Cornish Geothermal: Talking about United Downs research at EGU

Every year, Vienna in Austria hosts the second biggest meeting of geologists and geoscientists in the world, called the European Geoscience Union (or EGU) General Assembly. During the week of the 7th to 12th of April 2019, the meeting was a melting pot of over 16,000 scientists and researchers from 113 countries across Europe and the world and two of our researchers were lucky enough to go. Dr Hazel Gibson and Francesca Tirotto both presented some initial results at the meeting and to give you an idea of what they look like Hazel’s poster is available to view as a PDF online, or by clicking the image below.

Dr Hazel Gibson’s poster was presented at EGU

Because the conference includes people who work in a huge range of subjects, it is a really efficient way for our researchers to present the early stages of their work to others in a safe and supportive environment. By doing this, our researchers can discuss the initial findings and critique the methods they are using, to make sure that they aren’t making any errors or any assumptions that might reduce the accuracy of our study. The work presented by our researchers at the conference in Vienna included ongoing studies on how people use certain language associated with induced seismicity, how people associate certain words with other words, like ‘earthquake’, how using narrative and film we can share perspectives on geothermal power in Cornwall and how people’s attitudes towards geothermal power interact with issues of social acceptance.

Alongside the discussion of the data, our researchers also went to meetings about supporting geologists to become better communicators, got involved with the EGU committees and editorial boards of papers, ran a scavenger hunt for early careers researchers to help them learn more about working with the media and gave some short courses. But it was not all work, valuable networking often happens at conferences like this one, and some of the best of that happened during the Wednesday night board games evening and the poetry slam on the Friday night. We even got in a cheeky trip to the Vienna Natural History Museum and spotted some rocks from Cornwall!

During the week our researchers heard a lot of new science, presented some of our own and learned how to make our work on the United Downs Deep Geothermal Project even better. It was an intense week, but one that was absolutely worth it for all who got to attend.

For more information on the conference, check out our twitter posts, search #EGU19 on Twitter, or you can read the following conference abstracts online:


The United Downs Deep Geothermal Power Project is a partnership of organisations exploring if geothermal power is a viable energy resource for the UK. It is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund and Cornwall Council.

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