Exclusive interview: Rebecca Williams

VIPS Team

Hi! Rebecca, first of all, before we get to the questions itself, would you give us a short introduction of who you are?

Rebecca Williams

Okay. I’m Rebecca Williams. I’m a senior lecturer at the University of Hull. I’m a volcanologist, and my specialty is physical volcanology. In particular, I look at pyroclastic density currents and lahars, and try and understand how they flow and behave, mostly through looking at deposits in the field. But more recently I’ve gotten into analogue modelling, simulating these currents in the lab to see what we can understand about them through that technique.

VIPS Team

Do you have a favorite volcano?

Rebecca

Oh, that’s a difficult question! Okay, so favorite volcano probably has to be Kilauea. That’s the first volcano I really had any direct experience with; as soon as I graduated from my undergraduate degree I went to Hawaii for six months to work at the Hawaii Volcano Observatory. And that was the first time I realized that you could do volcanology as a job. I hadn’t realized it was a thing – I assumed that I was going to go into the oil and gas industry after doing my geology undergrad and just go be a geologist. But I was in Hawaii to work as a gas geochemist. And we got to go out and sample gasses from active fumaroles… At the time, it was the Mother’s Day flow, where the lava was flowing across the land into the sea and you could go walk on the fresh lava. You could see it cascading into the ocean… it was just one of those breathtaking, stunning, “I can’t believe I’m doing this” kind of moments, and that was happening every day for six months.

VIPS Team

Do you have a volcano that has taught you the most?

Rebecca

I suppose the volcano that’s taught me the most, is the one that I got to know the most, Pantelleria, in Italy. That’s where I did my PhD fieldwork. I spent a lot of time there getting to know it really well, and subsequently supervised a PhD student working on it. It’s a stunning place but with some really incredibly odd ignimbrites. And I do like incredibly odd ignimbrites.

VIPS Team

You commented on this a little bit in the introduction, but where do your current research interests lie? And what methods are you using?

Rebecca 

I’m still really focused on understanding pyroclastic density currents. Most of the work I do involves going out and looking at ignimbrites in the field and applying the typical techniques of logging them, tracing them out and trying to understand how those deposits were emplaced—partly to understand the kind of stratigraphy of a particular volcano, but more to understand the kind of processes that are involved in pyroclastic density currents. You can’t really witness them in the field because they are so dangerous, and if you do, you’re not going to survive to write down your scientific observations! And the problem with trying to interpret them from the rocks is there are still a lot of unknowns, because the rock captures a particular moment in a particular time on a particular current. So more recently, I’ve gotten into modelling these in the lab. I am working with a collaborator, Pete Rowley, and he developed a flume through which you can run granular flows, but aerate them so they represent the high pore pressures in PDCs. So we started doing those experiments, and we have a PhD student who works on trying to recreate some of the sedimentary structures that we see in the (real volcano) deposits in the flume. We’re trying to directly tie the processes we observe in the flume to what we see in the volcanic deposits.

VIPS Team

Cool. What’s your favorite aspect of your job?

Rebecca

Going into the field!

VIPS Team

How would you define your role as a scientist in society? What outreach do you do?

Rebecca

That’s a good question. I do a lot of outreach. I’ve always done public lectures, science festivals, and festival outreach… Both going into schools, and also bringing schools into the university, which is really important, particularly for some school children who don’t necessarily have aspirations to go to university. They don’t think it’s a place for them. So bringing those students into the university and showing them that it’s just a normal place can be really powerful. And more recently (not recently anymore I’ve been on it for nine years), I’ve got on to Twitter (@Volcanologist) and Social Media. And originally, that was just to share my research but it became apparent that there was a real need for clear communication from volcanologists to the public, particularly during times of volcanic crisis. And that’s something that I’ve gotten more and more involved in the last couple years, to try and provide a clear voice and direct people to official sources of information when a volcanic crisis is happening.

VIPS Team

That seems to be a very important role to fill in the Twittersphere. We’re glad you’re helping to keep the facts straight! What do you consider your biggest achievement in academia?

