Meet: Julia Migné

Julia Migné of Conservation Optimism

What do you work on? 

Julia Migne of Conservation Optimism

I create resources about the natural world and highlight what people are doing to protect it. Those resources can be posters, audio files like podcasts, videos and blogs. I also organise events like our annual short film festival to screen inspiring movies about the natural world.

What is your typical day like?

My days are usually quite different from one another so it is hard to describe what a typical day might look like! I constantly have a pile of post-it notes on my desk that I use as a to-do list so the first thing I do when I arrive in the morning is usually to assess what tasks are the most urgent.

I create a diversity of content as part of my role so I might be interviewing someone for a podcast episode in the morning, move on to creating some posters or learning resources around a species or topic and then spend my afternoon working on preparing for events such as our annual film festival for example.

Why did you become a scientist?

As far as I can remember, I have always had a passion for the natural world and kept telling everyone that I would study animals in the wild when I grew up. However, after doing a degree in biology I realised that I was not that keen on being a researcher and that I actually preferred writing about and sharing the amazing research done by other people so I became a science communicator!

When you were in school, what was your favourite subject?

I went to school in France and loved reading and writing so French (which would be the equivalent of English here in the UK) was my favourite subject alongside biology.

How do you relax when you’re not doing science?

I spend a lot of time reading and love to go out and take pictures of nature.

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