Ria Olivier

What’s the work that you do?

My role is to preserve the past for the future by maintaining archives and digital platforms: I am the project manager and principal investigator for the Antarctic Legacy of South Africa (ALSA). ALSA preserves visual material (including diaries) of previous overwintering members at the South African stations in Antarctica and on Marion and Gough Island. We also collect material from non-overwintering team members like construction workers, takeover personnel, scientists, and researchers. Using this material, I give lectures and public talks, train the overwintering teams and teach first year BSc students.

What keeps you going?

There’s so many perks to my job that keep me motivated. It is great to be part of the South Africa’s Antarctic environment as well as the bigger international Antarctic arena – I have made a lot of friends all over the world. I love being able to teach and support the future generations of South Africa: It is wonderful to see young minds absorb information and make it their own knowledge.

In making South African Antarctic information available to both the research community and the public, we create a nation of knowledge. I believe an informed nation can accomplish so much more, and I’m proud to be a part of it through my job.

What’s your message to the world?

I fiercely believe in making information open access so that it can become knowledge, which is crucial for policy makers and innovators. Research outcomes need to be added back into the world and its different communities. To create knowledge across all generations, we need to make information available. This way, we can learn from our highs and our lows and understand the world we are living in.