The show must go on: virtual seminar series in the Earth Science Research Group
This semester the Earth Science Research Group (ESRG) ran a weekly online seminar series, dedicated to showcasing a variety of exciting and important work that’s going on in the field. Running a seminar series is important for the ESRG to forge an identity as Earth Scientists in Liverpool and interact with the external community. In ‘normal-times’ these seminars would have been held in-person in the Jane Herdman lecture theatre. However, the ongoing covid situation saw this semester’s ESRG seminar series being held virtually for the first time, which presented several challenges but also opportunities.
We decided to live stream the seminars from Zoom to the ESRG YouTube channel, allowing anyone to watch along and ask questions using the chat function. As well as ensuring people didn’t miss out, this resulted in a greater audience viewing the seminars, which were publicly advertised in advance on the Earth Sciences twitter account @LivUniEarthSci. Our most popular talk has received over 400 views already, providing an important resource for the Earth Science community. These recordings could even be used as a resource for teachers of Earth Science, and to expose students to scientific seminars and research. One of the best things about having a virtual seminar series was that it facilitated national and international speakers sharing their research from their own home or office.
It was virtually impossible to find a regular time to have the seminar that suited all (this was often a problem for in-person events too). After getting an idea of which days and time slots worked best overall for ESRG members (via questionnaires and outlook calendar inspections), the time was finalised based on the speaker’s availability. This gave the speaker more flexibility, and having a variable time also meant that most members of the ESRG were available to attend at some point across the 12 weeks. Another challenging aspect was recreating a social aspect to the series and providing a chance to chat to the speaker during post-seminar coffee. To add some variety to the world of virtual meetings, the ESRG seminars finished with a trip to the virtual Jane Herdman building on gather.town. This allowed for continued group discussion and networking with the speaker in an informal setting.
The series ran over the course of 12 weeks, with talks from 12 different speakers with a diverse range of expertise - including geologists, volcanologists, engineers, and mathematicians. The topics ranged from understanding how dinosaurs may have become extinct, to the beautiful patterns created by self-organising sedimentary systems, to machine learning for improved geological models. While the main focus of the series was scientific research, speakers were also invited to share their experience with outreach and/or Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in STEM. One of the 12 seminars was even fully dedicated to promoting Earth Science research in schools. The collection of fascinating talks in the series are available here for Earth Science enthusiasts to enjoy at their own pace.
When safe to do so, the ESRG seminar series could transition into being part in-person and part virtual, where in-person talks will also be streamed online. Having a virtual series has opened up the range of both speakers and viewers, bringing the benefit of a diverse spectrum of exciting talks and discussion.