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Revisit talks from the festival

Saturday

Welcome 

Joe Smith, RGS Director

Opening address 

Felicity Aston, Explore Chair

Insights from a Rapid Biodiversity Assessment in Salonga NP (DRC) 2022 

Merlijn Jocque and Jan Mertens

West Bengal Water Project 

Raphaela Betz, Victoria Taylor and Susana Higueras

Video ethnographies for participatory action research 

Suresh Paul, Loel Collins and Cameron MacKay

Expedition planning 

Felicity Aston

Working backwards to move forwards: legacy driven expeditions

Mark Evans

Top tips for successful grant applications

Chad Staddon

Funding Q&A

Hosted by Felicity Aston with Chad Staddon, Claire McNulty and Julian Martin

Getting started in the outdoors

Evan Chick, Erin Linwood, Craig Mathieson, James Dyer, Dwayne Fields, James Levelle

The Adventure mind: how to design outdoor challenges to improve mental health and wellbeing

Belinda Kirk

Field safety management

Matthew Davies, Remote Area Risk International

Medical preparations for expeditions

Anna Shekhdar, Endeavour Medical

Mountain and trekking logistics and safety workshop

Tom Davis-Merry, Anna Shekhdar, Spike Reid

Feedback from workshops 

Sunday

Chair opening remarks

Citizen science and wildlife conservation: notes from the field

Matt Hammer

Why fieldwork matters: peatlands

Nick Girkin

Using expeditions and fieldwork to support UN Sustainable Development Goals

Meagan Neal, Transcaucasian Trail

See the world through digital visualisation tools

Simon Hutchinson

Starting your career in expedition medicine 

Expedition psychology: how explorers plan for extreme challenges

Jon Rhodes

Story telling

Matt Pycroft

Film and video: visual story-telling

Matt Pycroft, Cameron Mackay, Alex Keefe, Graham Jackson

Your priorities tomorrow and closing remarks

The Grant Speke map showing Lake Victoria.

Exploring the explorers’ maps

This talk will discuss explorers’ maps with an especial emphasis on the collaborative effort that goes into creating them, an effort that often included Indigenous peoples. It asks what stories we can and should tell with explorers’ maps? Part of the Explore festival.

Ash standing outside of a derelict building

Why we travel: a journey into human motivation

Award-winning author, journalist and broadcaster Ash Bhardwaj talks about Why We Travel, his smart-thinking debut book, which explores our motivations for travel, how to do it better, and how it helps us live more fulfilling lives. Part of the Explore festival.

Person using radio equipment on Alexander Hamilton Rice’s final expedition to Amazonia.

Hamilton Rice’s Amazon

This talk celebrates the centenary of Alexander Hamilton Rice’s final expedition to Amazonia (1924-25) which pioneered technological innovations such as the use of hydroplanes for reconnaissance, aerial photography and shortwave radio in the field. Part of the Explore festival.

Monitoring lightning striking in the Kalahari Desert

Observations from African climate change hotspots

Africa is the continent least responsible for anthropogenic climate change but is highly vulnerable to its effects. This lecture explores new fieldwork designed to uncover the science behind African climate change. Part of the Explore festival.

Speaker Tim Jacobs stood on stage in the Ondaatje Theatre at Explore 2022.

Welcome home: postcards from the field

Short presentations from recently returned expeditions and field research projects, what they did, and lessons learned. Followed by an opportunity to meet and celebrate. Part of the Explore festival.