Blog from Dr. Christina van Midden
The EC conference held during the first week of December 2025 was a mix of workshops and presentations, giving delegates the stage to showcase their projects. The theme was resilient soils for a sustainable future, inviting delegates to present work on soils for climate, people, water, life and advances for soil. With dedicated poster sessions and oral presentations, it gave delegates the chance to discuss their work with peers. Posters and presentations were judged with prizes awarded for best talk and poster. Many congratulations to Catherine Martinez for best oral presentation, Sara Trojahn for best poster and Abbie Rogers for delegates choice on best poster.
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- Catherine Martinez
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- Sara Trojahn
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- Abbie Rogers
The conference started with a social bingo session, acting as an ice-breaker for the delegates to network. Further workshops focused on effective communication in a range of scenarios and audiences to equip delegates with tools to communicate both within and outside of academic audiences. A soils profile workshop aimed to demystify soil classification and allowed delegates to get their hands dirty by assessing multiple soil cores.
The following day, Past-President Prof. Jack Hannam gave an excellent keynote speech on her career journey, providing helpful tips and insights. This set the scene for a career session designed to showcase multiple pathways into soil science careers, with a great panel discussing among many items, the skills they found most useful in their disciplines.
At the end of the conference, the outgoing chair of the EC committee, Dr Dannielle Robb, was presented with the Outstanding Society Contribution Award. This was well deserved for her hard work on the committee to generate events and provide information useful for early career members, her efforts to get the first UK soil judging competition underway and her passionate dedication to soil science.
On a final note, it was very pleasing to hear from a delegate in the annual conference (that immediately followed the EC conference), was their observation that the EC members who had stayed on formed groups with each other. This showed that we had achieved our intention for the EC conference to provide a space for delegates to meet and connect with peers, connections that could last throughout their careers.
