I use a range of methods to investigate the past:

Lipid biomarkers:

These are basically chemical compounds from living tissue (plant, animal or microbe!) that are preserved in rocks and sediments and offer us chemical clues about past environmental conditions.

Stable isotopes:

In the nucleus of an atom of an element, there are protons and neutrons. The number of protons tell you which element you are dealing with, while the combined protons and neutrons give you the atomic mass of the element. The actual number of neutrons, however, can vary between 'isotopes' of the same element - they have the same number of protons (so it's the same element) but the different number of neutrons gives them a different mass. These isotopes with different masses have different physical and chemical properties, meaning they behave differently in physical or biological reactions (plants fixing carbon dioxide, for example).....so, when we measure the ratio of stable isotopes of an element in, for example, a leaf or human hair, or a snail shell, we can get a lot of information about physical and biological processes from this.

2018 to date: PDRA on the NERC funded project Reducing Greenhouse Climate Proxy Uncertainty at the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham

2016 to 2018: Postdoctoral Fellow in the Hren Lab, Center for Integrative Geosciences, University of Connecticut USA

2015-2016: Postdoctoral Research Associate, Early Pottery Research Group, BioArCh, University of York UK

2015: Research Technician, QUEST, University of Reading

2014/15: PhD in Organic Geochemistry, University of East Anglia, UK

2010: Instrument Technician (Stable isotopes and trace elements), Chemical Analytical Facility, University of Reading UK

2010: BSc in Environmental Science, University of Reading UK

2008-10: Research Assistant, Geochemistry and Stable Isotopes, University of Reading UK

2007: Certificate in Natural Sciences, Open University UK

In this paper we develop a new organic molecular proxy for reconstructing the vapour pressure deficit of the atmosphere, and use this to identify an increase in moisture availability during the Middle Miocene Climatic Optimum in Spain

We used modern plants from a UK saltmarsh to investigate whether single compounds in the waxy coating of leaves of plants responded the same way to the bulk leaf tissue to changes in the environment during two growing seasons - key message is not all of them did! Looks like the biochemistry of the plants is pretty important here.....

Why did early hunter gatherers in Japan develop pottery? Why did the use expand? Did this relate to huge changes in climate around 12,000 years ago? We explored this issue by extracting fats from ancient 'Jomon' pottery from Japan, and found that pottery over a 9,000 year period had a remarkably consistent use - the processing of fish!!

Remember those leaf wax lipids I mentioned? Their hydrogen isotope composition is often thought to reflect the isotope composition of source water, however in our study here we show that plant biochemistry is often an important, and poorly understood, parameter influencing these values......

In this paper we identify the oldest example of millet processing so far in ancient pottery, identifying a lipid that is characteristic of this important cereal crop in Bronze Age pottery from Korea and northern Europe