Profile

I’m 27 and I live in St Andrews, Scotland (an hour north of Edinburgh). I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Liverpool and graduated in 2015. I then did a year out and did my Masters with the University of Exeter in Conservation and Biodiversity. During my Masters, I lived in Cornwall.

I wish I could own a dog but my weekends are so busy I don’t have time!

Communication is at the heart of my role.

I try to make Scottish marine science more accessible to other researchers in Scotland, for those in Scottish policy and for people and communities who are involved in the marine environment.

It has never been more important for society to be aware of the issues facing our oceans, and to do this we need to ensure those in science are speaking to other scientists, policymakers, industry, conservation charities, and members of the public.

I organise a large number of online events and webinars for all those people mentioned above. That way we can open the conversation up to those interested.

I also created ‘MASTS Casts’, a weekly blog that featured a variety of marine-science topics and people, such as:

• a student having their first paper published
• a new conservation project
• academics discussing a successfully funded project.

I not only provide information and practical assistance to speakers at these events, but I also advise on how to engage the audience. We don’t want boring speakers!

My work aims to ensure scientists are advertising their work to other scientists and to help make their work easy to understand for different audiences.

The day always starts of with me checking my calendar, who am i going to be speaking today (and have i forgotten to do anything for that chat!). I speak to many different people so a to-do list is really important. a to do list for that day and other things i need to do in the future. I check my teams social media for any mentions, retweets and how posts are doing. I will think about what new information do our followers and members need to know?

I check in with projects we have running to ensure they’re running to schedule and if there are any questions i need to answer.

Every day is different and the job is fast paced, i like these two aspects of my job.

My building is next to this beach, East Sands in St Andrews:

This is in the lab i work in ( i don’t anything there though!)

What it looks like when i’m running an online event, I usually have more than two screens!