Women in Climate (WiC) network
Women in Climate (WiC) network
Theme: WiC Christmas Social at Topsham Brewery
We have had another amazing year of Women in Climate. Thanks to everyone who joined us for our end of year social.
Theme: Mentorship
We were also thrilled to have a guest speaker, Dr Rachel McInnes who is Co-Director of the Joint Centre for Excellence in Environmental Intelligence (JCEEI) between the University of Exeter and Met Office, who shared her personal experiences with mentorship.
Get Involved: We are currently accepting expressions of interest for participating in our trial group mentoring. If you are interested in being a mentor or mentee (if both please fill in the form twice) we would love to hear from you! Please fill out this expression of interest form.
Theme: WiC in person relaunch.
We were delighted to be joined by so many of you (both from the University and the Met Office) at our in-person relaunch event! It was nice to see so many new faces, and we hope to see you again at our monthly events, whether that’s virtually or in-person!
Theme: Career Coaching workshop by Dr Hannah Roberts
Thankyou to everyone who joined us for this virtual event. We had a 1-hour Intentional Career coaching workshop aimed at female scientists, led by Dr Hannah Roberts. Our blog from the event will be uploaded here.
Theme: Discussion on the Gender Pay Gap
Thank you to everyone who joined us in person and online for our discussion of the gender pay gap. I hope those who attended found it interesting and valuable. You can read about the points discussed in our blog here.
Theme: Erin Chapple Q&A Session
Erin is the Corporate Vice President of Azure Core Product. She has been at the heart of major changes across Microsoft in the last 10 years and her teams deliver operational platforms supporting groundbreaking initiatives including OpenAI and ChatGPT. We will soon include our blog here.
Theme: X TRILLION – Feature Documentary Follows Pioneering All-Women Expedition to Great Pacific Garbage Patch
The WiC network attended a screening and Q&A of the feature documentary ‘X TRILLION’ at Exeter Phoenix.
Read our blog round-up of the event here.
Theme: Gaia Vince – ‘Nomad Century’
Thank you to everyone who joined in person and online for our joint seminar with the GSI. We were very lucky to have Gaia Vince with us in Exeter. Her talk focused on climate migration and practical solutions that can be implemented to mitigate the challenges we face as a population, as global heating makes our planet increasingly unliveable.
A blog about the event can be found here.
Theme: WiC Networking event
Thank you to everyone who attended our networking event. We hope you had fun learning more about the network and speed networking.
A blog about the event can be found here.
Theme: Social with Climate and Friends
Thanks to everyone for joining us for our anniversary social with Climate and Friends.
Theme: Menopause Network
Met Office Menopause Network Lead (Sarah Gooding) came and to talk about early onset menopause, in this joint event with MO menopause network. Sarah Gooding led a discussion to raise the visibility of menopause symptoms i.e. what to look out for and how to continue to work effectively when not feeling 100%.
Read our blog round up of the event here.
Theme: Jennifer Catto: Mathematics workplace excellent, inclusion, diversity, equality & respect at the University
We were joined by Dr Jen Catto for our February meeting. She an Associate Professor in the Climate Dynamics group of the Mathematics and Statistics department, which she joined in 2017. Her research is focused on high impact weather and climate in present and future climates in order to provide more robust information for adaptation and to improve climate resilience. Her background is in physics and meteorology, and she came through her undergraduate degree believing that the lack of diversity was just the way it was. During her PhD she began to see more successful women and became committed to improving gender balance in my own discipline. In 2020 she took on the role of chair of the WIDER committee. Her goal is to contribute to a culture of inclusion and celebrating diversity so that everyone can achieve their own ambitions.
Read our blog round up of the event here.
Theme: Book Club: Lesson in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
We met in January to discuss the book ‘Lessons in Chemisty’ by Bonnie Garmus, winner of Waterstones author of the year 2022.
Reviews of the book;
‘A delight of her rip-roaring, funny book is how it bonds familiar plot and character elements with the unexpectedly unconventional… a smart, funny, big-hearted debut combining chemical elements into what seems a winning formula.’ – The Sunday Times
‘A concept as unconventional as Zott herself, each page is bursting with wit, optimism and female empowerment. I’ve not enjoyed a book so much in ages: it’s witty, sharp and full of life, with the very best canine character. An interesting insight into how far women have come, and how much is still left to do.’ – Grazia
Read our blog round up of the event here.
Theme: Roberta Boscolo, Gender Diversity in the WMO
Theme: Meeting Dr Fiona O’Connor, Met Office Science Fellow and Exeter University Senior Lecturer
Fiona joined Exeter University as a Senior Lecturer on a part-time basis in October 2022, in addition to being a Science Fellow at the Met Office. Fiona has had a long career of nearly 20 years at the Met Office, achieving success as a woman in science alongside senior science leadership capabilities. Fiona is an approachable and friendly person, and we are delighted that Fiona has agreed to discuss her career, motivation, inspiration, successes and challenges with us. We will also discuss how senior scientists and leaders can individually try and help inspire the generations that follow them. The session will be an initial 20 minute informal interview by a Women in Climate chair to introduce Fiona, followed by a chaired discussion and question and answer session.
