Who We Are
We are legion. Well, we are four. Welcome to our labour of love – kickstarted by a conversation on twitter, and surprisingly, wonderfully, now an actual Thing.
Brenna
HassetT
Brenna Hassett is a bioarchaeologist with a hard line in teeth and a soft line in popular science writing (Built on Bones: 15,000 years of urban life and death; Growing Up Human: the evolution of childhood). You can find her on Twitter at @brennawalks. She is not, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, a tarsier.
Tori
Herridge
Tori is an evolutionary biologist at the Natural History Museum in London, UK. She’s an expert in elephants and mammoths, with a particular side line in the island dwarf variety (yes, really!). Tori is currently working on projects spanning Africa, Europe and Siberia, and has strong opinions on mammoth de-extinction. Sometimes she presents TV and podcasts. She tweets as @ToriHerridge.
Suzanne
Pilaar Birch
Suzie combines archaeology with biogeochemistry to investigate how humans adapted to climate change in prehistory. She is an Associate Professor at the University of Georgia with a joint appointment in the Departments of Anthropology and Geography. She tweets as @suzie_birch.
Rebecca
Wragg Sykes
Becky is an archaeologist and author, with an enduring fascination for the Neanderthals. After an academic career focusing on human origins research and ancient technology, she is now an Honorary Fellow in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool. Her first book, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, was published in 2020. She is @LeMoustier on Twitter.
What We Do
At TrowelBlazers, we believe that if you can see it, you can be it. We are dedicated to highlighting the contributions of women in the ‘digging’ sciences: archaeology, geology, and palaeontology, and to outreach activities aimed at encouraging participation, especially from under-represented minorities. Apart from the website, we’re on the socials too – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok – sharing stories of women past and present.
You can also find us writing for major media outlets and dreaming up new events and activities to celebrate women and inspire the next generation of TrowelBlazers. From reflecting on TrowelBlazing while pregnant to organising Wikipedia edit-a-thons, and participating in panels, debates, and science communication extravaganzas at the Royal Society, Cheltenham Science Festival, Feminism in London conference, schools and more… we’re passionate about supporting women in science.
Work with us
Got a project idea? Get in touch! We love new challenges, and have partnered with a number of organisations looking to work on themes around women in archaeology and the Earth sciences. This includes producing an exhibition for the National Trust, editing the world’s most famous archaeology textbook, and other consultation roles.
PREVIOUS COLLABORATIONS
We love to collaborate. Past projects include the award-winning Fossil Hunter Lottie doll with Arklu; “Woman In Time”, a spoken word performance combining storytelling, poetry, archives and science with Allison Cullingford, University of Bradford, and interviews for performance artist Bryony Kimmings‘ Credible Likeable Superstar project.
Our biggest creation was the Raising Horizons portrait exhibition in collaboration with artist Leonora Saunders, which was wildly successful, toured the UK for two years and finished with a special showing at the Houses of Parliament event celebrating Women’s Suffrage in 2019.
Writings and other things
Mainstream Media
Spades, soil, and sisterhood. BBC History Magazine (print). Rebecca Wragg Sykes. December 2021.
The Untold Stories of Archaeology’s Women. By Brenna Hassett, Suzanne Pilaar Birch, Rebecca Wragg Sykes, and Tori Herridge. Sapiens Magazine. 23 March 2021.
Behind a Lesbian Furore over a famous palaeontologist lies a deeper truth. By Tori Herridge and Rebecca Wragg Sykes. The Guardian. 2019.
The history of women in science shows us the fight is worth it. By Brenna Hassett, Suzanne Pilaar Birch, Rebecca Wragg Sykes, and Victoria Herridge. The Guardian. 8 March 2017.
Trowel blazers: women have been digging geosciences longer than you think. By Rebecca Wragg Sykes, Brenna Hassett, Tori Herridge, and Suzanne Pilaar Birch. The Guardian. 20 October 2016.
In search of the female Indiana Jones. By Tori Herridge. CNN’s Leading Women 2014
Searching for the Missing Women of Geology. By Suzanne Pilaar Birch. The Guardian. 21 Aug 2013.
Articles About Us
2018 Real Clear Life. “Digging Into Archaeology’s Overlooked History”.
2018 Smithsonian Magazine. “The Many Ways Women Get Left Out of Paleontology“.
2018 Nature. “A Guide to Juggling Fieldwork and Pregnancy“.
2017 The Observer. “Pregnant in the Field: Have Trowel, Will Travel“.
2015 Forbes. “Move Over Paleontology Barbie, There Is A New Fossil Hunter In Town”.
2015 Christian Science Monitor. “#InMyShoes: How a girl’s quest for dinosaur shoes is leaving a big footprint on Twitter”.
Collaborative Academic Publications
Hassett, B.R., Herridge, V.L., Wragg Sykes, R.M, & S.E. Pilaar Birch. 2019. “Activism from the Archives: Changing narratives to engage new communities” in Jameson, J.H. and Musteaţă, S. (eds.): Transforming Heritage Practice in the 21st Century. New York: Springer. pp. 399-413.
Hassett, B.R., Pilaar Birch, S.E., Herridge, V.L., & R.M. Wragg Sykes. 2017. “TrowelBlazers: Accidentally crowd-sourcing an archive of women in archaeology.” Apaydin, V. (ed.) Shared Knowledge, Shared Power. Engaging Local and Indigenous Heritage. New York: Springer.
Herridge, V., Wragg Sykes, R., Hassett, B. & S.E. Pilaar Birch. 2013. “‘A splendid regiment of women’: 20th century archaeologists and palaeontologists” in S. Charman-Anderson (ed.), A Passion for Science: Stories of Discovery and Invention. London: Finding Ada.
Trowelblazers Conference Proceedings
Hassett, B.R, Wragg Sykes, R.M. Pilaar Birch, S., and Herridge, V. 2019. Panel, “Women and Power? From Conversation to Action” Theoretical Archaeology Group, Institute for Archaeology, University College London.
Hassett, B.R, Wragg Sykes, R.M. Pilaar Birch, S., and Herridge, V. 2015. Where does your community live? The TrowelBlazers experience. Presented at the 80th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Wragg-Sykes, B., Hassett, B.R., Pilaar Birch, S., and Herridge, V. 2014. The cave, the skull and the women: female representation in Palaeolithic research. Presented at the 4th Annual Meeting of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution.
Hassett, B., Herridge, V., Wragg Sykes, R.M. and Pilaar Birch, S. 2014. TrowelBlazers: Accidentally crowdsourcing an archive of women in archaeology. Presented at the 20th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists.
Herridge, V., Hassett, B., Pilaar Birch, S., and Wragg Sykes, B. 2014. TrowelBlazers presentation and panel discussion. Revealing lives: women in science 1830-2000 conference, Royal Society.
Pilaar Birch, S., Herridge, V., Wragg Sykes, B., Hassett, B.R. 2014. TrowelBlazers: a collaborative, crowdsourced project born on social media. Presented at the 36th Meeting of the Computer Applications in Archaeology Association.
Wragg Sykes, R.M., Hassett, B., Pilaar Birch, S. and Herridge, V. 2013. TrowelBlazers: A grass‐roots, collaborative, international, crowdsourced outreach project born on Twitter. Presented at the 36th Australian Archaeological Association Meeting.
