James Hammond is Professor of Geophysics at Birkbeck, University of London, a NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow and Director of the Mount Paektu Research Centre. He is also a Fellow and Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society and an Honorary Research Associate at University College London. His research is focused on using seismology to image magma beneath volcanic settings, with projects in East-Africa, the Chilean Andes and northeast China and the Korean Peninsula. He leads the Mount Paektu Research Centre: a group working to build international scientific collaborations with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.