In her Met Office role, Fiona leads a team of scientists and scientific software engineers and her key areas of interest include climate forcing, climate feedbacks, climate change mitigation, and air quality. She was the principal developer of the United Kingdom Chemistry and Aerosol (UKCA) model for its inclusion in the UK’s HadGEM2 Earth System Model. She also contributed to the development of UKESM1 and led the UK contribution to the Aerosol and Chemistry Model Intercomparison Project. She is currently co-lead of the ozone radiative forcing working group for the Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report and sits on the scientific steering committee of the CACTI initiative on atmospheric composition and climate.
Fiona has won research grants of up to £1.5M, including awards for a number of EU projects (CRESCENDO, ESM2025) as well as grants from the Natural Environment Research Council and the UK’s Joint Weather and Climate Research Programme. Modelling work that Fiona has performed includes assessment of the climate forcing from anthropogenic activities, modelling the methane cycle, and an assessment of the role of methane mitigation and removal on climate and air quality. Fiona has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles in the scientific literature and has received a number of national commendations and awards for her work. Fiona was a contributing author for the IPCC 5th Assessment Report and a reviewer of the 6th Assessment Report
Read our blog round up of the event here.
Theme: Book Club- The Patriarchs by Angela Saini
This month we met to discuss Angela Saini’s new book ‘The Patriarchs: How Men came to rule/ The origins of inequality’. You can find the book here or here.
Angela Saini is an award-winning journalist and author. Her previous books ‘Superior: The return of race science’ and ‘Inferior: How science got women wrong’ are both well worth a read, and were published to enormous critial acclaim. The Patriarchs is described on her website with the following;
“For fans of Sapiens and The Dawn of Everything, The Patriarchs is a groundbreaking exploration of the origins of patriarchy. It was published in spring 2023 from 4th Estate (UK & Commonwealth), Beacon Press (United States), and Hanser Blau (Germany). In this bold and radical new book, Angela Saini goes in search of the true roots of gendered oppression, uncovering a complex history of how it first became embedded in societies and spread across the globe from prehistory into the present. Travelling to the world’s earliest known human settlements, analysing the latest research findings in science and archaeology, and tracing cultural and political histories from the Americas to Asia, she overturns simplistic universal theories to show that what patriarchy is and how far it goes back really depends on where you live.”
A breif summary of the discussion is summarised in a blog post here.
Theme: Summer Social
Thank you to everyone who joined us at Mill on the Exe for our summer social.
Theme: Elizabeth Harris: Dealing with difficult people in the workplace
We introduced you to one of the Met Office Executive Team, Elizabeth Harris. We heard about aspects of Elizabeth’s career and discuss tips and tricks for improving our interactions in the workplaces, especially with those people who might interact with diverse people differently. Elizabeth is working hard at the Met Office to develop a zero-tolerance response to any bullying and harassment that might occur and we also hope to cover this topic in our discussion.
Elizabeth Harris is the first Programmes Director at the Met Office, joining the Met Office in November 2020 from DSTL (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory), where she has a lot of experience working in male dominated environments. She began her career as an electronic engineering apprentice and completed her degree by day release with her employer. She is now a Chartered Project Professional, with decades of experience leading the delivery of cutting-edge research within government. As the Programmes Director, Elizabeth has accountability for programme delivery within the Met Office. Elizabeth is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
Continue reading our blog here.
Theme: Mentoring
We had a mentoring-focused session organized by Jenn Brooke and featuring Head of the Science Profession and Director of the Hadley Centre Albert Klein-Tank and Alex Volcansek from People Development who has set up formal mentoring at the Met Office.
We were joined by a panel of speakers who shared their experiences of mentoring, developing mentoring relationships and the personal growth and career development that can develop through mentoring. The speakers talked about the different mentoring schemes available at the Met Office and the University of Exeter.
Speakers
Continue reading our blog here.
Theme: The two body problem: balancing your career and relationships
We were joined by Dr Penny Maher, a post-doc at the University of Exeter and one of the co-founders of WiC, and Dr. Hannah Susorney, a scientist at the Met Office, to discuss the two-body problem. They shared their experiences navigating the challenges of balancing a career and maintaining their relationships. Their partners Steve and Will, who are both scientists as well, also joined the discussion to share their perspectives.
The presentation and discussion was focused on heterosexual relationships as that is the experience of both Hannah and Penny but we wish to acknowledge that there are many different relationships types and sexualities.
Continue reading our blog here.
Theme: WiC 5th Anniversary!
Thank you to everyone who joined us at Topshap Brewery to celebrate our 5th Anniversary of Women in Climate!
Theme: Clare Rodgers- Championing gender equality, diversity and inclusion
We were joined by a winner of Women in FCERM’s Inspiring Individual Award 2022, Clare Rodgers.
Clare is a Programme Specialist at the Environment Agency and was recently recognised for championing gender equality, diversity and inclusion across the Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management (FCERM) sector. Clare will join us to talk about the various activities which her award recognises, both inside and outside of her role at the Environment Agency, including mentoring, coaching and campaigning.
