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Last updated 6th March 2025

I am a geologist and geoscientist with broad disciplinary interests ranging from reconstructing past climate and environmental change to ethics and inclusion in geoscience education. My earliest academic work was in history and linguistics, but following a PhD in geology I focused for some years on using the magnetic and physical properties of sediments in lakes and speleothems in caves to understand past and present environmental change. After moving from the University of Waikato (NZ) to the University of Huddersfield (UK) in 2018 to develop a new Geography programme, I began combining my disciplinary interests in projects that included both scientific and pedagogical/social aspects. My current research interests fall under three strands: sedimentary geology as a means to study past environments; social and political dimensions of geoscience education and practice; and using geology as a tool to better understand human impacts on fragile environments.

Current and recent projects include:

1. Mining for Meaning: the Geoethics of Extractive Industries (funded by the British Academy). Building an interdisciplinary understanding of conceptions of ethics in geoscientific education and practice particularly with respect to mining, through engaging with stakeholders in three mining areas in the UK, New Zealand and South Africa.
2. Monitoring Nutrients in Cave Waters (funded by Natural England). Caves are very fragile environments both in terms of their ecology but also their biophysical processes. Excess nutrients in waters entering the cave can change the dynamics of the environment. This environmental monitoring project is focused on understanding the flow of nutrients through cave systems.
3. Geodiversity education to promote pro-environmental behavioural intention. Significant research exists on the value of sustainability education at biodiverse tourist sites as a means to increase pro-environmental behaviour intention in visitors. However, it is not known whether sites whose touristic interest is partly or primarily due to geological and landscape features can also function in this way. This project, in association with the Buxton Civic Association, is focused on investigating the effects of geodiversity education at Poole’s Cavern, a show cave in Buxton, Derbyshire.
4. Approaches to increasing a sense of belonging for students from under-represented groups in geography and geoscience undergraduate degrees (funded by the Natural Environment Research Council). This project worked with current and recent geography and geoscience undergraduate students from under-represented groups to understand their experiences of their study programmes and to co-create a set of recommendations for making geography and geoscience a place of belonging for all. For our results, visit geoaccess.org.uk.
5. A long perspective on flooding frequency in New Zealand from speleothem magnetism (funded by the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment). Speleothems are deposits of calcium carbonate in caves, such as stalagmites, stalactites and flowstones. When cave streams flood, they may deposit sediment on the speleothem surface, which subsequently gets incorporated into the speleothem. This project uses magnetic techniques to quantify the sediment in flowstones from Waipuna Cave, New Zealand, to understand flooding frequency over the Holocene.
6. Mineralogy of sand grains at the surface of coastal dunes (funded by a fellowship from the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre, University of Huddersfield). Coastal dunes are key providers of ecosystem services such as storm surge protection as well as important habitats for endangered organisms. Understanding how sand is eroded and transported in coastal dunes is key for land managers and conservationists. This project uses X-ray computed tomography and scanning electron microscopy to investigate how different distributions of minerals in dune sand may affect erosion and transport.

I welcome enquiries from potential postgraduate students who are interested in working on sedimentary and cave systems, social aspects of geoscientific education and practice, or X-ray computed tomography of geological materials.