International Women's Day - Spotlight on Dr. Helen Shaw - Mud and microscopes.

It is International Women’s Day, time to celebrate our achievements and consider the past and the future. A lot has changed since I was at school, careers advice was very divided into male and female roles. Science was not always encouraged for women. I learned science later in life. 

I always had an interest in plants, but it was only when I started an Open University degree, after several years of work in museums and arts, that I realised my fascination for science and how nature works. My Open University experience shifted my focus from arts to science. This fascination developed in a second degree in Biology at Southampton University. After time working in science administration for international science programmes, I undertook a PhD studying palaeoecology in the stunning environment of Glen Affric in Highland Scotland where ancient pine woods still survive and thrive in part of the Glen. This is where I started to specialise in my research area. My interests spanned geology, environment and ecology, so it was a natural progression to focus on palaeoecology.

Palaeoecology is the study of ecology through time. Most of the time use pollen from peat accumulations or lake sediments to infer what vegetation was there in the past. We can take cores from peat bogs, and ponds and all sorts of muddy little basins and look to see what pollen grains are in each layer. Because the layers of sediment or peat in a basin are laid down through time, each layer down core is a little older than the layer above. We can ‘see’ environmental change through time by examining the types of pollen trapped in samples from a sequence of depths in the peat core. 

I have spent many happy hours in muddy hollows collecting data on plant presence and peat cores for analysis. And many more contented hours staring down a microscope and counting the pollen grains that I find in each sample. It is a painstaking task, but very rewarding. Pollen grains come in all sorts of shapes from teddy bears ears (pine) to golf balls (grass), with some that have surface structures that look like giraffe skin (ash), and some that look like brains (elm): each is a new discovery. Counting the pollen is like a forensic investigation of the past, each new grain a new clue to the presence of a long-forgotten plant. 

My work helped to discover that some places in Glen Affric, where we thought there were lost and degenerating pinewoods, these were actually a more recent expansion; and I was able to provide evidence that the pine woods had much more diversity, with pine sharing space with other broadleaved tree species. 

The work in Glen Affric was highly applied to ideas of rewilding and reforestation. These are two other topics that really fascinate me. Ecological restoration is essential in a world where so much change has been wrought by humans, but we need to make space for restoration and rewilding to be dynamic. Ecology is always in a state of change and ecological balance might be a bit of an illusion. 

As a palaeoecologist I can provide evidence about past change over thousands of years in the life of a forest, and therefore I can help us to understand our ecological options for the future. We can also look at more recent change, to see how, for example, agriculture has changed ecology—we know surprisingly little about ecological change over the last few hundred years. I have investigated ecological change in cultural upland landscapes as well as woodlands. To do this work it is important to cross disciplines into agricultural history, and mapping, and archaeology… this just makes the subject even more fascinating!

Currently I am reexploring some of my old Glen Affric samples to investigate the other microscopic remains such as fungal spores found in the samples—spores from fungi that live on animal dung can help us infer past grazing for example. I am also working on some histories of vegetation change in the Irish midlands. These studies have involved the help of some wonderful students in the MU SPUR scheme. After years of perseverance in my subject area, a range of new conservation objectives, including the newly adopted EU Nature Restoration Law and EU Forest Strategy and guidelines for conservation of Old Growth Forest have led to an exciting new collaborative project which I am just about to start with several colleagues. Ancient Woodland Ireland, funded by Department for Agriculture Forestry and the Marine and National Parks and Wildlife Service, will map fragments of ancient woodland across the island of Ireland and will use palaeoecology alongside the mapping to explore the history of the most important woodland fragments in more detail. I am excited to be back in the woods doing palaeoecology!

Of course, supporting the learning of others is also an important part of my job. I love sharing my subject area through teaching. I am a great proponent of the joy of fieldwork, and of practical learning. The outdoors is a great learning environment and I hope to take students to the woods and involve them in the ancient woodlands work in future years. As a female geographer there are sometimes additional challenges to fieldwork, but getting muddy in a peat bog, or examining plants in a pasture, are some of life’s joys, and nothing should put us off! 

This year's IWD highlights the “crucial role of inclusion in achieving gender equality. It calls for action to break down barriers, challenge stereotypes, and create environments where all women are valued and respected”. Reflecting on my experiences as a woman in STEM, what would I tell my younger self? Don’t underestimate yourself, be determined, continue to support others and enjoy the wonderful friendships created by common interests. We should also be brave, call out poor behaviour. And what would I tell a few colleagues I have met along the way--don’t underestimate us, and don’t sideline us into the work that you do not want to do! Many women advocate that we must learn to say “No”, but in doing so we must recognise that someone else will get that work and it might well be another woman, or other undervalued person. I hope we can strive better for a fair, kind and collaborative academia full of fascinating research, great students, and opportunity for all who want it.