We were also joined by Wendy Brooks, who is the strategic lead for Women in FCERM, the network which awarded Clare. Wendy told us about Women in FCERM and why their awards initiative is important. Women in FCERM is a network and mentoring group that aims to provide networking and support to women working in the flood and coastal erosion risk management sector.
Thank you to everyone who joined us and to Hannah Hayes for organising this event. Read a summary of the event in our blog here.
Theme: SHE Changes Climate short film and discussion
SHE Changes Climate is an organisation which advocates for increasing levels of female representation at all levels of climate decision making.
More about their work can be found on their website https://www.shechangesclimate.org/. SHE Changes Climate had produced a 20min short film, released on IWD last year, which captures a range of voices on the importance of a gendered discussion on climate change, leadership crisis and how indigenous knowledge and science can work together. The film can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydbRQYYJbOY
In the meeting we watched the short film, and had a discussion about the issues raised.
Read a blog about the meeting here.
Theme: Demystifying maternity leave- Join us for an online panel discussion around how maternity leave works and our experiences across our organisations
We spent time be discussing maternity leave and maternity pay at both the University of Exeter and Met Office. Are you curious about how maternity leave works? Want to ask questions from people who have been there? Want to know the realities of being a working mum?
We were be joined by Dr Saffron O’Neill, Associate Professor in Geography at the University of Exeter, together with Dr Caroline Bain, Enterprise Architect at the Met Office and founder of the Returners Network scheme (which includes initiatives like mentoring and secondments), and Abigail Mewse, Benefits Manager and Lead of the Women’s Network at the Met Office.
In this panel discussion, we talked about all aspects of maternity leave, maternity pay, balancing career and family, and the reality of returning to work following a career break. Each of our speakers shared their experiences with us but the majority of the meeting was a Q and A session.
Read our blog post about the event here.
Theme: Book Club
In January we had a chance to discuss ‘Intersectional Environmentalism: How to dismantle systems of oppression to protect people + planet’ by Leah Thomas. The discussion assumed that you have had a chance to start reading the book. Find the book here. Waterstones describes the book as: “Leah Thomas coined the term ‘intersectional environmentalism’ to describe the inextricable link between climate change, activism, racism and privilege. The fight for the planet should go hand in hand with the fight for civil rights. In fact, one cannot exist without the other. This book is a call to action, a guide to instigating change for all and a pledge to work toward the empowerment of all people and the betterment of the planet – an indispensable primer for activists looking to create meaningful, inclusive and sustainable change. Driven by Leah’s expert voice and complemented by the words of young activists from around the globe, it is essential reading on the issue – and the movement – that will define a generation.”
A blog summarising the discussion can be found here.
Theme: Festive networking social
Thank you for everyone who attended out festive networking event. It was fantastic to see so many people, and spend time meeting newer members.
Theme: Discussion session on UNFCCC Report
As a follow on from the talk earlier in the year by Anna Pirani and Helene Hewitt around diversity in the International Panel of Climate Change, we discuss this short report recently released by the UNFCCC .‘Dimensions and examples of the gender-differentiated impacts of climate change, the role of women as agents of change and opportunities for women’
Read a summary of the event here.
Theme: Crystal Moore, Climate Resilience Deputy Director, Environment Agency
Crystal Moore has had fascinating and very successful career in the Environment Agency for over 20 years. Crystal has a doctorate from the University of Exeter, and is well known at the Met Office having been Deputy Director at the Flood Forecasting Centre, a partnership between the Environment Agency and the Met Office for more than 6 years. More recently she has taken on the important role of Climate Resilience Deputy Director, involving the strategic design and evaluation of climate and human emergency response options for the largest environmental regulator in Europe. Now, Crystal is seconded to the Infrastructure Industry Innovation Partnership (i3P), to help transform how the infrastructure industry reduces it’s carbon intensity. She likes to think big, have fun and get stuff done.
Read a blog round up of the event here.
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the social after this meeting as well.
Theme: Roaslind Cornforth of the Walker Institute
Professor Rosalind Cornforth leads the Walker Institute at the University of Reading, which is an interdisciplinary climate research centre. Their work focuses on developing climate resilient societies and works between NGOs, governments and stakeholders to achieve this. The vision of the walker institute is captured in this TEDx talk.
Read a blog of the event here.
Theme: Jemma Shipton (UoE), Careers talk
Jemma joined us this week to discuss her career so far in Academia. Jemma is currently a Lecturer in mathematics, with research interests in athmosphere and ocean modelling, finite element methods and time-parallel algorithms. Thank you to everyone attended and participated int he discussion.
Read our blog round up here.
Theme: Book Club, Katherine Hayhoe ‘Saving us’
We had a meeting to discuss Katherine Hayhoe’s new book ‘Saving us’. The book has been described as “A must-read if we’re serious about enacting positive change from the ground up, in communities, and through human connections and human emotions”- Margret Atwood on Twitter. Katherine Hayhoe is a climate scientist in Texas and cheif scientist for the Nature Conservancy as well as the climate ambassador for the World Evangelical Alliance. Her TED talk “The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: Talk about it” has been viewed over 5 million times. The book can be found here. Thank you to everyone who came along and joined the interesting discussion.
