People are just discovering that academics often do ‘other work’ to support their research work. I’ve done this so often, small consulting projects funding grading buyout so I can conduct interviews etc… normal business.
I first met @siouxsiew.bsky.social at a school science fair in Wellington where she was in a small marquee teaching kids all about bioluminescence, over a decade ago, so I'd say she's been doing outreach work as part of her job way before all this kicked off.
I'm damn sure University of Auckland has no damn problems with @siouxsiew.bsky.social being a "celebrity" when Film Festival audiences up and down the nation were seeing MS. INFORMATION - which was an awful lot of free PR, which is the best kind.
I thought universities loved their academics to have public profiles. Just not the way Siouxsie did it by, you know, calming the population and increasing knowledge in an accessible way.