A day in the life of a polychaeteologist

My PhD work is split between two institution, the Oceanography Centre in Southampton and the Natural History Museum in London. Working at the Natural History Museum is an amazing experience, so here is how one of my typical days would go….

Morning: I Arrive at  the museum and enter through Gloucester road entrance (staff only) to avoid the crowds of tourists and school children streaming into the museum. My office and laboratory are in the Darwin Centre, a large new annex attached to the original museum building.

View of Darwin Centre

There is a lot of active research going on at the Natural History museum over a wide range of disciplines from zoology to meteorology, from botany to paleontology.  I work in the department of Life Sciences, within Life Sciences I work in the polychaete laboratory.
My morning is spent in the office answering emails and reading journal papers.

View from my office window, overlooking museum wildlife garden and Cromwell Road.

Afternoon: Laboratory work time (my favourite part!). I use the microscopes to identify polychaete worms to species level. Luckily for me there is a great amount of polychaete  expertise in the museum, lots of identification books and keys and people who are always willing to help.

The Darwin Centre houses 17,000 fluid-preserved specimens in the Spirit collections. Daily tours take members of the public around the spirit collections and behind the scenes to see the scientists at work. Tours often come right past my laboratory while I am working at the microscope. This is very strange and I feel a little like a monkey in a zoo!

Giant Squid in Natural History Museum Spirit collections

On Friday, there is a departmental lecture given by a scientist from another institution to talk about their research. These talks are very interesting and important way to discover what other research is going on around the country and the world.

The Natural History Museum is open late to the public on the last Friday of the month. This is a great opportunity to wander around the galleries and have cocktail standing under Dippy the dinosaur in the great hall, a fantastic way to end the day.

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/after-hours/lates-master-card/index.html