Julianne Burns

What’s the work that you do?

I’m a PhD student at the Antarctic Research Centre in Wellington, New Zealand. My research involves piecing together how the Antarctic Ice Sheets responded to warming in Earth’s past, specifically in the Miocene, a period that offers a window into a warmer-than-present world. I work with a lot of proxies, with a particular focus on using sedimentology to reconstruct environments and ice-ocean-atmosphere interactions. Outside the lab, I run community-based climate literacy workshops.

What keeps you going?

What keeps me going is the joy of discovery, in both my research and in science communication. I’ve seen people come alive when they’re given space to embrace that childlike curiosity we’re often told to grow out of. That energy is contagious, especially when it makes the natural environment more accessible to someone. I’m also incredibly lucky to have mentors I look up to.

What’s your message to the world?

Talk to people and build community. Talk to people with an open mind. Talk to people outside your field, people you think you have nothing in common with, people you don’t think you’ll have anything to say to. A conversation where you connect with someone on a human level is a beautiful thing in itself.