It’s been a funny old month. With only a few weeks left at Teesside before I leave and start my exciting new job at Maynooth University, it quickly became time to start thinking about how I was going to shift my research over to Ireland. The thing about being in one place for so long, is that you amass quite a lot of stuff.
But it’s not just me who is leaving. Dr Rhys Williams, another bony person, is also moving on. His journey is much bigger though, as he’s heading over to Loyola University Maryland in the US for a new position there. I’m delighted for him, as it’s such an exciting opportunity for me to visit the US him. So this meant that we both needed to sift through our lab supplies and we headed up to the lab together.
Our lab, the mighty L-shaped M8.03, has seen a lot of science action over the past 10 years or so. When I joined Teesside, I was basically the first and only anthropologist they’d had, and so as excited as I am sure they were to finally have one on the books, it’s fair to say that they didn’t really know what to do with me. Or how to respond when I kept going on about bones and dead bodies. Unsurprisingly given my tendency to talk about decomposition, I was largely left to my own devices, and since this was my first academic position where I was spreading my wings, I got started to establish a research theme here.
Eventually, as our research group and our outputs grew, we were able to make a pitch for some proper dedicated space. Thankfully there was a lab that was too small, too weirdly shaped, too sticky, and too annoying to be used for teaching. Music to my ears. And so in we went. It was my first proper lab and I loved it. One of the things about moving more significantly into senior leadership is that you have to take a step back from lab work – my job means shifting from developing my own research lines to supporting others to develop their own. I miss the work, but I do love learning about so many other areas of research that our talented team are doing. I’m increasingly interested in why other people find things interesting. So when Rhys and I popped back to pack up, the memories of the fun we had setting it up in the first place came back. So much of our burned bone research, especially the crystallinity stuff, was done here. As was our foray into 3D scanning. It’s a well-used and widely adopted approach now, but back when we were doing it, there were barely any standards and no-one really knew what they were doing.
So we packed things up, emptied draws, chucked away an inordinate amount of soil, and had numerous “Huh – I forgot about this” moments. I’m just grateful that the freezer that had failed earlier had already been cleared out and removed. That’s one time I was happy not to be in the lab anymore.
I’m also really proud that so many amazing researchers did their early work here, in between trying to remember the code to get in and managing the temperamental blinds (we eventually just took them down – which seems straightforward until you remember that we’re eight floors high). They’re off now doing their own amazing things (the people, not the blinds), at other universities or NGOs.
Our view has always been that research should make an impact in the field. So it’s a good reminder that when we read academic papers and are getting our heads around the latest data in our field, we can often imagine it being done in some super-shiny lab in some all-glass building. Not at all. Part of being a good academic is making the best of what you have. I’m a big believer in the notion that necessity is the mother of invention. I also grew up in the 80s, with Ghostbusters, Back to the Future (10 points if you realised the title of this post came from that film) and The Goonies as some of my favourite films, and so I think this is why I have a soft-spot for slightly ramshackle science labs.
Anyway, the bony folk who follow us at Teesside at least have a shiny new space in the glorious BIOS building. It’s a more sensible shape and has lighting that isn’t just ‘off’ or ‘blazing solar inferno’. It even has it’s own fume cupboard – vital for any taphonomy-based work. But doubly-so here given our history of cheese imports (a story for another time…).