RGZ Team Spotlight: James Ansell

Hi everyone! I’m James and I’ve joined the RGZ team as a Communication/Engagement intern. I’m a PhD Candidate at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS) which is part of the Australian National University (ANU). I’m also a Sessional Academic (read: Tutor and marker) for a couple undergraduate courses covering things from ‘the Public Awareness of Science’ to ‘Science, Risk and Ethics’. And to pay the bills I work for the ANU in an administration role at (essentially) the Business School as well as a few other odd jobs.

But I am at heart an errant astronomer – having double majored in Astronomy/Astrophysics and Science Communications at the ANU for my B.Sci, graduating with Honours in 2015. I grew up in Alice Springs in the middle of Australia and had a purely spectacular night sky to look at. Something I only appreciated when I lived Brazil after graduating high school.

As part of my undergraduate studies I did dabbled a bit in some astronomy research. Firstly I did a project with Dr Charley Lineweaver (if you don’t know Charley, you should!) looking at the (surprisingly fuzzy) distinctions we make between objects in space e.g. planet, dwarf-planet, asteroid, moon. Let’s just say the project didn’t go where I thought it would.

Secondly, as part of an Astronomy Winter School I did research looking for ‘intergalactic stellar bridges’. Essentially chains of stars going from one galaxy to another which may have played a role in stellar formation in galaxies. I think. It was several years ago and the weather was against us when we went to do observations, so it didn’t go anywhere and my memory is pretty fuzzy on the details.

Outside of academia, I was involved in the ANU Black Hole Society (the Astronomy Club), the ANU Physics Society and the Science Communication Society. Also I absolutely love the TV series Cosmos, both the Carl Sagan original which I saw as a teenager and then the Neil deGrasse Tyson remake from a few years ago.

Since my astronomy research didn’t turn out particularly well, I ended up going down the science communication route. I’ve since done research looking into the effects of fictional doctors on young people’s perceptions of healthcare, factors affecting the uptake of vaccinations in Australia and the relationship between people’s perceptions of ‘Superfoods’ and their health behaviours. But I do miss the Astronomy and Astrophysics side of things so I’m super excited to be able to combine my two interests as part of the Radio Galaxy Zoo team.

(Also for some random fun facts about me – I used to host a music program on a Canberra community radio station, I founded the Canberra pop-culture festival ‘GAMMA.CON’ which is basically our local Comic-Con and I fly Hot Air Balloons with the ACT branch of the Scout Association.)

I’ll be hanging around in the forums under the name ‘JRAnsell’ and am keen to hear from you – if you’ve got questions about RGZ specifically or astronomy more broadly let me know! You can also hit me up on Twitter @radiogalaxyzoo or at radiogalaxyzoo@gmail.com.