Theme: Diversity and Inclusion in the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change- talk by Helene Hewitt
Dr Helene Hewitt is a Coordinating Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report Working Group 1, Chapter 9 ‘Ocean, cryosphere, and sea level change’. Helene will talk about how diversity and inclusion were addressed in the IPCC WG1 process followed by a discussion session on the topic. Feel free to ask Helene other questions about her experience of being a IPCC Coordinating Lead Author. Helene has also been part of the Met Office Athena Swan Self-Assessment team.
Helene joined the Met Office Hadley Centre in 1996 as an ocean scientist, where she worked on evaluating climate models and detecting climate change in the ocean. Since 2003 she has led both ocean and sea ice model development and work on Polar Climate. Helene previously managed the development of the climate model, HadGEM3, which couples the ocean and ice models to the Met Office Unified Model atmosphere. More recently, she led the development of a version of HadGEM3 with an eddy-resolving ocean component. Helene currently leads the Ocean Modelling group and the Joint Marine Modelling Programme. She is a Met Office Science Fellow and a Visiting Professor at University of Southampton.
Helene was joined by Anna Pirani, who is the Head of the IPCC Working Group I Technical Support Unit. She is responsible for the overall management of the WGI TSU as well as providing scientific support to the WGI Co-Chairs and Bureau in the preparation and production of the WGI products through the scoping, drafting, review, approval/acceptance, and publication processes. Anna was responsible for the oversight of the preparation of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C and the Working Group I Sixth Assessment report (WGI AR6), and also provided scientific support to the preparation of the Special Report on Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC). As part of the AR6, Anna supported the coordination of climate change scenarios across the IPCC Working Groups. Other activities include coordinating the preparation of Summary for Policymakers visuals with information designers and cognitive scientists and fostering the long-term curation of open source software for figures and data used within the WGI AR6. Anna holds a Ph.D. in Oceanography.
Read more about the event in our blog here.
Thank you to everyone who came along to celebrate the 4 year anniversary of Women in Climate!
Theme: To be or not to be? The gendered nature of ambition
We were grateful to be joined by Sabrina Spangsdorf in March to share her interesting research around gendered ambition.
Sabrina Spangsdorf is a strategic advisor and education analyst at Hillerød Municipality in Denmark while completing her PhD part-time at Exeter University. Her research primarily focuses of the gendered nature of ambition in adolescents and the possible gender differences in the perception of success and ambition to locate possible deterrents that may affect young students’ ambitions. Sabrina holds an MA in Business English and international relations from the University of Aalborg, Denmark and an MSc in applied Psychology from Liverpool University. Her MSc thesis was titled: ‘The glass slipper effect: The influence of occupational identity by association on the motivation to pursue a top managing position among women in Denmark’ and caught media attention for her research findings on such a relevant topic. An abstract outlining some of the results shown in the talk, and a short blog can be read here.
Theme: From Blogging to broadcasting: How I found my feet in science communication
Dr Rosie Oakes is a Senior Scientist in the International Climate Services team at the Met Office. Rosie has a wealth of science communication expertise from having her postdoctoral work exhibitedin the Academy of Natural Science in Philadelphia and being featured in a film by hit Youtuber Jack Harries and on ITV news during COP26. Rosie is passionate about communicating climate change science to a wide range of audiences and making science accessible and open to all. Join us to hear about Rosie’s journey in science communication, and her tips and tricks for success.
Rosie has a background in earth, ocean, and climate sciences. Her job at the Met Office involves working with people from around the world to provide clear, accessible climate information which can be used to inform decisions. Rosie is working on a wide range of projects across the globe, from an agriculture-focused project in the north east of China, to a hydropower and rainfall-focused project in Nepal. Regardless of the location, Rosie enjoys learning from people about the challenges they face and working out what climate information they need to help them prepare for the future
Read about the session in our blog post here.
Theme: Book Club – ‘Why men win at work: … and how we can make inequality history’
In January we met to discuss ‘Why men win at work:… and how we can make inequality history’ by Gill Whitty-Collins. This book looks beyond the facts and figures of gender bias in the workplace and studies the psychology of gender inequality. Described as “…an almighty set of recommendations.”, Sunday Times Magazine and “A must read for everyone working for a big corporation…” Lorraine Candy, author. Find the book online here, or try out an Exeter independent here!
Read more about our meeting and the book at our blog here.
See a round up of out 2021 events and blog posts here.
In December we were able to host an in person social event in Exeter. Many thanks to everyone who attended- we hope to be able to repeat this at some point next year.
