I completed my PhD looking at Holocene relative sea level change in 2004. I took a research/teaching position at Exeter University for two years and then moved to Coventry University in 2006 as a permanent lecturer.

My research interests and publications are mainly based around the use of diatoms and sediments for palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, predominantly from coastal sites containing Holocene sediments. I have also worked in lacustrine environments with a number of colleagues using diatoms as a proxy for lake level change and charting climate and environmental change within lake basin catchments.

My current research focus is on the threat and causes of tsunami around the UK, global sea level response to ice sheet decay and rapid climate changes/periodicity within the Holocene. I am currently conducting fieldwork alongside a number of archaeologists in Scotland who are trying to elucidate the prevailing environments throughout the Mesolithic through to the middle ages for a number of key historic and archaeologically significant locations.

The subject of climate change is paramount to our understanding of future human and environmental systems. Within this large arena of scientific research, sea level changes in the past and the present affect all of the world’s coastline. The geological record of coastal change since the last glacial period is punctuated by rapid alterations in the sea surface, and as such, a better understanding of this phenomenon is required in order to plan for our future.