A warm welcome to Sonia Papadaki, who starts her PhD in the Bradley lab exploring Arctic endoliths. Sonia is a London NERC DTP student, with interests in microbe-rock interactions and the potential biosignatures that microbes may leave behind in rocks. She will be carrying out molecular and mineralogical analyses on endolithic gypsum samples from Svalbard, and is co-supervised by Ozge Eyice (QMUL), Anne Jungblut (Natural History Museum) and Dominic  Papineau (UCL).

Antarcticness, edited by Ilan Kelman, and published by UCL Press, is an open access book combining original research, art and interpretations of different experiences and explorations of Antarctica. James contributed a photo essay entitled 'Voyage into Antarcticness'. You can download the book for free here.

James is Co-Principal Investigator on a recently funded NERC project: Cryo365: Are There Perennial and Light-Independent Microbial Processes on Supraglacial Ecosystems? The project will investigate whether microbial activity on Arctic glaciers persists year-round - specifically whether light-independent microbial activity on Arctic glaciers sustains perennial ecosystems which release climate-warming gases. The project is led by Arwyn Edwards at Aberystwyth University, and also involves Co-Is Neil Glasser, Andrew Mitchell, and ​Luis Mur, and involves year-round fieldwork in Svalbard. The award is for ​£768,329.