News

Meet the ExSoc Committee 2022

The President

Magda is the President of the ExSoc committee, 2022. She is a fifth year student who’s just returned from a placement at RZSS WildGenes.

Favourite animal:

Leaf Nosed Bat | Bat photos, Bat species, Bat
A leaf-nosed bat, similar to those Magda worked with on the Tobago expedition.

This is her fourth year being involved with the society, after being the leader of the 2020-21 Trinidad expedition, and a member of the 2022 Tobago expedition. She is excited to lead the society, and is looking forward to helping organise expeditions in 2023!

The Vice President

Holly is the Vice-President of the 2022 ExSoc committee! She is a fourth year student who completed her honours project in Tobago through the exploration society.

Favourite animal:

The majestic pangolin!

She is also the Secretary for the ZooSoc society and aims to draw connections between both teams! She is excited to help out with expeditions in 2023 and in re-growing the societies in a post-pandemic world.

The Treasurer

Abigail is continuing on as the Treasurer for the committee. She is a third year student and has been on the Iceland expedition as a member, and served as a Co-Leader of the Tobago expedition last year.

Favourite animal:

Arctic Tern by Martin Loftus - BirdGuides
Abi spent time with Arctic Terns on the Iceland expedition of 2021.

She is excited to continue working with the society, and can’t wait to see what expeditions are in store for this year!

The Web Convener

Emma is ExSoc’s web-convenor for this year. She is a third year Zoology student, and this is her first time being part of the ExSoc committee!

Favourite animal:

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ANIMAL FACTS AND PICTURES: TAPIR
Who doesn’t love tapirs?

She is excited to find out more about the committee and help bring it back to its former glory.

The Social Convener

Duncan is the social convener this year. He is a third year Geography student and has been a member of ExSoc for two years! This year, he was a part of the Trinidad and Tobago expedition, and is looking forward to expeditions next year.

Favourite animal:

The perfect camouflage…

The Secretary

Laila is a third year Geology student and has taken over the role of secretary in ExSoc this year! She hasn’t been on an expedition before, but she does have field research experience in other areas and sees active engagement in the world as key.

Favourite animal:

Not to be mistaken for your average domestic dog!

General Members

Molly is a recent Zoology graduate who is staying on as a postgraduate student. She was one of the leaders in this year’s Tobago expedition, and was a co-president of ExSoc.

Proposals Evening Recording & Application Quick Links

If you missed Proposals Evening, you can view a recording of it here.

We’re in the process of updating the pretty parts of the website, but here’s a quick list of all the expeditions, along with their presentations and application forms. To apply to an expedition, you must be an ExSoc member. You can join by filling in this form and sending £3 to the bank details listed. Expedition application deadlines are 11th October for leaders, 15th October for participants.

Cameroon: Presentation, Application

Guyana: Presentation, Application

Iceland: Video, Presentation, Application

Thailand: Presentation, Application

Tobago: Presentation, Application

Remote Scotland: Presentation, Application, Video

In addition, we invite proposals for a Remote Scotland expedition. None was proposed this year, but as it’s one of the most stable to organise, and cheapest for participants to join, we would like to run one if possible. If you’re potentially interested in running or working on an expedition within Scotland, you can apply here. From there, the Exploration Society committee and council will select leaders, then leave it to those leaders to select their participants and plan their expedition.

With the ongoing disruption from Covid, some stable expeditions have fallen off the roster, and could be revived. If there is more interest in marine expeditions than the Thailand one can handle, it may be possible to revive the Egypt expedition. If you think you might be interested in running this expedition, please email David.Bailey@glasgow.ac.uk.

You can read about past iterations of the Egypt, Remote Scotland, and other expeditions here, on our Achievements page.

Expedition Proposals for Summer 2022

Proposals Evening will be on October 4th, and due to space capacities, will happen over Zoom, to allow everyone to attend who may wish to. Link will be posted nearer the time. We also plan to have an informal, in-person social on the 5th (venue TBC), where you can chat and ask questions about proposed expeditions.

Because of the disruption to the normal expedition schedules, Proposals will work a bit differently this year. Rather than having a set of expeditions that will go ahead, that people can learn about and apply for, we are opening up for proposals of any expeditions that folks would like to run, and will support a subset of these based on interest, applications, and feasibility. Expeditions within Europe are more likely to be feasible than those going further afield, but proposals for expeditions outside of Europe are still welcome and are still likely to be accepted. We also welcome proposals for expeditions based around a particular research topic or programme, rather than based on a location, that may be able to be more logistically flexible.

If you would like to propose an expedition for summer 2022, please email explorationsocietygu@gmail.com by 1st October, to be included in the Proposals programme. You should prepare a short (~5 minute) presentation that you can deliver over zoom, as well as an application form for your expedition, and a blurb to go alongside it, for the website.

You must be a member of ExSoc in order to apply to join expeditions. You can join ExSoc here.

COVID-19 update

As of a couple days ago, all of ExSoc’s 2020 expeditions have been cancelled or postponed due to COVID-19. While these news are extremely unfortunate, it was the most sensible decision for all expeditions in order to minimize pressure on rural communities in Scotland and their host countries, and avoid infection during travel. Some expedition teams will be aiming to keep their current team together throughout next year and realize their original plans in the summer of 2021, while others will be looking for new teams in fall.

ExSoc is following University of Glasgow’s and the Exploration Council’s guidance regarding fieldwork and travel, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, we have updated the Achievements page with available reports from 2019 expeditions and welcome you to browse other reports from past expeditions.

Thanks everyone for applying!

As you might know, applications for next year’s expeditions closed last week. We wanted to thank every one of you for doing so, we have received so many brilliant applications! Keep an eye out on your inbox for updates on your application status as leaders are conducting interviews and making their decisions.

Teams will be finalised in the first week of November and then the planning will begin. We look forward to hopefully seeing you all on teams soon!

Applications for 2020 expeditions now open!

Hi everyone!

We’re pleased to announce that applications for 2020 expeditions are now officially OPEN!

Navigate to the 2020 Expeditions page and read all about the presentations which ran this year and will continue on next summer. All the essential information on location, duration and expenses is available in the expedition presentations as well, so no worries if you can’t make it to Proposals Evening on Monday!

The deadline for those wishing to be considered for leader positions is October 11th 24:00.

The deadline for those applying for other team roles is October 13th 24:00.

If you’ve got any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out to one of the expeditions personally or to ExSoc either through Facebook or email. These can be found on the bottom of the page. We have also uploaded the preliminary reports of this summers expeditions for you to peruse if you’d like to research potential project ideas etc., just click here!

Good luck and we look forward to seeing you all at Proposals Evening on Monday 18:00 at the Graham Kerr building!