Tom Hodgkinson, a member of St John’s, is on the second year of his MSc in Volcanology and Geological Hazards at the University of Lancaster.
In July this year he embarked on a 5 month placement at the University of Colima in Mexico, helping to monitor the active volcano near Colima as part of his research project.
“The volcano has been very quiet while I’ve been here, and you’ll be pleased to know we didn’t get any of the recent earthquakes or hurricanes. The research project I’m doing is comparing the build-ups to the last two eruptions (in terms of e.g. localised earthquakes, gases coming out, unusual heat signals we can monitor with a thermal camera), and in the next few weeks I’ll get to go on a flight over the summit in a small plane so we can see if anything similar to that is happening right now!
Away from all of that, there’s been lots of other fun things to do – we’ve been a few times to the beach resort Manzanillo, which has a beautiful drive to get there and lots to do when you’re there. We also visited another volcano much further to the east which we were able to climb. This weekend I’m going to Mexico City to see the F1 which I’m very excited about, then we have the Day of the Dead festival just after that which will be interesting to experience.”
