Not sure what I'm looking for on here – initially meeting up with people and seeing if and how we get on. Anything else depends on the results! At my most romantic, I'd ultimately like to meet someone, fall in love, have a wonderful relationship and a life with chickens, a vegetable garden, an orchard and a goat, but am quite poor as well as busy with things like university and trying to have a career at the moment, so that might have to wait a while . . .

I'm a bit of a mixture of things - scientific, logical, private, cerebral; musical, lateral, sociable, active. Different things at different times. I could never choose what to learn! That's how I ended up in archaeology: my favourite way to spend time is doing something that involves body, mind and a bit of inspiration - which is what I enjoy about things like gardening, cooking, singing, hiking and dancing, too. Archaeology is not a career path you choose if you're bothered about earning money . . . My most rewarding work so far has been in the public sector - badly paid for really high standards of work, but you do feel like what you're doing matters and actually helps people. Though working in academia would be nice - it's tough to get into, but I'm not giving up on the idea yet!

A PhD in archaeology, part-time, as well as working part-time in public sector archaeology. Also doing a little bit of teaching and things at the university and doing a lot of swing- and blues-dancing, as well as classical singing. I've recently started regularly DJing at a blues social dance night. I love finding random things to do at weekends, like to get out of the city for a stomp in the countryside or a visit to somewhere historical/archaeological when I can, go to the Watershed or Cube to see foreign-language/independent/arthouse films, occasionally make it to the Old Vic for plays, read proper books when I have time and listen to a lot of music (swing to make me happy, blues and lyrical stuff to help me feel sad or thoughtful – e.g. Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell, Elliot Smith, Nick Drake, Anja Garbarek – and classical to help me work).

Archaeology things like identifying random metal objects people find in the garden, academic-type sciencey thinking, dancing, singing, dressing up a bit vintage or completely practical, depending on the occasion and weather, not taking myself too seriously, making people laugh, being silly, ranting about politics or discussing evolutionary theory in the pub . . . Also occasionally completely reinventing myself or packing a bag and heading off to the other side of the world for extended adventures.

Short, gingerish, maybe a bit bossy . . .

Books –
Mara and Dann, Doris Lessing
Blindness, José Saramago
A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf
Death and the Penguin, A Matter of Life and Death, Andrey Kurkov
The Disposessed, The Left Hand of Darkness, the Earthsea books, Ursula Le Guin
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
Philip Pullman
Neil Gaiman
Loads of others, plus a pile of must-reads that I swear I'll get around to one day . . .

TV things I'm watching at the moment or was recently: The Thick of It, Getting On, Miranda, The Killing, Friday Night Dinner, Fresh Meat, (um, Merlin, sorry), Dr Who, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, QI, Only Connect. Classics like Monty Python, Jeeves and Wooster, Blackadder, Fawlty Towers, M*A*S*H (Alan Alda as Hawkeye was my earliest crush, which probably explains my soft spot for men in 50s Hawaiian shirts), then more recently Black Books, Father Ted, Green Wing, the Mighty Boosh, Flight of the Conchords. Radio 4, e.g. the News Quiz, the Now Show, a good play without too much wrist-slitting. I love a bit of R4 drama like last year's Complete Smiley by John Le Carré. And more recently The Waves, by Virginia Woolf. And you can't beat In Our Time for a lovely bit of Melvyn Bragg and his brain!

For music, see above.

Films – too many to list. Prefer independent/foreign language. I recently saw Beasts of the Southern Wild and On the Road, both of which I loved – though you should never see the film instead of reading the original Kerouac. Saw Surviving Life (Theory and Practice) last year, also excellent (funny and dark at the same time). Another independent one called Frozen River. Love a bit of Studio Ghibli. Foreign language: loads of French ones I can't remember the names of, Black Cat White Cat, Belleville Rendezvous, L'Illusioniste, anything with Jaques Tati, anything by Almodovar. Amelie for romance. Easy Rider, The Shining, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Silly British comedies like Sean of the Dead. Classics, like anything with Alec Guinness or by Hitchcock.

Food – vegetarian, preferably non-British (Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Italian, Spanish, Mexican), though I do a pretty good veggie sausage toad-in-the-hole.

Family and friends, dreams, music, science, green/old places/the sea.

Human evolution - e.g. what could the evolutionary explanation for that behaviour/trait be? Friends and family, places I've been or want to travel to, politics/how the world could work better if I was in charge ;-), stories, music and dancing, how on earth to manage all the things I'm doing at the moment, pay the rent and still work on my thesis . . .

Hunting down danceable jazz/blues in Bristol/further afield like a chrome-soled tiger . . . Or choir rehearsals followed by pub, or pub minus choir, or going to the cinema to see a strange surreal Czech film, or cooking vegetarian Vietnamese noodle soup and summer rolls for friends, with unusual beers, wine or gin and tonic.

For a scientist, it's a bit odd that I sometimes do my own tarot readings. But it's all based on Jungian psychological principles about archetypes, symbols and the unconscious, you know!

You think I sound interesting.