Where The Magic Happens
Current Serving YGS Council Members
At the Yorkshire Geological Society, we pride ourselves on being diverse, friendly & inclusive. Below is a list of current YGS council members, once you know who we are, come & say hello when you see us at events (or even in the street!).
Colin Waters| President & Circular Editor
My initial interest in geology started through mineral collecting in the vicinity of my home town of Barrow-in-Furness. Following a Geology and Mineralogy degree at Oxford University I did a PhD at UC Cardiff on blueschist metamorphism and alpine deformation in Corsica. I started my 29-year career as a mapping geologist at the British Geological Survey in 1988. In 1994 I joined YGS Council for the first time after becoming project leader for the DoE City of Bradford Metropolitan District study, starting my long association of mapping Carboniferous rocks in the ‘Pennines’, that also included the Hexham, Pateley Bridge, Huddersfield, Rochdale, Glossop, Barnsley, Wigan and Derby sheets.
I had to stand down from Council in 1999 as by this time, over six consecutive winters, I was mapping in first Morocco then Mauritania, the Sahara providing a contrast from Yorkshire weather. An interest in anthropogenic deposits developed whilst mapping in the heartlands of the industrial revolution led ultimately into my involvement in the Anthropocene Working Group as Secretary from 2011, becoming their Chair from 2020–2024. Having retired from BGS in 2017 I have continued research via an Honorary Professorship at the University of Leicester, with more than 100 peer-reviewed papers (12 in the PYGS) and 80 book chapters, mainly on diverse aspects of Carboniferous and Anthropocene stratigraphy. I rejoined Council in 2019 becoming YGS Circular Editor in 2022 and President in December 2024.
