This week we held our postgraduate symposium co-hosted by Reading and Portsmouth Universities. It was two days of fantastic talks by our postgraduate community. We discussed quaternary careers in both academia and industry, and enjoyed keynote talks from Prof Nick Branch and Dr Mark Hardiman.

Just over a week left to register for the QRA PGR symposium hosted by Reading university. Don’t forget to sign up before the 6th August!

SAVE THE DATE!! 5-8 Jan 2026 QRA Annual Discussion Meeting: “The Quaternary - Past Human and Environment Dynamics” at University of Brighton. Website and registration coming soon!! @quaternaryra.bsky.social

Still a couple of spaces on our North Wales @quaternaryra.bsky.social field trip in October 2025. QRA Engineering Group: Field course in engineering geology and sedimentology of glacial and periglacial terrains

We are pleased to announce that this year's QRA Postgraduate Symposium will be held at the @uniofreading.bsky.social from the 27th - 29th August 2025, and is co-hosted by the University of Portsmouth. Tickets can be purchased here: www.eventbrite.com/e/1333917556...

Our new micromorphology guide to the microscale analysis of glacial sediments and processes, edited by the fantastic Emrys Phillips and John Menzies is now available at the QRA bookshop! Get your copy here www.qra.org.uk/bookshop/mic... (don’t forget your members discount!) 📖🔬

We had productive discussions about our latest publications, upcoming grants, and the future direction of the QRA. We couldn’t resist a trip to the Honours Wall, where a ladder was up to add the name of the new Busk Medal recipient: Prof Murray Gray. He joins an impressive list of past QRA winners!

Now available to buy at www.qra.org.uk ….

Today is the World Day for Glaciers, so we thought we'd showcase some of the excellent glacial landscapes preserved in the UK...🧵

To celebrate #InternationalWomensDay we asked some women in quaternary science: "What sparked your interst in climate science?" Here are their responses....🧵1/6

Happy International Women and Girls in Science day from the QRA! Today we get to celebrate the incredible scientific achievements of the women and girls in our quaternary community. Comment and tell us about the women and girls who have inspired you! 👩‍🔬 #womeninscience #womeninstem

**ECR Outstanding JQS paper award, 2024** The Dorothea Bate Prize for an outstanding paper by an ECR in the Journal of Quaternary Science has been awarded to Sean Field for his paper “Climate and Community in Central Mesa Verde". 🧵1/4

Journal of Quaternary Science news 🚨The QRA is delighted to announce that, following an open call for applicants earlier this year, Mary Edwards (Southampton) and Achim Brauer (Potsdam) will jointly take over the editorship of JQS from January 2025. This will succeed the current editor, Neil Roberts

Please do sign up for the Joint QRA/IQUA Field meeting in Co. Louth, Ireland between the 5-7th April. Sign up using this form here docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... It’s going to be a great field trip! Do share to others who may be interested too beyond Bluesky

Announcing this year’s postgraduate conference to be hosted by Queen’s University, Belfast from the 29 -31st August! This is a great opportunity to showcase your research in a friendly environment, and get to know other Quaternary ECRs. Registration will be open soon!

And thank you to Chris Field & Anna Keightley for talking us through the spaghnum farming & Care-Peat project work vb.nweurope.eu/projects/pro...

Stop 3: we are in the Manchester mosses at Little Woolden Moss. Jonathan Lageard talks us through the bog oaks & their dendrochronology from the wider region

Paraglacial processes in action…

Stop 2: looking out across at a landslide, with thanks to Brandon from National Highways for explaining the stabilisation approaches here

Stop 1: Lumb Mill in the Irwell Valley to view erratics and some unearthed organics from the BA. Then walking along a hypothesised kame terrace & viewing a WW1 zeppelin bomb site

The post ADM QRA24 fieldtrip is underway, starting up in the Irwell Valley near Lumb

Our final session is part 2 of Glaciation in the Quaternary

The inclusivity panel is underway

Please take the time, after enjoying your lunch, to peruse the posters. There is a fabulous line up in the atrium nearest to the lecture room

From the wonderful bivalve mollusc ‘tree rings of the sea’ to the case of the missing sediment in the Sn North Sea, then on to the MIS5-4 transition in the North Sea brown bank formation & finally sedimentology & geochemistry going back to explore those ‘older than expected’ RISeR sites

Session 5 this morning was a continuation of yesterday’s stratigraphy session. We had a great set of talks discussing all things marine - especially the North Sea! Very interesting records

Two absolutely great talks from Becky Briant, Rosie Archer, and Tessa Spano. These talks were very inspiring and continues the conversation of inclusivity in Quaternary Science #QRA24

Presentations explored sedaDNA in the UK, Daubian loess & its provenance, Amazonian peatland records of flooding & ecological change, anthropogenic indicators at Diss Mere UK & abiotic & biotic proxies of the industrial revolution at Holcroft Moss near Manchester.

Session 4 QRA24

Welcome to Day 3

#QRA24 post conference dinner socialising is in full swing!

Session 3 is about the detection and analysis of materials

And circumpolar study for NH here www.nature.com/articles/s41...

A lovely overview here doi.org/10.1111/nph....

Now the 2nd keynote of the QRA24 from Inger Greve Alsos en.uit.no/ansatte/inge... The novel and dramatic insights into ecosystem change using ancient sedimentary DNA

The Stratigraphic records session at the QRA24 took us through tephrochronology in E Africa, NW Europe, W Mediterranean & NW America, to diatoms in a permafrost zone lake & then remaining in permafrost processes that formed pingos, their remnants now full of organic-rich sediment

The Stratigraphic records session at the QRA24 took us through tephrochronology in E Africa, NW Europe, W Mediterranean & NW America, to diatoms in a permafrost zone lake & then remaining in permafrost processes that formed pingos, their remnants now full of organic-rich sediment

David Hatton exploring offsets between radiocarbon and 210Pb dating in three lakes in eastern Canada over the last ~300 years.

Next; aminostratigraphy with Ellie Nelson, also from NEaarLab talking about using snail opercular 🐌 as part of the EQuaTe project sites.google.com/york.ac.uk/e...

And next Marc Dickson from www.york.ac.uk/palaeo/servi... talking about amino acid dating in teeth, with some wonderful UK & South African examples

First up @abistone.bsky.social presenting on behalf of Shashank Nitundil of @qeguom.bsky.social about portable luminescence reader approaches to dune dating. These reveal Holocene linear dune accumulation in the western Thar

Session 1 is all about chronology with “Dating Techniques and their Applications”

Day 2 of QRA24 will be at Manchester Metropolitan University on the Business School building (maps.app.goo.gl/viNmtVry5wS1...) See you tomorrow at 8.30 for morning coffee ☕️

Really inspiring talk, filled with theory, innovative methods, future questions, and amazing photos and videos. Thank you very much Dorthe!

Exciting work underway in Green2Ice project: using both luminescence dating and cosmogenic dating for the silty ice at the base of Greenland Ice Cores. Explained by Dorthe Dahl-Jensen in her Wiley Lecture #QRA24 @quaternaryra.bsky.social

We’re excited to hear from Professor Dorthe Dahl-Jensen next here at #QRA24. She will take us to the wonderful world of ice cores from Greenland

And congratulations to Prof. Mary Edwards on the awarding of the James Croll medal

Congratulations to Jeremy Ely and Dulce Oliveria on being awarded this years Lewis Penny Medal!

Our Dorethea Bate award went to Dave Aditi, and Samuel Hudson was highly commended, congratulations!

Congratulations to our Winifred Pennington-Tutin winners for their undergraduate dissertations!