Dr Shyama Vermeersch

I will (try to) take a social media break over summer! Contact me through email or other means if necessary😉

My blog for Pasture for Life on their #Biodiversity case studies is published!

I explore the most common methods to farm for – and with – biodiversity, how to turn biodiversity efforts into economic profits & what support is available.

#Farming

www.pastureforlife.org/news/pasture...

This week, I am with the Amman Citadel Excavation in Jordan to analyse animal bones and take samples for stable isotopes!

Good tip to print it - if it's overwhelming on A4, it will be the same on A0 or A1!

Will keep this in mind! Someone else commented to use the poster to draw people into conversation, which is what visuals can do!

QR codes are a great idea! I think I once saw someone link it to their published paper, which seems pretty neat. And I agree, text blocks are one way to make me run away. Treating a poster as a way to draw people into conversation is smart - will try it out!

I fully agree - I love it when a poster just draws me in from across the room thanks to visuals! Personally, I love puns/pop culture, but I do worry how well it translates internationally.

I am making an academic poster for the very first time! Having seen many boring posters, I am trying to make it fun.

What are things you have seen on posters that you loved or hated? #Academia

Today's task: editing a video of me talking about archaeological methods for my video course. First mini task? finding the appropriate funky tunes 🎥😎 #SciComm

This Friday is all about job applications... and one collaboration meeting. It is interesting to experience how much more difficult it is (mentally) to apply for non-academic jobs! What have your experiences been when transitioning out of #Academia?

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, will definitely give it a read! I am excited to see the authors brought in a threshold of 50 NISP since apparently from this point more specimens does not influence taxonomic richness (in the Northwest Coast of North America).

Awesome, and I LOVE that you proved them wrong! Nothing beats the gloat of being petty and successful 😂 I will send you a DM with my email address, it would be so helpful to see what you did 🙏

I haven't! Thanks for sharing this, I just gave her a follow and will read this ASAP 🙏 It looks promising!

Reposting this since I still am looking for inspiration on how to treat small sample sizes in #Zooarchaeology.

One might say that publishing anything less than a 100-200 bones is not worth it. However, with precarious funding and contracts, I think it is well worth it so data does not disappear.

I am sure there must be some research on this!

That's really interesting, because I live in a village and hardly see them there as well! It seems like these are proper urban foxes with a taste for kebabs?

Fox in a car park at night

Seeing foxes wandering around town in #Oxford in such close proximity to humans will never lose its magic to me.

Working on a blog about farms who have a #Biodiversity approach. Quite a nice setting here at my parents!

Rate my set-up 😄 Today, I'm taking pictures of charred barley from a Syrian site. Documentation is important when you're about to destroy samples for stable isotope analysis in #Archaeology!

I had so much fun giving this webinar! Lots of people in the comments shared their experiences with past farming technologies (which I unfortunately forgot to download to look into later on).

Winter Webinar: Farming Past and Present What can archaeology tell us about farming, and how relevant is this for the present? Dr Shyama Vermeersch, University of Oxford.

Tomorrow at 1PM UK time, I am giving a webinar for Pasture For Life to talk about how #archaeology can give us insight into #farming of the past and how it can contribute to current discussions on #sustainability.

Tune in here (for free): www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/winter-web...

A bookshelf with a range of 12 books.

We went to 66 Books yesterday for the first time and got quite the #Book haul! Besides fiction, I am excited to have gotten my hands on copies of 'Rewilding' and 'Eat, Die, Poop' 💩🌿

Not featured: some books we got for friends!

This term I joined a video class, which means I am now preparing my script for filming an in-person interview next week. Excited to talk about how #Archaeology can contribute to discussions of major present-day issues 🎥

Today, it's back to analysing Pasture For Life's #Biodiversity casestudies. Doing this work definitely is helping me rethink how to include #Archaeology on discussions about #Farming. 🧑‍🌾

#Archaeology provides (ecological) baselines for animals which can help #Reintroduction of extinct animals.

However, I can't help notice the lack of mention of archaeology with the recent #Beaver reintroductions in the UK. 🦫

Am I missing something? If so, please send it my way!

Does anyone have some good (published) case-studies in #Zooarchaeology that use small sample sizes?

Defintely looking for some inspiration to make my small dataset a bit more interesting 🥹

Plastic boxes with a lot of differently coloured vials in them: white, yellow, blue, green, and red.

Today, I am running the last batch of animal bone collagen samples from Jordan through the mass spectrometer for stable isotope analysis!

It's good to know I processed all the samples collected in September before going to the field again in May 👩‍🔬💪

No worries! Just thought it might save some people from disappointment 😅

This job vacancy has closed a while ago, apparently 😅

For 2 weeks now, I've ordered the UK only organic veg box from Sandy Lane Farm (Oxfordshire) in an attempt to eat a bit more sustainable. It's been fun trying out new recipes and discovering veggies I'd never heard of/used before! 🧅🥔🥬🥦