Theme: Leadership in the male dominated field of Data Science
Dr Kirstine Dale is the Met Office’s Principal Fellow for Data Science and Co-Director for the Joint Centre for Excellence in Environmental Intelligence between the Met Office and the University of Exeter. With a strong, multidisciplinary background across natural and social sciences, and vocational training in project, programme and research management, she leads the strategy of the group in areas covering R&D, Infrastructure Development, Capability Building, and Research Applications. As Principal Fellow, Kirstine plays a leading role in shaping the future of Data Science (including Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) in the Met Office. In addition, she leads the Met Office’s Science Partnerships Team.
Read about the event in our blog post here.
Theme: Dr Kate Marvel: Climate, Clouds and Communication
Dr Kate Marvel is a high profile physicist and climate scientist who, whilst building a research career in climate science, became a well-known climate communicator through various writings, a TED talk and outreach on Twitter. Kate’s career has so far spanned researching policy relevant science issues at Stanford, wind power at the Carnegie Institute, fingerprinting the human influence in precipitation change at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and climate forcings and feedbacks at Columbia University and NASA GISS. Most recently, Kate teaches Dynamics of Climate Variability and Change at Columbia University. Kate’s communication efforts started with a blog, but have included high profile writing in Scientific America and the book/project ‘All We Can Save’ as well as high profile interviews with Time magazine, the New York Times and Rolling Stone magazine. Kate gave a TED Talk on clouds and climate change in 2017 which has had over 1.3 million views.
After a short talk from Kate, the main part of the meeting was be composed of an interview with a Women in Climate host for which we invited submissions for questions in advance of the meeting.
Read about the event in our blog post here.
Theme: Women and climate craft
Many people, particularly women, find the medium of arts as an attractive way to communicate about climate change, with crafts considered a gentle, positive approach which is both effective and inclusive. We met for a discussion of the history of climate through craft and to talk about various ways that it exists today (for example, Craftivism Collective: https://craftivist-collective.com/blog/2021/06/canarycraftivists/).
After the online meetingwe met up in Exeter in a park to come together in person and have a go at some climate craft ourselves. Read more and see some of our creations in our blog post here.
Theme: Book Club – “Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race”
In our August meeting we discussed “Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race” by Reni Eddo-Lodge. This Sunday Times Bestseller has been described as ‘A wake-up call to a nation in denial’. A very useful list of further resources was gethered in the session and is included in the blog post.
Continue reading about the session in our blog post here.
Theme: Gender differences in productivity and collaboration networks of top-ranked academics
Historically, cultural constructs have imposed women and men to different roles in society. Such roles affect how each gender take decisions and participates in the labour market. In this meeting, we were joined by Ana Jaramillo and Mariana Macedo, PhD candidates at the University of Exeter. They both presented how each gender display different patterns in two crucial activities of our daily life: research development and mobility.
Ana’s interests intersect the higher education systems, sociology of science, public health and social disparities, specifically the complex systems approach in general and network science in specific. She is currently studying her PhD in Computer Science at the University of Exeter. Mariana’s interests are in swarm intelligence, evolutionary computation, multi and many-objective, binary optimisation, complex networks, human mobility, gender inequality, data mining and machine learning. She is currently studying her PhD at the University of Exeter.
Continue reading about the event in our blog post here.
Online Workshop: Communicating science through comedy and storytelling
Exeter Women in Climate teamed up with award-winning comedian and environmental economist Dr Matt Winning to create an exciting workshop. Matt talked about his experiences using comedy to communicate climate change, and why it can be a useful tool. Then everyone had the chance to create their own fun material based on their research topic. Matt Winning has performed his climate comedy at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and on tour around the UK, has appeared on TV and radio, and hosts a podcast and a BBC Radio 4 show. The Scotsman described his latest show ‘It’s The End Of The World As We Know It’ as “Passionate, engaging and consistently funny, It’s The End of the World is an urgent dispatch”. Want to read more about the event, check out our blog post here.
Theme: Women of the GSI & Met Office – Their Experiences
In the May meeting, we were joined by Dr. Catherine Bradshaw and Dr. Karina Williams. Both Catherine and Karina are senior scientists at the Met Office and part-time Lecturers within the GSI. They shared with us their career experiences and their perspectives on working for both the Met Office and University.
Some key points to come out of the presentations and discussion:
In the April meeting, were will be joined by Dr Kirsten Walsh, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Exeter.
In her recent monograph, Reading Popular Newtonianism (2018), Laura Miller argues that the image of science as masculine was knowingly constructed by popularisers of Newton’s Principia. Eighteenth-century Newtonianism was presented as something for, rather than by women. That is, women could engage with the most important scientific theories of the day, but only at a safe distance—through popularisations written specifically for them. This attitude towards women’s participation in science is insidious and entrenched, persisting into the present day. Of course, these attitudes were not invented with Newton—the history of Western science is largely a history of exclusion—but, just as Newtonianism played a crucial role in bringing science to the emerging middle-classes, it also played a role in reinforcing the exclusion of women from science and medicine. That’s not to say that there haven’t always been women-practitioners of science. But they have often participated at a distance from their colleagues, from society, and even from their resources. In this talk, Kirsten highlighted four women scientists, Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), Emilie Du Châtelet (1706-1749), Laura Bassi (1711-1778) and Mary Anning (1799-1847), suggesting that their participation in science is best characterised as action at a distance.
