Life in the wild is filled with bears, poisonous snakes, and insects that can kill with a sting.
But they don’t faze Grace Kinney Broderick and being among them isn’t the wildest thing she has done.
Armed with a camera, a PhD, and a good tolerance for danger, the University of Cambridge student has long been capturing leopards, foxes, African wild dogs, lions, zebras, and birds on camera.
All in the name of capturing nature at its rawr-est.
As it’s not every day you meet an adventure, we caught Broderick for a quick Teams call to find out the wildest things she’s done in the field.
Her answers weren’t exactly what we expected.
At Cambridge, Broderick is studying avian evolution and morphology under the guidance of Dr. Daniel Field’s research group. Source: Grace Kinney Broderick
Wildest thing you’ve ever done abroad?
For this, Broderick had two answers.
“I would say the month-long fossil expedition in the Sahara Desert, Niger, Africa was the wildest thing I’ve done outside of my academic work,” she shares. “But moving to the UK was wild for me.”
Moving abroad for years is a significant undertaking for many, and Broderick acknowledges this. However, for her, it was an adventure on its own.
“I’ve never really been a huge homebody,” says Broderick. “I’ve been pretty comfortable with going out on my own. When I moved to Boston, I didn’t know anyone there — and it was the same as when I moved halfway across the world to Bristol and Cambridge.”
Growing up, Broderick’s mother often encouraged her to see the world.
“She’d tell me, ‘I don’t want you to be afraid of the world’, so every summer, we’d travel out of the US for a couple of weeks,” she shares.
But the fact that she’d now be away for much longer — it’s a crazy thing to do, but it’s for a good reason.
In search of possibilities outside her bubble
Broderick found that being in the US meant that she wouldn’t be able to think about possibilities beyond its borders.
“Living in the US is so insular and it’s extremely US-focused,” she says. “I only thought about leaving home because when I was looking for other palaeontologists, they all happened to be outside of the US.”
Broderick found many who were interested in birds in Canada and Spain.
“If I pursued law, it would make sense for me to just study in the US,” she says. “But this is different, and being abroad was the best choice for it, even though being away from family for years to be in an unfamiliar place would be difficult.”
A photo of a Monk Parakeet that Broderick took. Source: Grace Kinney Broderick
What is the wildest thing you’ve ever done to pass a class?
This was a tricky question for Broderick to answer, as her master’s classes did not include any fieldwork.
But there was an ornithology course that required the class go to their local park for 30 minutes of the day and log in every bird they encountered.
“It’s ‘wild’ because it’s just your local park, you’re not going anywhere crazy,” she says. “It gave us the idea that there’s nothing more than just pigeons, but we were wrong. There were so many different birds that we had no idea were native to our park.”
Broderick fell in love with dinosaurs at the age of six. She even participated in her first dig at 14. Source: Grace Kinney Broderick
Getting a degree in palaeontology is already wild in itself
Palaeontology isn’t something that’s often ventured into. We could even say that many grow out of their love for dinosaurs towards the end of their childhood.
But not Broderick. Her love for it remains strong, so she decided to dedicate her life to it.
It’s a niche field, but a vital one.
Palaeontology helps us understand how life evolved, how ecosystems change over time, and even how modern species might adapt — or struggle — to the changes happening in the world.
That’s not all; the fieldwork itself is demanding. As seen in Indiana Jones or Jurassic Park, it is about hiking for miles with heavy gear, enduring harsh weather, and sometimes spending weeks in remote areas with little access to modern comforts is a part of the job.
So, this path isn’t for the faint of heart, but for Broderick, it’s a calling worth digging for.