Rebecca 

This is probably really bad, but…as a scientist, I can’t pinpoint my biggest achievement! I guess I still think of myself as quite early career, so I feel like my biggest achievement might be yet to come. I can’t quite fingerpoint directly onto something. I mean, there’s been some really cool findings through my PhD where I demonstrated how pyroclastic density currents can wax and wane, and they can have different behaviours at different times because of the nature of the eruption and how the current moves over the landscape And they build up this circular kind of deposit sheet which originally people thought was emplaced simultaneously very quickly from the expanding radial current, and I demonstrated that actually that’s not how it happens. It is actually built up by a shift in flow paths. And initially, the currents are pretty sluggish and pretty slow. And then they really dramatically, over hours, increase to these huge currents that are able to over-top, and propagate. It was kind of a new behavior that hadn’t really been demonstrated before. So I think that’s something that I’m most pleased of. I do hope my biggest achievements are somewhere in my future.

VIPS Team

Do you think you’ve had a breakthrough in your career?

Rebecca 

I’m not sure really that science is done with big breakthroughs anymore. I think that’s an interesting kind of philosophical question.

VIPS Team

Do you think you’ve ever had a ‘biggest failure’ in your career?

Rebecca

Don’t think I’ve had a big failure. I do think I have a big failing, which is I’m a enthusiastic project starter and a terrible project finisher. I love starting new projects; for me the excitement of science is starting something new, finding out fun stuff, to go a new field area, collecting and analyzing loads of fun data. Worst part of science for me is then spending weeks, months, years writing it up and getting it published. Finishing that project. That’s probably my biggest failing as a scientist.

VIPS Team

What was your motivation to start as an early career scientist?

Rebecca

Originally, I wanted to be a geophysicist if you can believe it. I went to university thinking I’d do geophysics, and was actually really into archaeology, thought I’d be an archaeological geophysicist. And then I started looking around universities and visiting them and I thought, “that doesn’t sound so much fun as looking at rocks and studying volcanoes.” But like I said, I didn’t think it was a thing. And I didn’t realize it was a job, or a career until I went to Hawaii. And then I really wanted to get into volcanology, and try and help mitigate hazards, to try and decrease the amount of of volcano crises and tragedies that we have. And that’s why I originally started off doing numerical computer modeling of lahars as a way of trying to create hazard maps (that’s what I did my masters in). So that was my initial motivation. And then I got much more interested in understanding the processes behind the currents.

VIPS Team

Have you ever changed directions in your career?

Rebecca  

Yes. Not in terms of the science, but in terms of what my focus as an academic is. I have a very teaching-focused career track at the moment. After my PhD, my first job was as a teaching fellow, and where I was just teaching at university. I was running a kind of part time postdoc at the same time, but my focus was on the teaching. And that’s kind of followed me ever since. So when I got to Hull, I focused on learning and teaching and developing degree programs, and then became Head of Geology for a while. Now I’m actually working in the faculty as the Associate Dean for Student Experience. That’s quite unusual, somebody earlier in their career to be at that level. And so it has meant that at times, the research has never stopped but it’s not always been the focus. And I’ve flipped backwards and forwards with time to have that focus more or less. And so whilst the general thread of the research has always been the same – apart from a really brief hiatus into basalt geochemistry (it was brief, it was dull, still haven’t written up those papers), the switches for me have been into these periods of really intense teaching focused versus typical research.

VIPS Team

So from that, I guess you always have seen yourself as an academic or have you ever seen yourself outside academia as well?

Rebecca

Yeah, I mean, I had a couple years out, between my undergraduate and my Masters. I was actually working as a PADI scuba diver! Working in a school as a PADI dive master and working in a dive shop. Which was great, that was awesome fun. But as soon as I went back to do my Masters, it then became my focus to stay in academia.

VIPS Team

What are some of the major problems or setbacks you have encountered?

Rebecca 

I suppose sometimes that teaching focus has meant I haven’t been able to do as much research as I always wanted to, and I haven’t always been able to publish as quickly, (as well as my deep dislike of the process) as much as I wanted to. And that kind of makes it hard… It’s now hard for me to get the funding, because I haven’t got that really research-focused CV, so now I’m kind of trying to build that up more. People often see me as a quite a teaching focused academic. So at the moment, especially with the funding and climate in the UK, it’s really difficult to get grants. And you can’t do field work without grants, which is one of the reasons why analogue modeling is so useful as a research technique. And so I think that’s one of the big setbacks, is just trying to get funding to start developing these big projects.

