TIMELY Project Outcomes

Linda’s journey challenges the idea that environmental science only happens through visible research roles. She began as a researcher, completed a PhD in virology and antibody-based research, and spent many years working across fixed-term research contracts. But over time, the uncertainty became exhausting. As her children grew older, she wanted stability, boundaries, and a role that allowed her to switch off at the end of the day.

Leaving research was a major crossroads. “I really didn’t know what I could do,” she recalls. Through conversations with others, she began to see technical support as a meaningful route rather than a fall back. Moving into a senior support technician role meant taking a salary drop, but it also allowed her to use her research expertise in a different way: supporting researchers, looking after labs, teaching inductions, solving problems, and keeping scientific work running.

Her next pivot was into teaching lab management. The role was not easy. The team was under pressure, morale was low, and there were operational challenges. Linda applied anyway: “Opportunity is really hard to come by. I’ll just try for it.” Within a year, she had rebuilt the team, supported students, won awards, and gained public recognition. “I felt like I found my flow,” she says.

Linda’s story foregrounds invisible labour. As a teaching lab manager, she oversees the systems, people, safety, consumables, equipment, waste management, and sustainability practices that make laboratory teaching possible. She had not initially seen herself as part of environmental science. Being nominated as a role model made her rethink that: environmental work also includes the people who create safe, efficient, sustainable spaces for others to learn and experiment.

Her identity as a Chinese woman and ethnic minority staff member also shapes how she leads. Having experienced under-recognition, she is attentive to others who work hard behind the scenes.

Her message is that there are many ways in. “You don’t have to be just in the research lab to be involved with environmental science,” she says. Technical, teaching, and support roles are not peripheral. They are the roots that allow others to grow.

Cher entered environmental work through what she calls a “side door.” Her current role is as an administrator supporting Warwick’s Spotlight programme, particularly the Sustainability and Behaviour strand. She did not begin with a background in environmental science; her academic training was in museum studies and art history. Yet through professional services work in higher education, she found herself supporting interdisciplinary sustainability research and gradually seeing how broad the environmental field could be.

Her route has involved several major transitions. One pivotal decision was withdrawing from her PhD programme. Another was stepping away from her original academic background while choosing to remain within higher education. Rather than seeing this as failure, Cher frames it as a career transition: a movement into a different kind of contribution. She notes that PhD training gave her project management skills, a sense of the “big picture” of research, and insight into how academic projects work — all of which now shape how she supports others.

Cher’s story also challenges assumptions about what counts as environmental work. She does not see professional services as secondary to academic research. In fact, she argues that modern research cannot happen without it: “Without professional service, research projects cannot be delivered.” Her work involves coordination, communication, information-sharing, and keeping people connected across disciplinary boundaries.

Belonging, for Cher, depends strongly on whether academic teams recognise the value of professional services. In the sustainability work she supports, she feels included because colleagues copy her into early planning conversations, allowing her to understand the project rather than only receiving tasks after decisions have been made. Thismatters:being “kept in the loop” helps her feel part of the community.

Her message to others is grounded in self-trust. “Don’t limit yourself,” she says. “Trust your feelings.” If something no longer works, it is legitimate to move. For students and early-career professionals, Cher’s journey shows that environmental work is not only done by scientists in labs or academics in departments. It is also made possible by people who connect systems, support collaboration, and help interdisciplinary ideas become real.

Connor’s environmental journey began with childhood visits to the Oxford Natural History Museum and the zoo. But his career did not unfold in a straight line. It has zigzagged between ecology, education, consultancy, research, botanic gardens, freelance work, creative practice, and queer ecology.

A pivotal moment came during his undergraduate degree in zoology, when he volunteered at a natural history museum. On his first day, he was given a drawer of pinned stag beetles and asked to digitise their labels. Looking closely at insects — without fear, without them flying at him, noticing their detail and beauty — changed how he saw them. “I was just completely hooked on insects since that moment,” he says.

After university, Connor moved to Singapore and Malaysia to work in environmental education, taking students into rainforests and coral reefs. He later shifted into ecological consultancy, then reached out to a UK professor whose research interested him. That cold email led to lunch, encouragement, and eventually a PhD opportunity. Yet COVID disrupted the project. With fieldwork in Malaysia impossible, Connor withdrew from the PhD.

He does not frame this as failure. Instead, it became another pivot. He returned to education through the Royal Parks’ Mission Invertebrate project, then worked at Chelsea Physic Garden before becoming freelance. Today, his work brings together insect surveys, education, volunteering, art, graphic design, and community engagement. “If I hadn’t done that big zigzag,” he reflects, he would not have had the combination of experiences he now uses.

Connor’s identity also shapes his science. As a queer ecologist, he challenges the idea that nature is simple, fixed, or heteronormative. Through queer nature walks and queer ecology work, he creates spaces where people can see both science and themselves differently.

His advice is direct: “Follow your interest and don’t be afraid to zigzag.” For Connor, detours build unusual and valuable skills. His story shows that belonging is not always something you find ready-made. Sometimes you build it yourself — with insects, community, creativity, and courage.

