Castles and Coprolites

Two posts in one day?? Yes, deadlines are looming so the blog posting is on fire. I thought I would do a little update on some non-academic stuff I've been doing recently. Around this time last year I ran an Indiegogo fundraiser . The main reason was that I no longer had an academic job, and therefore no longer had access to a microscope to continue my research that I had started at the Ness of Brodgar in Orkney. I was unsure about whether to do crowdfunding, it is really hard asking individuals for money, compared to asking research councils for millions (that's harder in a different way). But I couldn't think of any other options and desperately wanted to continue the research I was doing. The campaign was reasonably successful; I didn't raise the total, but I did get enough to buy a halfway decent microscope and to cover the costs of taking it up to Orkney for the next field season, to do a 'field lab' where students and visitors could watch the analysis in p...

Just taking this opportunity to share a video I recently posted on my YouTube page, from my talk at the Archaeological Research in Progress conference 2015, organised by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland . Any feedback and comments on this would be much appreciated, as it is the first 'full length' talk I have done that has been recorded (by the talented Open Access Archaeology ). I now have a grand total of 3 videos posted on YouTube, and it got me thinking about the idea of doing video-blogging. Is this something that people would find interesting? I was thinking of doing short videos that summarise different aspects of my work (and related research areas), and including PowerPoints that I have previously used in my teaching - this could either be at a very introductory level, or a little more advanced. What sorts of topics would people like to see? Also taking this opportunity to share my IndieGoGo campaign again, which is now half way through and on 21% - thank yo...

Regular readers of my blog will have heard that I am soon to be leaving academic research for a while, and will be working full time doing outreach and recruitment work, part of which will be encouraging women and students from disadvantaged backgrounds to study geosciences and engineering. However, I hope this is not the end of my work as a geoarchaeologist, and I have been developing a plan to stay involved in archaeology in a voluntary capacity. Initially I thought about trying to do this as a consultant, but to be honest there just isn't the market for this type of work outside academic research, and in any case I would much rather focus on the teaching aspect, where I can give my time to projects that interest me, rather than any old commercial work. So, I have devised a plan to set up a travelling field laboratory, initially to complete my work at the Ness of Brodgar in Orkney, but with the longer term aim of doing outreach work with school groups and volunteers, using archa...