Alumni Events are a chance for us to welcome back past students and staff and to share what is happening in Earth Sciences at Cambridge. They're also a wonderful opportunity to reconnect with your peers, former colleagues and meet new members of the Department. We will announce future events here and via email and/or GeoCam as details are confirmed. Please check back for the most up-to-date details. If you have any questions or need more information, do please email us at alumni@esc.cam.ac.uk.
Earth Sciences Alumni Events
We look forward to welcoming you back to Cambridge and elsewhere for in-person events in the near future. Find out more about our forthcoming events below.
First Winter Lecture
The Teaching Team held the inaugural Winter Lecture on 5 December. The lecture was an opportunity to get together at the end of Michaelmas term to hear a talk from one of our Emeritus faculty, Professor Dave Norman, in a talk titled:
Dinosaurs: are their evolutionary origins and relationships problematic? … and … should we care?
The lecture was recorded for those who were not able to attend or join online on the day and can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LGokKIu0R4
Alumni Days past and future
SAVE THE DATE! The next Earth Science Alumni Day and Dinner is happening on Saturday, 9 May 2026. Join us downtown for talks, activities and tours. Explore the building once again and relive those uni days. Catch up with your peers, find out what everyone has been up to and hear from some of our academic staff and students on current research and projects. The day will wrap up with drinks in the museum before we head out for dinner. Day only, Day and Dinner, and Under 15s tickets plus much more information is available here.
We share updates and further information on our next alumni day in our termly emails and GeoCam as well as sharing programme news and updates to alumni who have agreed to receive event emails. To check if you have given permission for us to email you, access your Cantab account.
For 2025, we hosted the event at the Bullard laboratories, Madingley Rise. This was the first time we have held the event at Madingley Rise and it gave alumni and their guests a chance to explore a site that has been home to ground-breaking discoveries and is a key part of the Department. Dinner was held at Downing.
Alumni Days includes short talks from staff and students (on their Mapping and Geochemistry Projects). We have a range of tours each year and alumni enjoy social time during the day and at the evening dinner in Downing College which offers a chance to catch up and reminisce with their peers and meet and mingle with current students. Families regularly join us for the day (we provide free tickets to under 15s) and Partners are welcome to join the Dinner.
A range of photos, taken by our official photographers Sarah Humbert and Thomas Holland, from the 2025 day in this Flickr album. You can peruse photos from the 2024 Alumni Day and Dinner in this Flickr album, and the 2023 Alumni Day and Dinner in this Flickr album. The 2019 Alumni Day & Dinner are available on Flickr and YouTube. Photos from the 2018 Alumni Day are available here on Flickr. You can read about the 2021 Alumni Day & Dinner here:
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Watch past events:
Cambridge and Oxford Earth Sciences Alumni Panel Evening at the Geological Society
Chaired by our Head of Department, Richard Harrison, our panel presented their areas of study and special interest and answered questions on the evenings theme uncovering the habitability of other planetary bodies.
The Panel: Oli Shorttle, Richard Katz, Nick Tosca and Chris Ballentine. Watch the recording here.
Alumni Digital Festival 2020 - New 'Wonderchicken' illuminates the origin of modern birds
If you missed the presentation by Earth Sciences' Daniel Field at the 2020 festival, it is still available to watch here.
Today, birds are ubiquitous, occupying virtually every corner of the Earth. Yet, until recently, we have known very little about the earliest stages of their evolutionary history. Daniel Field revealed the world's oldest modern bird fossil, and what it teaches us about how, when, and where living birds originated.
If you have any questions about alumni events, do please get in touch.