Continue reading about the event in our blog post here.
Inspired by MIT’s report on the status of women in science, we want to know what the data says about the gender balance at the University of Exeter and the Met Office, from junior to senior levels. Gender (and other diversity) statistics not only allow us to understand our present situation but also help us find ways to increase the representation of women and other underrepresented minorities at senior levels in our institutions.
March’s meeting provided an opportunity to discuss gender balance and gain some insight into what gender statistics tell us about our institutions. We were joined by Professor Janice Kay, Provost at the University of Exeter, and Dr Jenny Cook, data insight consultant on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at the Met Office. Continue reading about the event in our blog post here.
For International Day of Women and Girls in Science seven of our members wrote blogs describing what motivated them to pursue a science career, to reflect on the past or to comment on the future. Click on the tile below to read their stories.
Our February meeting was a book club discussing All We can Save, described as a series of ‘Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward.’
Read the main takeaways from the session in our blog.
Thanks to everyone who joined in our January meeting. Our theme for this meeting was a general catch-up. We talked about some of the future events we have planned for the network and how people are coping in the latest lock-down.
We were delighted to be joined by Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean of CEMPS Professor Zhongdong and the Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Executive Dean of CLES Professor Dan Charman in our December meeting.
In our September meeting with Carol Rosati OBE, she highlighted that we should know our senior management and have opportunities to express concerns or highlight areas we feel there is a need to improve.
This event was an opportunity to share experiences with our senior management staff and ask questions about the present and future of CEMPS & CLES. The main topics covered were promotions, opportunities coming up, PhD extensions and support, office/lab space, mentoring opportunities and Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI).
Continue reading about the event in our blog post.
Often when climate science is discussed in the media, men are quoted much more often than women, and there are few women regularly quoted in UK media about climate change. This reinforces the impression to the public that climate scientists are largely middle class, white men. It is important in general to increase diversity in science, but it would also be great to make our media representation more diverse, which will help prevent reinforcement of the lack of diversity. What barriers do we face in this? Do women have more barriers in getting involved with the media? Some suggested barriers may include: adequate seniority to feel comfortable to talk in public, confidence, time required for preparation, potential for attack on social media. Do we have lots of women in junior science communication roles and, if so, how can we make sure we capitalise on that and pull through this talent to ensure we get women featured by the media when science is discussed?
For this discussion we were joined by Professor Peter Stott, an experience climate communicator at the University of Exeter and Met Office, who is a champion for helping improve diversity in science communication. We were also joined by Met Office climate communicator Ayesha Tandon, who graduated from the University of Exeter in 2019. Continue reading about the event in our blog post.
Raychelle Burks, a chemist at American University, discusses gender bias and racial discrimination in the new independent film Picture a Scientist. Credit: Uprising LLC
Picture a Scientist is a must see film for all scientists to share in the experiences of women in STEM, get new insights into the challenges for women doing field work, and the everyday sexism that can exist within academic institutions.
Picture a Scientist brings diversity in science into sharp view at a critical time. The film paints a nuanced, emotional but unflinching portrait of the struggles women in science have faced, in recent decades up to today. The film challenges audiences of all backgrounds and genders to question their own implicit biases and move toward change.
After the film screening we hosted a discussion meeting to talk about the film.
Key points from the film and discussion:
Continue reading about the screening and discussion in our blog post here.
We are grateful to the Global Systems Institute for purchasing the rights for this screen event.
We were joined by Met Office BAME network founder Misha Khan (she/her, Twitter @SuperMish651), the founder of the LGBT+ PRISM-Exeter network Claire Davies (she/her, Twitter @Tuffers_c), and our Met Office Sponsor and Director of the Met Office Hadley Centre Professor Albert Klein Tank (he/his). We had excellent attendance, with 74 participants joining us for the meeting.
Being a good ally requires taking the time to self-educate about discrimination in society and understanding your own privilege. However, it’s also important to create spaces where we can discuss how best we can help work towards a fairer society in an empathetic and productive way. Continue reading more in our blog post.
Carol Rosati is currently working on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy at the Met Office. Carol is an experienced talent and people coach, specialised in understanding diversity and has championed women in senior leadership for over a decade since founding the women’s board network Inspire in 2008. Carol is Vice Chair for UN Women UK, was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s 2015 Birthday Honours List for Services to Women In Business, was included in the Global Top 50 D&I professionals list in 2016 and 2017 and in 100 Women to Watch: The Female FTSE Board Report 2017.
Carol shared with us her perspective on what is holding women back at work, some pitfalls to avoid and some suggestions on how to get ahead.
The key points from the meeting were:
To find out more continue reading our blog.
Do you struggle to say no to things you don’t have time for or things you do not want to do? In this meeting we discussed how to say no and not feel guilty about it. In the meeting we will discuss Sarah Knight’s book “**** No!”. The key points from the book:
In the work context:
Women in Physics and Women in Climate teamed up to host an interactive one-day training session on understanding body language. This virtual training session was led by Sadie Sharp (Sharp Transformations) and took us through a variety of practical, relatable and effective techniques to help us project more confidence, develop our assertive personal presence, and tackle a range of common workplace challenges, including:
Please continue reading our blog about the training event.
