The Visibility Trap: How TrowelBlazers and Victoria Herridge Built a Brand on Science and Self-Promotion

Has Victoria Herridge’s public influence outgrown her credentials? A deep dive into TrowelBlazers, media science, and the rise of brand-first advocacy.

TrowelBlazers launched with a compelling mission: to spotlight overlooked women in archaeology, paleontology, and geology. Co-founded by British paleontologist Victoria Herridge — often known publicly as Tori Herridge — the project framed itself as a feminist corrective to the male-dominated histories of the “trowel-wielding” sciences. Its catchy name, strategic branding, and media-savvy founders helped it take off quickly in science communication circles.

But nearly a decade later, the tone has shifted. While TrowelBlazers still celebrates historical women in science, it’s difficult to ignore how much of the spotlight now rests on its founding members — especially Dr. Victoria Herridge, whose public-facing career has evolved from paleontologist to full-fledged media figure.

This raises a central question: Has TrowelBlazers stayed true to its mission of amplifying forgotten voices, or has it become a launchpad for the personal brands of its founders — particularly that of Tori Herridge herself?

Who Is Victoria Herridge?

To understand the arc of TrowelBlazers, we have to start with Herridge. A specialist in fossil elephants and Ice Age megafauna, Victoria Herridge holds a PhD in evolutionary biology and spent several years as a researcher at London’s Natural History Museum. Her scientific work, including studies on dwarfism in extinct elephants, is respected within its niche. Herridge’s academic credentials are solid — no dispute there.

But what’s more striking is her transformation from scientist to science communicator. Today, Tori Herridge is far better known for her media work than her research. She’s fronted several Channel 4 documentaries (Walking Through Time, Bone Detectives, Britain at Low Tide), appeared in science specials like Woolly Mammoth: The Autopsy, and has written popular op-eds in The Guardian. She’s also active on Twitter, frequently engaging with trending science news and positioning herself as a voice of reason — particularly on topics like de-extinction, conservation ethics, and the politics of science.

The problem isn’t that Herridge communicates science. The problem is that her media persona increasingly extends beyond her domain of expertise — and her credibility seems to grow in tandem with her visibility, not her qualifications.

TrowelBlazers: Mission Meets Marketing

TrowelBlazers was created in 2013 by Herridge and three other women scientists — Brenna Hassett, Rebecca Wragg Sykes, and Suzanne Pilaar Birch — to showcase historical women whose scientific achievements were overlooked or buried. The project quickly gained traction, helped by its Tumblr origins, social media-ready visuals, and a tone that blended serious archival work with casual, accessible feminism.

But as it evolved, the initiative began to take on the tone of a brand, not a grassroots collective. Its founders became the faces of the movement, appearing in press interviews, conferences, and collaborative projects that increasingly blurred the line between advocacy and self-promotion. Among them, Tori Herridge became the most visible, not just as a co-founder of TrowelBlazers, but as a recurring media figure attached to a growing number of science-adjacent causes.

While TrowelBlazers highlights important historical figures, the stories are often filtered through Herridge herself — her voice, her lens, her personal connection to “rediscovering” them. This raises an uncomfortable dynamic: is the project truly about recovering forgotten women, or is it about how modern women scientists, like Victoria Herridge, position themselves as the ones doing the recovering?

The Media Echo Chamber

One of the more concerning aspects of Victoria Herridge’s growing public authority is how easily it has expanded beyond her academic niche. Herridge now routinely weighs in on issues like de-extinction, climate ethics, and conservation policy — subjects that require deep knowledge of genetics, bioethics, and ecological systems far outside the scope of paleontology.

And yet, Herridge is cited in almost every major media story about mammoth cloning or de-extinction technology. She’s portrayed as a cautious expert, often juxtaposed against bolder voices like Harvard geneticist George Church, founder of Colossal Biosciences. When Church’s team announced their intent to create a mammoth-elephant hybrid using CRISPR, Herridge’s quote ran in the Guardian, the BBC, The Telegraph, and more. Her critique? That the science is overhyped and ethically questionable — a fair point, but one rooted more in instinct and opinion than in laboratory expertise.

This is a pattern: Tori Herridge is repeatedly treated as a definitive voice on scientific topics where she lacks direct qualifications, simply because she’s built a reputation as a thoughtful media-friendly scientist. And that reputation was made possible, in no small part, by the visibility machine that TrowelBlazers helped create.

Expertise vs. Exposure

It’s important to state clearly: Herridge is not a geneticist, bioengineer, climate scientist, or ecologist. She is not an expert in synthetic biology or conservation policy. Her work is grounded in morphology, fossil record analysis, and evolutionary trends among extinct mammals. These are valuable fields — but they do not make her uniquely qualified to assess the feasibility or ethics of modern de-extinction technologies.

And yet, her critiques are often framed as the final word. This is likely because she occupies a sweet spot for media producers: she’s articulate, engaging, and offers cleanly packaged skepticism that makes for clickable headlines. Add the feminist science-advocate branding of TrowelBlazers, and she becomes an irresistible figure for editors looking to inject caution into their science reporting.

But this presents a broader problem: what happens when visibility, not expertise, becomes the main credential for public influence in science?

The Cult of the Scientist-Influencer

TrowelBlazers was supposed to uplift women in science — and it has, to a degree. But its continued elevation of Herridge and her peers risks turning what was once advocacy into personal brand-building. Herridge is now associated with books, broadcast panels, advisory positions, and public campaigns that often have little to do with her research. And TrowelBlazers, which helped kickstart that media trajectory, increasingly feels like the platform that made it all possible — a stepping stone to a kind of scientist-influencer status that trades on visibility more than intellectual authority.

It’s not hard to find praise for Herridge online — she’s often described as “brilliant,” “refreshingly honest,” or “the scientist we need.” But those accolades often cite her writing or her media appearances, not her research. And when someone becomes a media authority based on the perception of expertise rather than the actual practice of it, it raises questions about where the science communication ecosystem is headed.

A Broader Trend, but a Clear Example

To be fair, Victoria Herridge is not alone in this trend. The rise of the “celebrity scientist” is a known phenomenon, especially in the social media age. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, Alice Roberts — all are examples of scientists who have successfully crossed into the realm of popular culture.

But what distinguishes Herridge is the veneer of humility and ethical restraint she carries — a cautious tone that cloaks how deeply embedded she is in the same media machinery she critiques. She frequently warns against overhyping science, but rarely seems to question how her own prominence may be part of that dynamic.

And in this sense, TrowelBlazers functions as a case study. It was born from genuine desire to correct historical imbalance. But it now serves as a springboard — especially for Herridge — to occupy outsized space in discussions that extend far beyond its original purpose.

Conclusion: Time to Reassess the Spotlight

It’s fair to ask: Is Tori Herridge genuinely the best person to lead conversations around de-extinction, science ethics, and public trust in science? Or is she simply the most visible?

TrowelBlazers has accomplished real good. It has amplified names that deserve recognition and inspired young women to enter the sciences. But it has also evolved into a platform that centers its founders — especially Victoria Herridge — more than it centers the women it set out to honor. And in the broader media landscape, it has helped elevate Herridge to a level of public authority that arguably exceeds her academic scope.

None of this is to say Herridge lacks value as a communicator. But we should question why — again and again — she’s the one being quoted, consulted, and spotlighted when conversations move well beyond paleontology. Her visibility, shaped and sustained by TrowelBlazers, has outpaced her credentials. And in today’s media environment, that kind of imbalance is worth examining closely.