Friday Earth Sciences Talks (FEST)

The Earth Sciences study countless aspects of ‘System Earth’ and, as such, form a multidisciplinary field of their own. Earth scientists often have specialist backgrounds, e.g., in biology, chemistry, hydrology, physics, material sciences, or computational sciences. There are many occasions where these specialists meet each other, varying from international conferences to local (group) seminars. But while the Earth connects everybody, people from different disciplinary backgrounds may sometimes get lost in the specialistic details of other disciplines. To tackle this 'communication problem', we introduced the Friday Earth Sciences Talks, or FEST.

With the FEST, we intend to bring the departments of Earth Sciences and Physical Geography together. The aim is to present (mostly) Utrecht-based Earth Sciences in an accessible way, primarily in order to stay familiar with each other’s work across disciplines. Simultaneously, this provides an excellent platform to help (in particular MSc.) students in their orientation on possible graduation specialisations and future careers. In general, the FEST is bi-weekly and takes place in the Koningsberger building. The student-staff after-social is usually in, or in front of, the Vening Meinesz A building and organised with help of our student society U.A.V.

The preliminary schedule for 2026/2027 is as follows, but may be subject to change.

DateSpeakerRoomAfter-social
September 11Andrew Roberts (ANU)KBG PangeaVMA Lava
September 25Liviu Matenco & Jan-Diederik van WeesKBG PangeaVMA Lava
October 16Charlotte SummersKBG PangeaVMA Lava
October 30Hans de BresserKBG CosmosVMA Lava
November 27Eric HellebrandKBG CosmosVMA Lava
January 22Joris EggenhuisenKBG CosmosVMA Lava
February 12  VMA Lava
March 12  VMA Lava
April 16Johan van Leeuwen VMA Lava
June 25  VMA Lava

Titles and abstracts are published one to two weeks in advance on the Events calendars of both departments: Earth Sciences and Physical Geography, as well as on Facebook. The organising FEST-committee can be contacted via fest.aw@uu.nl. Also if you'ld like to join the committee or just provide an idea for a speaker.

The committee especially welcomes one or more new members from Physical Geography!

 

FEST-committee