Molly describes her environmental journey as a “wiggly path”. She did not grow up imagining herself as an environmental scientist. At first, she thought she might become a medical doctor, then became interested in forensic science. Environmental research entered quietly, almost in the background: summer projects, undergraduate modules, and finally a master’s project on microplastics in the environment.
 

A key turning point came when Molly applied for twovery differentmaster’s projects: one in London on human molecular biology and forensic science, and another in Dublin on microplastics. She “left it to chance” — and the Dublin project changed everything. Working in the Water Institute, surrounded by researchers who cared deeply about protecting the environment, helped her realise that environmental science suited her. “If I’d got offered the other project,” she reflected, “I probably wouldn’t have ever ended up in environmental research at all.”

Her PhD then allowed her to bring together what might look like separate worlds: molecular biology, forensic precision, fieldwork, and environmental monitoring. Rather than seeing her non-linear route as a disadvantage, Molly sees it as the foundation of her contribution. Her background in forensic and human molecular techniques gave her a distinctive way to approach environmental questions.
 

Belonging has not always been straightforward. As a young woman entering male-dominated fisheries spaces, she sometimes wondered, “maybe I can’t do this.” But supportive mentors, female role models, and moments of recognition helped rebuild that confidence. Motherhood has also reshaped how she navigates work, making her more protective of time and clearer about boundaries.
 

Molly’s message is simple and generous: environmental science needs many routes in. “You can do it,” she says. “There are options out there to get into this field through multiple different avenues.” Her story reminds us that career identity is not always found at the beginning. Sometimes it is discovered through chance, curiosity, and the courage to follow what keeps returning.

Sarah began as a chemist, not an environmental scientist. She chose chemistry because she enjoyed science, and chose Swansea because she wanted to live by the ocean. That decision — part academic, part instinctive — became the first step in a career that would move through marine algae, deep-sea vents, NASA astrobiology, national facilities, and technical leadership.

Her environmental journey truly began during a year abroad in Australia, where she worked on marine algae: diving, collecting samples, and using chemistry to understand the ocean. Later, at the National Oceanography Centre, she was encouraged not to do a master’s but to go straight into a PhD. Her chemical expertise, she was told, was valuable; the marine science could be learnt. That encouragement opened a pathway into deep-sea hydrothermal vent research.

Sarah’s career contains extraordinary moments: research cruises, remote vehicles, deep-sea sampling, and even going down in the Alvin submarine. Yet her story is not only about adventure. It is also about choices, risk, and recognising where she could thrive. Leaving a NASA postdoctoral route for a more stable UK position was pivotal. Later, she gave up a permanent role at the British Geological Survey for a fixed-term opportunity at Warwick to build a new research facility from scratch.

Over time, Sarah’s identity shifted from researcher to technical leader. She now supports others’ science through infrastructure, specialist technologies, robotics, and a team of technical specialists. This has also meant challenging assumptions about what counts as a research career. She found in the technician community an openness and generosity she had not always experienced in academic conference cultures: “No question seems to be a stupid question.”

For Sarah, technology has always enabled science — from submarines and synchrotrons to liquid-handling robots. Her remembered poster, “not all chemists wear white coats,” captures her journey perfectly. Science can happen underwater, in facilities, through robotics, and through the people who make research possible. Her message to others is that environmental careers are often made by taking opportunities seriously when they appear: “We were presented with opportunities and we jumped on those opportunities.”

Hita’s environmental journey began not in a formal environmental science programme, but through questions of poverty, inequality, urban life, and care. As an undergraduate in India, she joined an environmental outreach programme where students created materials for schools. Later, in an intercollegiate competition, she and her peers researched waste management in Bangalore, speaking to people in colleges and shopping malls about where their waste went. That early project helped her realise that she was good at “asking a question and telling a story out of it.”

Her relationship with the environment is also deeply rooted in lived experience. Hita speaks powerfully about growing up in poverty, watching her mother forage for fuel and edible plants in the city to keep the family fed. These experiences shaped her understanding that environmental questions are never only about ecology; they are also about class, gender, justice, and survival. “Even if you live in a city, you are unequal,” she reflects.

Her career has unfolded through what she calls “serendipity,” care, and mentorship rather than careful strategy. After studying chemistry, botany, zoology, and life sciences, she resisted being boxed into a single discipline. A job with an NGO on climate vulnerability in informal settlements brought her into environmental research professionally. A mentor then encouraged her into an interdisciplinary PhD, calling on the deadline day to push her to apply. Hita submitted the application at “4.59 p.m.” for a 5 p.m. deadline.

During her PhD, another apparently small moment changed everything. When she mentioned that, if not biology, she would have studied history, her supervisor replied: “You like history? I like history too. Let’shave history in your thesis.” That invitation reshaped her work toward environmental history, urban commons, and justice.

Hita’s story is one of refusing narrow academic boxes while building generous communities. She wants to practise science “without the I and the ego in it,” grounded in care, compassion, and solidarity. Her message to others is beautifully clear: “There is no pressure to fit in. You can be completely yourself and still find a home here.”

