Thread by @MinoritySTEM

Ok! So I mentioned yesterday that I am not only a volcanologist, but an interdisciplinary one combining the social sciences. Part of ending up on this path was owed to my university studies, my family and also questioning the disasters that happen in the world (1/n)

I am interested in how people live in a hazardous environment (flooding, hurricanes, wildfires etc) but more specifically in a volcanically active environment. So, as a physical scientist I must understand the hazard. As a social scientist, I must understand the people...(2/n)

...I study both because I was taught both. I always carry the saying from a lecturer “it is not a hazard without the people”, because it’s so true. Certainly with volcanoes, sure we need to study them but also what about the people that have to live with them everyday?

In terms of physical volcanology, I research the volcanic hazards a volcano produces, which can be quite diverse. This includes ash fall, lahars (volcanic mudflows), lava flows, volcanic gases and pyroclastic density currents (hot ash flows). This is because, all impact people!

I’m no good at chemistry, maths or physics which is common to use in physical volcanology, so this is where the lines between physical and social blur when understanding the hazards. I take in knowing how the hazards interact with the environment (e.g. topography & climate)...

...and then apply them to how they have impacted the built environment (buildings, infrastructure), but also how they damage/disrupt the society in obvious and not so obvious ways. An obvious way is people losing their farmland. How this impacts trade, is not so obvious sometimes

The social bit investigates how the society functions as a sum of its parts. I like to look at the household/community/national level where I can! Here, I focus on the risks, vulnerabilities and resilience of the people when an eruption impacts everyday life, and how they recover

With these two approaches, I bring them together to highlight how complicated our relationship with volcanoes are. Each volcano is different, and each society living around them is different too! So, my research is interested in understanding culture and volcanoes.

For my PhD, I’ve done this for the Caribbean society of St. Vincent and the Grenadines when it was British colony (was first colonised by the French), because that’s when the volcano La Soufriére has erupted in the 3 eruptions I researched, it was during colonialism.

So yes, for the two earlier eruptions I investigated (1812 and 1902-1903), it was racist as heck. 1812 was during slavery, and slaves were pretty much left behind to fend for themselves. Imagine being violently removed from your country and then experiencing an eruption?

There were a handful of large plantation estates in the vicinity of La Soufriere because of the fertile soil, and unfortunately this was where most of deaths of slaves occurred. The count may be higher, but it was not recorded in the documents I looked at.

Anyway, the PhD made me align my research interests more to do with (post)colonialism, racism/sexism/other forms of discrimination in the context of disasters. This also meant political things such as social/environmental (in)justices.

Another inspiration of the PhD in branching out my research interests ended up me spending 5 months in Denmark, researching with an archaeologist! The archaeologist is interested in cultural heritage, and was wondering how my perspective as a historical and social volcanologist..

So, I had a lot of reading to do on top of finishing up the PhD! I read up on cultural heritage, geoheritage and also dark heritage. Dark heritage is an offshoot of cultural heritage, looking at how communities and particularly sites, deal with sites of human trauma.

Dark heritage is interesting. It covers anything to do any physical space left behind arising from human suffering in whatever its form. Slavery falls under this too. If these areas are exploited for tourism, they are called “dark sites” and it’s called “dark tourism”...

But visiting these dark sites, doesn’t necessarily mean you are a dark tourist! But, disaster sites created by natural hazard impacts most certainly fall under this. Research has already been done on Pompeii, Herculaneum and other sites destroyed by the 79 AD eruption of Vesuvius

We looked at bridging the gap between geoheritage and cultural heritage by using the notion of dark heritage. We did a citation analysis and then provided suggestions for La Soufriére, St. Vincent, Soufriére Hills, Montserrat, Vesuvius, Italy and the Laacher See, Germany. 🌋

For La Soufrière (the same volcano I’ve studied for my masters and PhD), we focused on the geotourism as the geoheritage, the indigenous culture as cultural heritage, and LS having killed people and slavery as the dark heritage (photo from when I visited in 2016)

Anyway, don’t want to dragged on but for Soufrière Hills we again focused on slavery, how the island is the “modern day Pompeii” and how the land is slowly being reclaimed. For Vesuvius, it was the inspiration for the arts and for the last caldera forming eruption in Europe...

...the Laacher See in Germany, we focused on my co-author’s research into how the eruption disrupted Hunter-Gatherer social networks and a “what if” scenario in order to help us learn from it. And I shall end there today!