Academic Research
I've been a scientist at the University of Oxford for nearly 20 years, investigating how and why desert landscapes and ecosystems of Africa have changed over the last 200 thousand years and why that matters to humans past, present, and future.
A multiproxy sediment-core record, paleolake Makgadikgadi (82–21 ka) with implications for human occupation
Using molecular biomarkers to unpick the past.
Lessons from a lake bed: unpicking palaeo-hydrological change & human landscape use in the southern African interior.
Peeking into the lives of our ancestors who were lugging about lumps of silcrete on a salt-pan 75 thousand years ago.
Uneven surface moisture as a driver of dune formation on ephemeral lake beds.
The mysterious islands of the Makgadikadi: A model-based assessment of how these landforms evolve.
Inter hemispheric dynamics of the African rainbelt during the late Quaternary.
Using climate models and information from lake muds to understand natural climate cycles over millennial timescales in intertropical Africa.
Ecosystem resilience to late-Holocene climate change in the Upper Zambezi Valley.
Using pollen and charcoal to understand how and why Zambia's ecosystems have changed over the last 6000 years.
Implications of a new chronology for the Stone Age of the upper Zambezi Valley.
The long, long history of humans along the Zambezi River
An uncertainty-focused database approach to extract spatiotemporal trends from lake-status histories.
The rise and fall of African lakes.
Determining the response of African biota to climate change: using the past to model the future.
How Africa's environmental past can help us understand what's coming next.
Hydrological dynamics in the Middle Kalahari: Forcing and feedbacks.
How big lakes changed the climate and vegetation of southern Africa.
Mega-Lake in the Kalahari: A Late Pleistocene record of the Palaeolake Makgadikgadi system.
How the desert was once home to one of Africa's largest ever lakes.