This session is possible thanks to funding from the Researcher-Led Initiate awards from the University of Exeter’s Doctoral College. This training was featured on the University of Exeter’s news page. Sadie also creates regular content for her Linkedin profile.
We hosted a two day writing workshop led by Professor David Schultz who is a Professor of Synoptic Meteorology at Manchester University. Prof. Schulz is the author of the excellent writing guide Eloquent Science and provides training on his approach to academic writing. Continue reading about this workshop in our blog post.
The workshop was possible thanks to generous funding from the Royal Meteorological Society Legacy Fund, and the Global Systems Institute.
Most of our recent meetings have been training, seminars or themes discussions which have not allowed much time to connect with one another. This was something that naturally happened before and after meetings before they all went online. So our meeting was a social catch-up.
Following our very successful seminar in August 2018, we held a second seminar on page charges and open access. We will be joined by Imogen Ward-Smith and Caroline Huxtable from the libraries Open Research team. In this session we discussed how to pay journal publication fees, how to make our author accepted manuscript open access on Symplectic, when to pay open access fees and much more. The slides from the event can be found here. Some key points worth noting:
There are lots of resources on the open access website. In particular check out their online training.
In part 1 of our writing journal article series, we were joined by Prof. Mat Collins to discuss: Why Publish? Mat shared with his perspective on publishing papers and as an editor for Journal of Climate.
Mat’s top tips:
Continue reading here for some of the Q and A from the session.
Theme: “Research Dissemination in COVID-19 times”
The current pandemic has cancelled workshops, seminars and conferences, which made research dissemination more difficult. Even though, online alternatives have been put into place, communicating our research and results is not straight forward.
Our discussion was led by Emma Sheriff. Emma is the technical manager of the Digital Humanities Lab at the University of Exeter, where one of her key areas of work is teaching colleagues and students to develop technical skills for the dissemination of research messages. We discussed how to broadcast research online, such as podcast and videos. Continue reading our blog post here or read the LibGuide prepared by Emma Sherriff based on her presentation.
Theme: “Productivity during COVID-19”
We hosted our first zoom WiC meeting and talked about productivity while working from home. Lets face it, working from home can be hard. Especially when if feel isolated. Exeter Universities Doctoral College has some good tips on working from home: read their suggestions here.
A few keys points from our discussion:
We teamed up with the Natural Sciences Equality Network, and Women in Physics to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Diversity Event at Met Office hosted by Women in Climate.
We were delighted to have Dr. Natalie Garrett talk about how she transitioned from post-doc to her high-profile position of private secretary to the Chief Scientist, a prestigious position supporting and representing the Chief Scientist. Natalie previously worked in the International Climate Services team at the Met Office and as a research fellow at the University of Exeter’s School of Physics.
One of the key take home points from Natalie is this: make a plan and work towards your goal but be prepared to change your plan to take advantage of new opportunities. You will grow and change during your career. Be open to new and exciting opportunities. Continue reading our blog post here or read Natalie’s slides here.
Have you observed that there are more male professors than female professors? Here is some stats from the IOP in 2011/2012.
Dr Inmaculada Adarves-Yorno, Senior Lecturer in Leadership Studies within the University of Exeter’s Business School, joined us for an interactive session on Mindfulness Plus.
What is Mindfulness? Mindfulness is being in the present moment with purpose and without judgement. Its benefits are varied but mainly related to general wellbeing, better job performance and positive emotions.
During the session, Dr Inmaculada Adarves-Yorno provided us with a set of quick exercises for applying mindfulness on our every-day life.
See Inma’s TEDx talk on Using Mindfulness To Move Forward:
Our January meeting was a book club where we discussed Sarah Knight’s “Get your sh*t together”. The core theme of the book is to assess your life and decide what elements you are happy with and what you would like to change. There are lots of great tips on how to set goals and strategies to stay focused and achieve them. This is a genuinely funny and quick read. A few stand out points from the book were:
We were joined by Dr Anna Harper, Lecturer in Climate Science at the University of Exeter, who shred with us her experience navigating the space between post-doc and lecturer. We were also joined by three other lecturers within Maths. We had a great turn out to the event and a lot of excellent discussion. Continue reading the blog.
We were joined by our HR immigration specialist Helen Belcher to discuss indefinite leave to remain and the EU settlement scheme, continue reading the blog post, and our HR adviser Ruth Baker who will talk to us about sick leave, parental leave and bereavement leave, continue reading the blog post about leave.
Some key points from our discussion:
SEEK OPPORTUNITIES
Keep an eye out for opportunities for both blue-sky research and targeted calls which you may be able to work existing ideas into. Know your funding agency/agencies! Be flexible and chase opportunities. Research investment changes focus over time so consider which areas are growing and how your interests can fit into that. Think about research gaps and potentially create your own opportunities (e.g. NERC highlight topics). Be aware that more specific targeted calls are likely to be less competitive than regular grants so are worth devoting time to seeking (i.e. don’t just focus on fellowships and standard/large grants). Ensure proposals to targeted calls are focussed specifically to fit the call.
