My research interests focus on understanding and using chemical proxies to reconstruct past climate systems. I am an isotope geochemist working on cave deposits such as stalagmites record and the ways in that they record changes in the local environment and regional climate over long periods of time. Currrent projects involve monitoring cave environments and stalagmite growth at sites across Europe, India and rhe tropical Pacific with the ultimate objective of undestanding the long term patterns of extreme weather events across Europe and their links to other global climate systems such as the Asian monsoon and the El Nino-Souther Oscillation.  

I teach courses in geochemistry, igneous petrology, planetary geology and paleoclimatology. I also enjoy teaching geological mapping in the field.

Experience includes shipboard scientist on the Ocean Drilling Program and  Research Fellowships at the Universities of Birmingham, Hawaii, Cambridge and the Open University. I moved to Royal Holloway in 1989 and established new stable isotope laboratories and have been involved in wide range of research fields ranging from  meteorites and planetary geochemistry, marine geology, igneous petrology, mantle geochemisitry, genesis of  diamonds, the carbon cycle in the deep Earth, paleoenvironment reconstruction, cave science and Quaternary climatology.