Dr Hazel Beaumont

I am a Senior Lecturer in Geology/Geoscience at UWE Bristol. My current research focuses on microplastics and understanding how they travel through and where they are stored within fluvial systems. To understand this work I have undertaken experimental flume tests and I am in the process of collecting field data to further this understanding and to determine if the experimental data matches the field data. Before this my research focused on a Cretaceous fluvial system in Rajasthan and understanding how the climate and active tectonic influenced the fluvial channel style and implications for diagenesis.

Funding:

For my research, I have received the following funding:

1. Vice Chancellors Early Career Researcher, University of the West of England; Summer 2021 for a project called: Where and how are the microplastic stored locations in fluvial systems? I received £14,947.
2. Early Career Researcher, International Association of Sedimentology; Summer 2021 for a project titled: Do microplastics affect bedform migration in rivers? I received €2429.
3. Daniel Pigeon Fund, Geological Society of London; Summer 2020. For a project titled: Provenance of Lower Cretaceous Sandstones within the West Indian Rift System of India and the Lower and Middle Indus basins of Pakistan. I received £1280.

Teaching:

At UWE I teach geological processes and landforms including geological time to geographers and environmental scientists to understand the past, tectonics and hazards. As well as this I help students to understand extraction for resources and environmental assessments. I love fieldwork and therefore help students learn by taking them into the field on most modules I teach on.

I'm a coordinator for Geoscience for the Future: https://geoscienceforthefuture.com/ which I am very passionate about. At Geoscience for the Future, our goal is to change the record and show how Geoscience gives us tools to tackle the biggest challenges facing our world – from fighting the climate crisis, to managing resources, to protecting communities from hazards. I was the secretary for the British Sedimentological Research Group (BSRG) from December 2018 until December 2021.

Before UWE:

Before taking up my post here I was a teaching fellow at the University of Birmingham where I undertook teaching across all UG levels and across multiple geography and geology programmes. While undertaking this post I was completing my Ph.D. in sedimentary geology at Keele University. I also hold an MSc in Structural Geology and Geophysics and a BSc in Geology with Geography.