Dr. Steffi Burchardt recently received the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation grant, and the organization sent out a film crew to interview her about the winning project.
The VIPS team joined her on a field excursion to Iceland in June 2019, and the crew met up with us for a couple days to get some first-hand footage of those spectacular Iceland volcanics.
Below Dr. Burchardt describes her passion for outreach and provides a link to the 8-minute documentary. Enjoy!
The ultimate goal of any volcanologist is to understand volcanoes and be able to explain what is likely happening during an unrest period. But as a researcher I can’t help it and sometimes wonder how big the impact of my work actually is. After all there are only a couple of thousand volcanologists in the world, and maybe a few hundred people in my field of volcanic plumbing system studies. That’s why it is so important for me to work with science communication.
The coolest outreach project I’ve had the chance to participate in so far was the production of a short documentary about my research that my main funder, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, has produced. Despite my initial reservation to see myself on screen and my awkwardness during the recording of the material for the documentary, I’m so happy with the result. The three key ingredients to get to this high quality are in my opinion: a professional production company, a good dialogue between the producers and my team and me during the whole process, and having the camera team come and see where the magic happens, i.e. out in the field.
Now I don’t want to keep you any longer from watching the master piece, so here it is:
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