A Scott Polar Scholar on Diversity in Polar Research

St Catharine's College, University of Cambridge · 22 November 2021

In November 2021, St Catharine’s College at the University of Cambridge featured me as that year’s recipient of the Scott Polar Scholarship — one of the College’s full-funding awards for polar research, given to the top applicant for the MPhil in Polar Studies. The piece used the scholarship as a starting point to explore something less commonly discussed in the discipline: what it looks like to do polar science from a background that doesn’t typically appear in it.

Below is a recap of the conversation.

The Scott Polar Scholarship

The Scott Polar Scholarship covers full tuition and maintenance for the MPhil in Polar Studies at the Scott Polar Research Institute, and is awarded annually to the year’s top applicant. Winning it was the difference between this MPhil happening and not. The Scott Polar selection committee don’t make their decisions lightly, and being chosen — particularly for a topic as compute-and-data-heavy as the work I went on to do on the George VI Ice Shelf — is one of the achievements I’m proudest of.

Not a typical polar researcher

The piece spent real time on what it looks like to do polar science from a background that doesn’t typically appear in it. I am a woman of colour. I grew up partly in Mumbai, partly in Vancouver. Polar research wasn’t a career conversation in my family, or in any of my school networks, or really in my undergraduate cohort either.

“Polar research certainly wasn’t a career choice that I was aware of during my early years in India or growing up in Canada — but I’m proud of the journey I’ve made to St Catharine’s.”

There aren’t many of us in polar science. Cohorts at SPRI in any given year typically have only a small handful of women of colour — sometimes none. The College knew this, and used the feature partly to address it directly: for prospective applicants from similar backgrounds who might be looking at polar research and wondering whether they’d belong.

From computer science to atmospheric science

The interview also touched on my undergraduate years at the University of British Columbia, where I originally applied to study Computer Science before switching to Atmospheric Science.

“I worked out pretty quickly that Computer Science was enjoyable to me only when I could apply it to environmental problems. By switching my degree, I was able to use these skills to support climate modelling and research into how the atmosphere is changing. Polar research is going to need people with these skills if we are going to be able to continue to expand our understanding of the habitat and the impact of climate change.”

That intersection of code and climate has been the throughline of everything since.

“Technology also gives us a real shot at establishing Net Zero polar research stations, which currently require field work and long distance travel. My own research uses the data available from sensors and satellite data, which I can process and analyse remotely thanks to the support of the team on the ground in Antarctica.”

Polar Impact and teaching MPhil courses on diversity

A natural extension of being one of very few women of colour at SPRI was getting deeply involved with Polar Impact, the volunteer network founded in Cambridge in 2019 to connect and amplify the voices of Black, Asian, Indigenous, minority ethnic professionals and people of colour in polar research. I co-organised it during my MPhil and led some of its early projects — including a multi-week social media takeover during COP26 in which we handed the network’s accounts to under-represented polar researchers around the world to tell their own stories.

“By sharing the real-world experiences of our diverse community, we can begin to challenge the stereotype of polar exploration being exclusively the domain of white men. There’s still a long way to go but I look forward to Polar Impact expanding its activities into scholarships, training and workshops to support talented researchers from under-represented backgrounds.”

The work expanded beyond peer support. I went on to teach MPhil-level lectures at the Scott Polar Research Institute on diversity in polar academic circles — taking the case studies, lived experiences, and frameworks Polar Impact had developed and turning them into a curriculum unit for graduate students at the same institute where I had just done my own MPhil. Having work I’d helped lead become teaching content a floor away from where I’d sat as a student is the kind of long-tail impact that’s still hard to believe.

Choosing Cambridge, choosing Catz

Anyone who has been through the Oxbridge applications process knows the collegiate system can be opaque from the outside. I was certain I wanted to apply for the Master’s at the Scott Polar Research Institute, but the college side of the decision was less clear.

“To be honest, I didn’t understand what joining a college meant so I turned to Reddit to find out more. I discovered a thread about the friendliest colleges with lots of recommendations in favour of joining Catz. Fortunately, everything I read proved to be true: everyone has been very welcoming, warm and passionate about their interests.”

The research itself

For my MPhil thesis I worked with Dr Amelie Kirchgaessner at the British Antarctic Survey and Professor Ian Willis at St Catharine’s, studying atmospheric drivers of surface melt on the George VI Ice Shelf — the second largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula. A fuller summary of the science, methodology, and findings lives on its own page on this site.

• 🔗 Read the full feature: caths.cam.ac.uk → Amplifying diversity in polar exploration
• 📄 Archived copy: download PDF