Distal volcanic ash layers are increasingly being used to provide chronology for sedimentary archives to investigate the timescales and propagation of climate change across the globe, further understand hominid migration, and constrain the tempo of volcanism for hazard assessments. The DPhil student will be working within an interdisciplinary group working on paleoenvironmental cores, archaeological sites, and volcanoes around the world. Projects can focus on the identification and characterisation of volcanic deposits to establish chronology (relative and absolute) for sedimentary archives, or chemical characterisation of the volcanic deposits to investigate magmatic processes. We have facilities to chemically characterise the volcanic deposits (electron microprobe) and a laboratory to identify non-visible ash layers (crypotephra). Potential field areas include Italy, Ethiopia, Mexico, and Japan.
Experience & Qualifications
BSc (Hons) in Environmental Science (1999), MSc in Geology (2001), PhD in Geology (2005); all from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Psotdoctoral Research Fellow in Earth Sciences at the Unversity of Bristol (3 years; 2006-2008). Research Fellow (5 years), Senior Research Fellow (3 years) and Associate Professor (3 years; since 2017) in Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art (RLAHA), School of Archaeology, University of Oxford. Supervised 6 DPhil students to completion. Currently have 2 doctoral students.
