Dr Tamarah King

Dr Tamarah King is a postdoctoral researcher (postdoc) within the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford. As a postdoc she conducts independent and collaborative research on her topics of expertise, namely earthquakes and active faulting in intraplate regions (away from tectonic plate boundaries). Tamarah is part of the Earthquakes and Active Tectonics research group, working as part of the Centre for Observation and Modelling of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tectonics (COMET) to investigate active faults through Central Asia using a combination of field-based, seismological, and remote-sensing techniques.

Tamarah’s day to day job involves: conducting her own research by collecting, analysing and interpreting satellite data, drone data, field observations and published data/literature; keeping up to date with other peoples’ research by reading papers, scrolling Twitter, and attending seminars/webinars/conferences; chatting and debating ideas with colleagues, students and friends; mentoring undergraduate and postgraduate students; teaching practicals and field trips for undergrad courses; writing papers, online articles and lectures to distribute her research to the wider academic community.

What are the best parts about your job?
What are the hardest parts?

I fundamentally love learning new things and sharing that knowledge with anybody who’ll listen! This includes teaching lectures, practicals, and field trips, but also publishing papers, attending conferences, news media, social media, festivals, pubs, and any other place that I can talk to people.

Research can often feel like the most tedious and difficult mountain to climb. There are long patches of complicated (or boring) data to process, difficult papers to read or write, frustrating dead ends and failed experiments, and lots of rejection (grant applications, journal articles, job applications, etc). Sometimes the top of a mountain is breathtaking and worth the climb, but sometimes it’s cloudy, rainy, and you just want to go home.

What are the positives and negatives of your career?

There are few careers where you’re paid to explore curiosities and have broad and wide-ranging discussions with researchers and students from around the world. Academia can provide time for those diversions, tangents, conversations, and debates as they lead to the most exciting and interesting scientific advances. There’s nothing like the thrill of following an idea and uncovering a new piece of knowledge! Additionally, it’s wonderful to share this knowledge with students and in turn be challenged with new ideas and ways of thinking.

However, an unfortunate fact of academia is that there are limited jobs and finding funding for research is increasingly difficult and competitive. At its best research is a collaborative endeavour with space to identify and explore new ideas. But at its worst, researchers are forced to finish research quickly and compete with colleagues to find and retain employment and funding. Academia has been a historically exclusionary space, which continues to exacerbate these other difficulties. Movements to improve these aspects of academia are gaining momentum and creating change, but it can still be a difficult system to work within.

How well did your degree prepare you for your career path?

My geology degree taught me how to observe and interpret information across a huge range of spatial and temporal scales. This means I can observe tiny details of rocks, vegetation, landscape, etc., and apply those observations to continental scale processes across hundreds to billions of years.

Being able to think through problems across such huge differences in scale is useful in all aspects of life, but particularly when tackling complicated topics like earthquake hazards which involve not only science but policy, engineering, politics and people.

What are the major challenges in your field?

My research focusses on intraplate earthquakes, which occur away from tectonic plate boundaries (e.g. earthquakes in Australia). Intraplate earthquakes aren’t well explained by plate tectonic theory, we don’t really know why they happen, let alone when or where they might happen.

Those are my main research questions, but adjacent to those are large questions about the mathematics and physics of how to model earthquake hazard, and the engineering, social, economic, and political questions of how to educate and protect communities and infrastructure from earthquake hazards.

What does your career progression look like from here?

The traditional academic career path (which not every academic follows!) goes PhD -> postdoc -> lecturer/associate professor -> full professor. However, there are a lot of PhD graduates, not many postdoc positions, and even fewer faculty positions. So depending on my research, funding, job openings, and a dash of luck I might progress up the academic ladder, or I may transition out of academia into a research-driven job in consulting, government, education or a range of industries. While I hope to enjoy a career in academic research and teaching, I think it’s best to keep all your options open!

What advice would you give to students in your study area trying to decide on a career path?

Try to identify what part of earth sciences most interests you. That may be a particular topic (e.g. sedimentology, climate systems, etc) or you might be excited about something more abstract like instrumentation, learning, travel, organising, hiking, communication, etc. Those interests and skills can lead to a far broader range of careers than you may be aware of initially.

I also recommend talking to as many people as possible about what paths they’ve taken, including people at career fairs, department events, and in class. Don’t be afraid to ask people what paths their peers also took; this could provide a broader picture of earth sciences careers than just those industries at career fairs or academic departments.

Anything else you’d like people to know about your job?

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who want to work in academia and not enough jobs for them all. But if you’re interested in a career in research and/or teaching, there are all sorts of industries and careers that require those skills! So, if you’re following an academic career path, be aware of all the skills you pick up along the way, and don’t be scared to think outside the box when it comes to career decisions.

Connect with Tamarah

Twitter

Tamarah’s website