Research
My Research History
My academic studies started back in 2009 when I undertook a geography degree at Royal Holloway, University of London. My undergraduate degree introduced me to the importance of using past climate events to understand modern climate change. This introduced me to studies of the Quaternary Period; the last 2.6 Million years, where the earth’s climate has undergone cycles of cold glacial and warm interglacial periods.
After graduating in 2012 I stayed at Royal Holloway and studied for a masters degree in Quaternary Science.
Carrying out fieldwork at Loch Etteridge for my undergraduate dissertation.
Researchers coring Lake Baunt Siberia. Photograph copywright to Dr. A. Shchetnikov.
Ph.D. Research
My Ph.D. studied how environments responded to past periods of abrupt climate changes over the last 30,000 years. This time period covers the Last-Glacial-Maximum (LGM) and transition into the current interglacial period, the Holocene.
My work reconstructed how environments changed during this period in southern Siberia, a region being very strongly influenced by modern human driven climate and environmental change.
During my Ph.D. studies I was based at the Department of Geography, University College London and was funded by the London NERC DTP.
Current research
Since completing my Ph.D. I have been based at Royal Holloway, University of London. During this time I have worked on reconstructing environments over different timescales. This includes looking at modern lake samples from Diss Mere (Norfolk, UK), to help to understand how weather influences the lakes functioning. Alongside this, I have worked on understanding the lakes responses to climate changes during critical past time-periods during the current interglacial (the Holocene). This lake is particularly important for this, as the lake sediments are ‘annually laminated’, meaning the can show changes in the system on a year to year scale, which is rare. My work has been able to highlight how past changes in the suns activity have an influence on atmospheric dynamics.
Alongside working on sites in the UK, my recent work has also studied past interglacials, including from Armenia over 300,000 years ago, a time-period critical for human expansion.
Alongside my research I am also a university lecturer in the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London. Here I teach about changes in biogeography, global issues for conservation and additionally on specialist masters courses around understanding past climate changes during the Quaternary period into the modern day.
Taking water samples from Diss Mere, Norfolk.