When Philippa (Pip) Liggins was choosing where to go to university, she couldn’t decide if she wanted to focus on climate change or volcanoes.

“I did geography at A level and volcanoes really grabbed me,” said Pip, who has just graduated from Lancaster University with a MSci Hons in Earth and Environmental Science.

But Pip was also fascinated by climate science and didn’t know which area interested her most.

“I chose Lancaster because you can combine a lot of different subjects, you do not have to choose in the first year. I could do volcanology and climate sciences, not something you can do everywhere,” Pip explains.

Pip also chose to do a four year course, spending her final year doing masters level modules and an extended research project. As well as gaining a First, she won the Lancaster Environment Centre prize for the best overall performance by a fourth year MSci or MArts programme.

Unsurprisingly, a volcanic field course to Mount Etna was a main highlight of Philippa’s time at Lancaster.

“It was erupting at the time we went, so we were able to stand on a volcano and see what was happening, we were watching volcanism in action.”

Pip also walked down lava tubes, big hollow cylinders formed by previous eruptions. “There were three levels, so we walked in the top lava tube: the walls had fallen through in some places so we could see the tube below, and understand the volume of lava that would have flowed through. We could pick up a piece of lava and think you were once molten.”

The lecturers on the trip talked about their research and encouraged the students to think like researchers.

“We would go out to an unidentified bit of volcano and try and work out what happened, what formed it.

“The lecturers are fantastic, they can’t do enough for you. If you ask for something they will do their absolute best to do it for you. They make the subject interesting, you see it from their point of view and they try to get you invested in it.”

Today Pip knows clearly where her interests lie.

“I am now firmly in volcanology but interested at looking at how volcanoes affect the climate.”

For her final, masters dissertation Pip looked beyond the Earth’s boundaries, studying how differences in gravity, atmospheric pressure and temperature effect volcanic processes on other planets and moons in our solar system: Mercury, Venus, the Moon, Mars and Io, one of Jupiter’s moons.

“These results were used to generate a model of plausible volcanic styles across the solar system, ranked from most to least likely to be observed. So if a new planet was found we couldpredict what volcanic eruptions on that planet would be like.”

Pip has now been offered a PhD at Cambridge University, which follows on neatly from her dissertation. She will be investigating ‘atmospheric fingerprinting’, identifying how the gases emitted by volcanoes are process in the atmosphere, to see if you can tell by looking at a planet’s atmosphere whether there are volcanoes on the ground.

Find out more about studying Earth and Environmental Science at the Lancaster Environment Centre.