate people on things that I care about. When I was younger I thought being a scientist was out of reach I want to change that. Especially for girls!

Tell us a funny story, work-related or not:

Recently at an event I was talking to some children about sustainable farming and we were discussing if it would be better to have more or less animals on the farm to which they replied “more because you get more meat!”. I then explained the implications of having more animals and it would in fact be better to have less and to cut down on meat (my table was all about sustainability) their mother pulled them away from my table and told them not to listen to me because I was brainwashing them! Ooops!

What’s the best career advice you’ve received?

Not really career advice so much as unrivalled support from my Mum she always convinces me I can do anything no matter how out of reach it seems to me.