Dwejra: of land, sea, and sky

Wirt Għawdex will hold the sixth in its series of talks for 2025 on Friday, the 6 June at 6:30pm at St Cecilia Chapel, Għajnsielem. The talk by Prof. Joseph Caruana, which will be delivered in English, will focus on Dwejra.

Dwejra is a gem of the Maltese Islands — a time-capsule of geological history, a showcase ofecological adaptation, and a window unto our home galaxy (the Milky Way) and the Universe at large. This lecture will guide participants through Dwejra’s geological and human history, uncovering some of the site's lesser known wonders along the way. 

Beginning with a tour of its terrestrial features — geological, ecological and archaeological — we will then explore its underwater marvels, before broadening our view to the cosmic perspective afforded by its dark skies. The session will conclude with an overview of the challenges and threats facing this unique site, and the vital role every citizen can play its conservation.

The speaker is an astrophysicist at the University of Malta and President of Wirt Għawdex. Fascinated by Dwejra since a very young age, he has conducted scientific studies of the site, including its underwater geomorphology and night sky. 

He has long been an advocate for the preservation of Dwejra and its dark skies, and maintains a dedicated website (www.dwejra.net).

Caruana read for a joint honours B.Sc. in physics and mathematics at the University of Malta (UM). 

Following this, he carried out his doctoral research at the Department of Physics of the University of Oxford, where he read for a DPhil in astrophysics as a Marie Curie research fellow in a network associated with the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope NIRSpec instrument. At Christ

Church, Oxford, he tutored General Relativity and Cosmology. 

In 2012 he moved to Berlin, taking up a postdoctoral research position in astrophysics at the Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik (AIP) in Potsdam, as a member of the Galaxies & Quasars group and the MUSE Consortium. In 2016 he joined the Department of Physics and the Institute of Space Sciences and Astronomy (ISSA) at UM, where he lectures on optics, astrophysics and cosmology, and the philosophy of science.

His main research interests encompass the early universe, galaxy formation & evolution, galactic dynamics, and the history of astronomy. At UM he initiated a light pollution research group, leading an ongoing night sky brightness monitoring effort, with a particular focus on light pollution’s effects upon the environment, ecology, and human health. He is also interested in the application of statistical methods and mathematical models to hyperbaric medicine.

Caruana is a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a member of the European Astronomical Society and the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Since 2021 he has been serving as President of Wirt Għawdex.

After the talk there will be time for questions from the audience and discussion. APS Bank is sponsoring our series of talks while Delicata Winery are kindly sponsoring the events’ post-talk drinks.

The event on Facebook can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1876610853139669.

Wirt Għawdex is a voluntary non-governmental organisation founded in 1981 with the aims of fostering the knowledge of our heritage amongst all levels of society and to strive to safeguard the natural, archaeological, historical and anthropological patrimony of the islands of Gozo and Comino.