Carla’s environmental journey began with childhood curiosity: being outdoors, collecting fossils, noticing animals, insects, landscapes, and deep time. But her path into environmental policy and interdisciplinary research was never inevitable. She was the first in her immediate family to go to university, entering a space without inherited maps or reference points. Going to university itself was a pivotal decision.

She chose Natural Sciences, combining biology, archaeology, and earth sciences, because interdisciplinarity already made sense to her. Later, she completed a master’s in engineering geology and expected to work in environmental consultancy, especially on contaminated land and remediation. Instead, a research project she enjoyed became the basis of a NERC-funded PhD. That unexpected turn pulled her into academia.

Her route continued to shift. After her PhD, rather than staying close to geochemistry or engineering geology, Carla moved into public policy, science advice, and environmental decision-making. This felt like “a million miles away” from her doctoral training, yet it allowed her to explore how environmental knowledge travels into planning, policy, and practice.

Carla’s story foregrounds the labour of interdisciplinarity. Working across fields can be intellectually rich, but it is also demanding: harder to fund, harder to publish, and harder to explain. She notes that interdisciplinary researchers are sometimes expected to be experts in every field they touch, as if they could be “500% of a person.” Yet this in-between position also enables her to bring people together, listen carefully, and frame problems expansively.

Her sense of belonging has grown through networks: ecosystem services communities, intergovernmental platforms, colleagues, collaborators, and professional services staff who make research possible. She also reflects on mobility — moving almost every year from age 18 to 35 — as part of the hidden cost of building an academic career.

Her message is not to force people into environmental work, but to help them recognise its relevance. “You’re probably already working in an environmental field,” she says. There is no business, economy, or society without environment. Whatever pathway you choose, environmental awareness matters.

Jessica’s environmental journey has taken her from London suburbs to coral reefs, scuba boats, Cambodia, Panama, Madagascar, and eventually Warwick. Trained as a tropical coral reef ecologist, she now works as Associate Professor of Global Sustainable Development in the landlocked Midlands — a shift she finds both amusing and meaningful.

Her path has been full of movement, risk, and reinvention. After an undergraduate degree in marine biology and coastal ecology, Jessica trained as a scuba instructor and took a difficult job in the Middle East. Returning home unhappy, she faced a safe option: an administrative job in hospital records. On the same day, an opportunity arrived to work with a marine conservation organisation in Cambodia. She refused the safer route: “I’m going to get back on the horse.” Two weeks later, she was on a plane to Cambodia.

That decision started a chain reaction. Eco-tourism, conservation, PhD research, field teaching, and a teaching role in Panama all followed. Another major pivot came when she chose to “hang up my snorkel” and seek a more grounded career in the UK. At Warwick, she moved into interdisciplinary sustainability education, where she often had to advocate not only for herself, but for environmental science as a discipline.

Jessica’s story also shows how field-based teaching shaped her as an educator. Living on boats with students, sharing cramped spaces, managing conflict, and building rapport taught her how to teach through relationships. She now sees environmental work as deeply people-centred. Environmental policy, she argues, is not simply about “the environment”; it is about how people interact with it.

She also challenges romanticised images of environmental careers. Yes, there may be beaches, reefs, and sunshine — but there is also instability, loneliness, risk, and hard work. Still, she insists that learning outside matters. “I fundamentally believe that the classroom is not always the best place to learn.”

Her objects include an underwater photograph from Cambodia, baobab trees from Madagascar, and her scuba mask. Together they capture a journey of movement, courage, and learning by doing.

Kirsty’s journey begins with two long-standing loves: mathematics and nature. As a child, she enjoyed being outdoors, but she was also the child who chose times tables over colouring. Mathematics felt natural, yet the career options she first encountered— finance, tax, teaching — did not excite her. The question was not whether she loved mathematics, but where that love could meaningfully belong.

A turning point came during her undergraduate degree, when she attended a seminar on mathematical modelling of environmental and agricultural problems, including bovine tuberculosis and foot-and-mouth disease. Suddenly, mathematics could help make sense of ecological crises and public problems. She later read about mathematical ecologists studying migratory seabirds and realised that there were jobs connecting mathematical thinking with environmental science.

Her PhD was a more difficult stage. It gave her research legitimacy, but also brought imposter syndrome and discomfort with what she describes as “competitive isolation” in academia. A later role as a professional statistician in an agricultural research institute changed her understanding of research. There, she experienced collaboration as a common goal rather than competition. It helped her rebuild confidence and see that “this is not what research is like; this is what your own first experience of it is like.”

Kirsty’s career has been about finding fit: first finding environmental applications for mathematics, then finding research cultures that matched her collaborative values, and now trying to bring both together at Warwick. She describes herself as a “yes person” with a can-do approach, willing to learn new methods and work across unfamiliar problems.

Her path has also been shaped by family, maternity leave, mobility constraints, and the realities of a dual-career household. She is honest that academic expectations of moving for progression do not always fit people’s lives.

For the exhibition, Kirsty’s objects include a nautilus shell, where mathematical form appears in nature; seabird cliffs, representing joy in the natural world; childhood times tables; and perhaps a graduation cap, despite her mixed feelings about academia.

Her message is generous and expansive: think about what you enjoy doing, because “there is a home for all skills and all practices within the environmental sciences.”