VIPS Team

In your view, what are the things you like most about the academic workplace?

Rebecca

That I do something different nearly every day. One day, I could be working on a paper with my student about analogue modelling. Another day, I could be going to a completely different department in my faculty to work on a student experience problem. Another day I could be meeting with the university leadership team about something. Another day I might be planning a field trip to take students to teach, another day planning my research, or finding myself in Uppsala talking to a whole new research group! So, I think that continuous variety, is what makes it so fun. So exciting.

VIPS Team

The opposite: How would you change the academic workplace if you could?

Rebecca

Less admin and less paperwork. We love paperwork. It’s insane. There’s a form for everything. There’s a process for everything. There’s bureaucracy around everything.

VIPS Team

That is one of the necessary evils. What advice would you give early career people who aspire to have a career in geoscience, or volcanology specifically?

Rebecca 

I would say always do what you enjoy. And always chase the opportunities that you fancy. People are always going to be giving you conflicting advice, and pulling you in different directions, and saying, “if you want to do this, then you need to be doing this”, but actually, I think what I found is that taking chances on opportunities has led to things I never thought would happen. For example, when I first applied to Hull there wasn’t a geology degree program, they were just starting it up. And a lot of the advice that I had from people like my PhD supervisory team and postdocs, people around that time was, “you’re just going to do loads of teaching, and it’s not a great place, you should take some time out, write your papers and go get a postdoc”, and I didn’t listen to any of that. I thought, “Well, it sounds like fun. And it’s in the same county as my soon-to-be husband.” And actually it opened really big doors for me. I was able to establish my career there. And I thought that it sounded like a fun opportunity to start a geology degree program up from scratch. And it was. And it has enabled me to have huge amounts of freedom in what I teach. And being in a department where geology was just part of geography and environmental sciences, it has also opened up collaborations I would never have been able to do if I was in a traditional geology department. I’ve been working with a PhD student, and she’s been doing historical social volcanology, looking at archive work. And that would never have been an opportunity if I stayed in a more traditional department.

So there is no correct career path. And there’s no correct career advice, I think. Just always chase the opportunities that look fun and interesting.

VIPS Team

And because there’s so much talk on the Twittersphere about mental health in academia, what advice would you give to an early career scientist? And how do you maintain a healthy work-life balance?

Rebecca

I would say that only you can be in control of a work-life balance, and you have to set your own boundaries and try and stick to them. I did not have a healthy work-life balance during my PhD. I would work evenings, weekends. And then my first job as a teaching fellow I was only supposed to be 60% part time…. I tracked my hours for a couple of weeks and I was doing 70 hours a week, which is way more than 100% job, let alone a 60% job! And so when I moved to Hull I made the decision to change that. I wanted something different. My new rules were that I wouldn’t work the weekends. And I would work perhaps in the evening if I had a big deadline. But now I try, I really do try to put my job in between like nine to five, and I don’t work evenings and weekends. I try and encourage that kind of behavior in the people around me, too, so I don’t do things like send emails on a Friday evening and over the weekend expecting responses.

But equally, people have different working patterns. I know people that like to work late in the evening, because that’s when it’s good for them. So I think it’s important to respect that people have different working patterns and just find what suits you, and have other stuff to do outside of the university, whether that’s running, cycling, another hobby… it’s really important to keep that.

Also, having a baby’s absolutely forced me to have good work-life balance. Because she doesn’t let me work in the evenings and weekends, even if I wanted to.

VIPS Team

Is there any other question we should have asked you, or anything else you want to say?

Rebecca 

No I don’t think so.. Academia can be really hard. Research can be really hard. But it also can be enormous amounts of fun, and I’m working with such varied and inspiring people. It’s really great. So if that’s something you’re interested in doing, then it’s a great thing to do.

VIPS Team

Thank you so much for your time! We wish you all the best!