Profile

I suppose I am a lover of being creative and how things are made. Not in the arts way, but being creative in making/mechanical way. I have just finished making some cupboards from scratch at home.

I have 2 classic cars. The driving is good, but it is also about the restoration of them. I enjoy the making of the parts, getting parts made or repaired, and the processes to do this and the end result. I have just finished making a rubber mould to cast some new parts.

Television programmes like The Repair Shop are great.

I’ve been the fieldwork technician within the Geography Department at University College London for about 22 years.

I support teaching and research, getting equipment ready, making sure everything works, building things if they’re needed. Prepping and getting equipment ready for people who need it.

The physical side of Geography which basically looks at how the world works. This maybe on a smaller scale, a pond, a river or a fish population. We’re looking now at microplastics, global warming, biodiversity loss. Those are just some of the examples I get sort of involved with.

We as a department look at quite a lot of sediment because you can understand what’s going on with the environment now as well as in the past by looking at certain parameters within that sediment. It could be pollen, diatoms which is an algae or pollutants.

We have various bits of equipment to analyze that sediment. Maybe looking at particle size or contaminants within that sediment for pollution or remains of plants and bugs.

My job is varied, and I don’t know what I could be asked to do/help with next. When I am in the laboratory it is helping students and researchers do their work, repairing or making equipment. The fieldwork I do is the more interesting and sometime challenging part of my job. I do quite a lot of work on water e.g., taking sediment cores from lakes, netting waters for fish and eels, collecting greenhouse gases . Sometimes it is abroad, like helping a PhD researcher in Madagascar.