GREAT IDEAS AND ACHIEVABLE GOALS
Keep thinking about big ideas throughout your career (not just the project/s you are doing now!) so that you are consistently developing ideas that can be developed into proposals. Stand-out novel ideas are likely to do well if the proposal is well put together. Make sure your proposals are clearly and quickly understood by non-specialists (reviewers may be experts in your field, panels won’t be). Make sure your goals are achievable as proposals will be criticised for being overly-ambitious.
WRITE WELL
The art of writing is very important so it is worth attending courses and learning how to write well. Get involved with proposals as early as possible to learn how your senior colleagues put them together. Get as many people to read your proposal as possible and integrate feedback – peer review with colleagues and work friends is a great place to start. Make sure you are focussed on the importance of the big picture when putting together your proposal. Helen Butler in IIB has put together a document on frequent criticisms of NERC grant applications – ask Andy Watson for a copy so you can avoid making common mistakes.
COLLABORATE
Work with senior colleagues on grant applications. If you are moving areas, collaborate with current experts to put together a proposal with your new enthusiasm and their expertise. In any case, if you are not top-class in an area and likely known to your reviewers, then collaborate and impress them with letters of support from experts. Regarding worries about your publication record:for fellowships typically an ‘ideal’ CV would have a very high impact publication but also ‘meaty’ ones, so a well-rounded publication record is a great asset. On collaboration – learn networking skills and never be afraid to approach senior academics who will likely be very interested to hear about your ideas and work. There are people in IIB at University of Exeter who will also be able to advise and help with aspects of grant applications.
KEEP AT IT!
Talk to your director of research to express your intent to write a proposal. Lots of schemes will limit the university to a certain number of applications so you may have to go through an internal sift process first. It takes a LOT of TIME to put together excellent proposals. If you aren’t initially successful, be resilient and keep working on it, reuse, recycle and make it better – if you have good ideas, eventually you will be able to integrate them into a successful proposal.
Also keep in mind that these are ideals. During our careers we may find ourselves doing tasks (or even jobs) that we don’t want to do. We have to keep in mind that we need to pay the bills and that is often a higher priority than an ideal job. In this situation, the task is to integrate components into your job which you are passionate about and look toward opportunities to move into positions you are more passionate about.
WiC, Natural Sciences Equality Network and Women in Physics hosted a morning tea together to celebrate International Women’s Day #IWD2019.
We had an open theme for this months meeting. We discussed upcoming activities, reflected on what meetings we enjoyed last year and discussed ideas for future meetings/events. If you have any ideas, we would love to hear from you.
The theme for this meeting was: Outreach. We were joined by Dr Tom Powell from Geography who has been involved in many different outreach projects. Tom’s motivation for doing outreach comes from a desire to impact people beyond his academic contributions and to remove barriers between the university and the general public.
Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to work out what is your motivation for doing outreach. Here is a brief summary of the points we covered. See the outreach blog page for a more detailed summary and of a list of interesting projects and people to contact to get involved in local outreach activities.
One-off seminar on open data management – Thanks to Dr Adrian Champion for organising the follow up to the page charges and open access on 31st Aug (see below).
Our Research Data Officer Dr. Chris Tibbs gave a seminar on how to manage and make available your data. Here are the slides from the seminar. Please continue reading the blog post which summaries the key points from the discussion.
Don’t second guess everything. Instead take this it as a reminder to check yourself – am I asking the right person and for the right reasons.
One-off seminar on page charges and open access.
The UK Research Councils (UKRC) do not pay journal page charges. So how do I get a manuscripts published in a fee paying journal if I can’t charge the fees to a grant? Imogen Ward-Smith and Caroline Huxtable from the libraries Open Research team gave an excellent seminar the focused on the following key questions such as:
Here are the slides from the seminar and please continue to read on in the blog post.
On the notion of luck and how it impacts your perspective:
Be kind to yourself and avoid the self deprecating description of luck.
The theme for this meeting was: The perceptions of women in male dominated roles. We showed two short films and discussed related issues with Professor Claire Belcher, who leads a research group studying the role of fire in the Earth System. Claire was involved in The Bearded Lady Project, a documentary film and photographic project celebrating the work of female paleontologists and highlighting the challenges and obstacles they face. We showed a second short film about the experiences facing female firefighters Women in Fire.
The theme for our June discussion was work life balance. We were delighted to be joined by Jennifer Catto and Tim Jupp.The main points were the discussion were:
Here is a nice article on how to work a 37 hour week
To move or not to move? We were joined by Prof. Nadine Unger and Prof. Mat Collins who helped us navigate this theme and share their experiences/perspectives. Here are the discussion points for the May meeting. The key points from the discussion were:
Thank you to everyone who attended the WiC Launch event. We had an excellent turn out given how quiet campus has been during the break. The theme for our launch meeting was: What challenges lie ahead? Here are the discussion point from the Launch
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