After a degree in Earth Sciences at Oxford and a PhD on the sedimentology and tectonics of an area of SW Turkey based in Edinburgh with annual secondments to the Universite de Paris-Sud, I sailed on Ocean Drilling Program Leg 160 to the Eastern Mediterranean. Following a post-doc position in Edinburgh working on some of the samples we recovered from the cruise, I moved to Cambridge to work for CASP as a field geologist. I led their Russian Far East Project which involved extended fieldwork in Sakhalin, the Russian island north of Japan and was one of the first western geologists to work there after the end of the Cold War. It was an amazing experience, scientifically and politically.

In 1999 I was awarded a Wolfson Dorothy Hodgkin Royal Society Fellowship to develop a new isotopic tracer for reconstructing the connectivity history of marine gateways - a key control on major changes in ocean circulation and climate. I moved this fellowship from Cambridge to Bristol in 2002 and was appointed to a lectureship in the School of Geographical Sciences in 2004.

Much of my research subsequently has focussed on multi-disciplinary (geochemistry, numerical modelling, sedimentology, tectonics, palaeontology) research on marine gateways principally through EU-funded Marie Curie Initial Training Networks. I now lead a major international scientific drilling initiative, IMMAGE, that will recover an 8 million year record of Mediterranean-Atlantic exchange to evaluate its role in local, regional and global climate. IMMAGE is the first land-2-sea drilling project in the world involving both offshore coring with IODP and onshore with ICDP. The first element of the drilling is the offshore IODP Expedition 401 which is scheduled to sail from December 2023 to February 2024. I am Co-chief Scientist on this cruise.

I am currently Deputy Head of School and was School Education Director between 2017-2020.