AN ONLINE event aimed to encourage young female and nonbinary people across Britain and Ireland to consider a career in geoscience is set to go ahead this month.
The Girls into Geoscience initiative has been running for seven years and plans to inspire young female students who are in their last years of high school to study the scientific field of geoscience and pursue a career in it.
The event aims to bring women from industry, government bodies, academia and high schools together to emphasise and promote geoscience and its valuable potential as a career path for girls to pursue.
Geoscience is the study of the earth and its history and future, the event aims to encourage girls to pursue this valuable career.
This year’s event will take place on June 28 and 29 and will be held online due to COVID-19 restrictions, it will offer new opportunities to increase the diversity if speakers along with the number of attendees.
Girls attending this will experience a selection of speakers talking about their careers in geoscience, there will be a series of question-and-answer panels which will cover topics including the field, careers and University life.
Dr Amanda Owen, lecturer in sedimentology at the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences, helped organise the University of Glasgow’s involvement in the event said: “We were thrilled to have more than 200 girls take part in last year’s event, even though it was entirely online.
“It shows that young women across the UK are already curious about careers in geoscience, and it’s great that taking the event into the virtual world actually allowed us to reach many more girls than we would have been able to with any of our previous physical events.”
Over 200 girls took part in the event last year, showing an increasing desire to study geoscience.
Dr Jodie Fisher and Dr Sarah Boulton from the University of Plymouth, and co-founders of Girls into Geoscience, said: “As our planet continues to experience the effects of climate change in the coming decades, the field of geoscience is set to become even more important.
“Geoscientists will play a vital role in helping us monitor, mitigate and adapt to the changes we’re already beginning to see around the world.”
Geoscience is the study of the earth, its history and its future, taking a wide range of expertise from across a range of sciences to help aid the understanding of the Earth’s complex systems.
The study of geoscience isn’t usually offered as a subject on its own in schools throughout the UK, but some aspects of it are covered in mainstream science subjects like chemistry, physics, biology and geography.
You can register for the free event here.
