Assistant Professor of anthropology and geology Suzanne Pilaar Birch had a dilemma. She’d just been offered her grant-funded fieldwork opportunity in Cypress, yet her son’s birth was just three months away. Was it safe? Were their other women scientists who had worked in the field while expecting? She turned to her co-created site, Trowelblazers, that both celebrates past and present archaeologists, paleontologists, and geologists and educates future scientists and the public about their contributions. It now provides a social network, too. Once Pilaar Birch entered #pregnantinthefield on both the site and social media she received fantastic stories of female scientists whose work in the field while pregnant were both entertaining and inspiring. She shares the responses—and photographs—with the Twitterverse and the internationally read Guardian newspaper. Read their article here.
