Dear BERGers,

It has been brought to the BERG organisers' attentions that the link to the Spring 2020 schedule was only viewable by the owners/creators of the document. A classic kerfuffle, indeed. This has been fixed!

Special thanks to the people who reached out about this issue: Elizabeth Renner, Jade Hooper, Kirsten Blakey, Tzu-Yun Lin, and any others we might have missed!

The new link is: https://stir.box.com/s/2nz26sgrlkwmjl72a5oz7j8uuo1qmdd7

Please do take the time to sign up for talks this semester, by viewing the available dates and e-mailing organisers Gema Martin-Ordas and Sarah Kraemer with your chosen slot and the title of your talk. Urge a colleague with relevant research interests to sign-up! We welcome suggestions for speakers as well.

(Special thanks to David Pritchard for some fantastic suggestions for speakers who are traveling through Scotland!)

We also welcome anyone with interesting news, ideas, or opportunities outside of BERG meetings to forward those along! A great example was Zsuzsa Lugosi making plans for a social BERG movie night soon. That is the spirit!

This e-mail is also a reminder that today's BERG meeting is dedicated to the plight of the Koalas and humans affected by the recent/current bushfires in Australia. BERG members are welcome to read the article(s) attached in the previous update e-mail and discuss them over snacks at 5:30pm today in the Psychology common room.

While we are on the topic,

The department's own Sarah Vick took the theme of this week's discussion to heart, and reached out to Kris Descovich – an Australian former post doc in Animal Welfare at Stirling, and currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Queensland – to see if she could suggest what BERG folk could do to help support those dealing with the wildfires.

This is the message she had for all of us:

"That is so kind of you all to be thinking of us and great that the fires are getting coverage internationally. We had a terrible start to our fire season up here but on the whole have been pretty lucky, but down in some of the southern states the damage is really at a level that is hard to comprehend. There are quite a few places that are collecting and organising donations. New South Wales has had a huge influx of donations through celebrity support, so it would be better to direct donations to Victoria I think. The two that I believe would be best are the Country Fire Authority (www.cfa.vic.gov.au/donate1) and Wildlife Victoria (www.wildlifevictoria.org.au). Because these are bushfires and not house fires they are largely being tackled by the rural fire brigades (e.g. the CFA) which are pretty much made up of all volunteers. Similarly, with the wildlife rescue and care as these are also almost entirely volunteer run, and carers are usually spending their own money to buy everything they need like milk, blankets, petrol. I think any support will go a long way.

Thanks again for thinking of us all, and all of the people and wildlife affected!

Please say hi to all of the old BERG’ers for me. J

Kris"

BERG members are able to click on the links if they feel empowered to donate to Dr. Descovich's two suggested organisations.

One final note: This semester we will be in special need of volunteers to introduce weekly speakers, take on the task of setting up the snack table, and clear up everything afterwards. This is due to organiser-Sarah's fluctuating research schedule at Living Links, and organiser-Gema's long commute to/from England. We will create a sign-up document for this duty, and disseminate that shortly. 

This week, Kristine Gandia has kindly volunteered!

If anything, the theme of this e-mail was "The Who's Who of Who e-mails BERG coordinators about Who and What!" Do you want to see your name in bold?

E-mail us!

And let's have a high-Koalaty meeting later today, shall we?

🐨

Sarah and Gema

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