In the Company of Volcanoes

-Alison It seems obvious to say volcanoes are big, but as with anything in geology size is not immediately obvious. Volcanoes can loom over a landscape, spread ash over large chunks of the planet and even influence our climate- that all sounds big. On the scale of an individual human any eruption is big. They are frequently faster than, slower than (yes both), hotter than and physically larger than a human being. One of the exercises I use when teaching volcanology is focused on understanding just how big, "big" is. We go about this by finding things that we already understand the size and compare them to volcanoes. Like many natural processes (and humans), volcanoes and volcanic eruptions come in all shapes and sizes. If volcanoes only had one size and style of eruption our job studying them and anticipating future eruptions would be much easier. The only human-sized volcano I have ever seen. It was a volcano costume in Kagoshima Japan in 2013. We need to be able...

-Alison Experimental volcanology is a pretty fun sounding job description, but it is also one that isn’t as obvious in terms of what that entails. There are a lot of different specialties in volcanology, and the day to day activities for volcanologists can be pretty diverse. You can describe what I do as making deposits from simplified versions of volcanic processes using experiments to understand what evidence is left behind in the rocks. The simplifications mean that I can study the complex phenomena of an explosive eruption in parts, one or two at a time. Then I relate isolated processes to the deposits they form, which I compare to natural deposits that are the result of anywhere between 2 and 10 different processes. Every volcanic rock you see is the result of whatever process gets it out of the ground, some form of transport and then deposition. After that the deposits can be altered through physical processes like erosion by water and wind, chemical bre...

-Alison When I am asked what I do, whether it be by a store clerk, a customs officer, or by a student, I have several options to describe my job. I am a volcanologist, I am a postdoc, I am a researcher, I am a geologist, I am a scientist, I pretend to be a professor, I am a doctor (of philosophy). In that list, the one that most people do not recognize is a postdoc (and I've had some entertaining responses to volcanologist). You can think about postdoctoral scholars/fellows as stuck in career limbo. We have finished our PhD's, but have not yet secured a permanent position. Some of us don't yet know what we want to be, or what sort of jobs are even feasible. The expectations of a postdoc may vary dramatically by subject, institution and funding situation. The things that are consistent are that postdocs are typically funded on short term contracts (even if those contracts get renewed regularly in some fields) and t...