How a Hong Kong dinosaur expert is making her mark in what was ‘a gentleman’s science’
Natalia Jagielska, dinosaur researcher, illustrator and scientific consultant, explains how women are under-represented in her field
At first glance, Natalia Jagielska’s workspace looks like a clash between a scholarly science laboratory and a whimsical art studio. On one hand, she studies reconstructions of 200-million-year-old dinosaurs; on the other, she creates “cute” digital sketches of Jurassic-era creatures.
For Jagielska, a 28-year-old postdoctoral researcher in palaeontology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), the two worlds are inseparable. Apart from research, she also works as a freelance illustrator and scientific consultant for television, books and video games.
Jagielska’s journey to Hong Kong was a meandering road. Born in Poland, she moved to the United Kingdom as a child. Having grown up as a “Jurassic Park kid”, she joined an integrated master’s programme in Earth science at the University of Manchester the year she turned 18.
After that, she headed to the University of Edinburgh to complete her PhD in palaeontology, but her fascination with Chinese fossils – sparked by a British Council cultural immersion programme in Chengdu and Hangzhou in mainland China – eventually pulled her into Asia.
“There are a lot of sites across China and Hong Kong which have amazing fossils that have not been described yet,” Jagielska says. “It’s like an unexplored frontier with very different animals, new species and new features.”
