Profile

I live in Portsmouth, where I teach at the university – I’m a dad to two girls, and have a tortoise called Albert.

I love the outdoors, which is what got me interested in geology, along with watching David Attenborough on the TV when I was at school (we were both a lot younger then!).

Most people like to listen to soothing music to relax.  Me?  I like the sound of really loud bangs, doing clay and target shooting!

I started out studying geology at the University of Portsmouth 25 years ago, and I’m still there!  I’m now leading one of the courses, and teaching a new generation of students about the history of our planet, and the life that has existed on it over the last few billion years.

As well as teaching in the classroom and laboratories, I also take students out on fieldtrips to look at geology and fossils all around the country, and sometimes to other countries too.  It’s great to get out of the classroom and look at what we’re studying in the outdoors.

When I’m not teaching, I study microfossils (things like ancient plankton and pollen) as my research projects – these microscopic fossils can tell us a huge amount about the history of our planet, such as the ancient climate, sea level, ecosystems and biodiversity, and the age of the rocks that they’re found in.

My days at work are always different – one day I might get into work to give a class at 9am on how to make a map, or teaching students how to use a microscope!  Lots of my classes involved looking at fossils, so we often get lots of drawers of specimens out and help thte students to identify what things are, draw and label them, and then work out what the fossils can tell us about the ancient environment they came from (like was it under the ocean, or in a lake? How warm was the temperature? Was the sea level high or low? What age of rocks is it from?).

On other days, the best days for me, we might take the students out of the classroom on a fieldtrip – sometimes for a day, sometimes for a week or two.  We go to famous fossil collecting locations around the country, and also to other countries as well.  I’ve been on trips to America, Spain, Italy, France, Cyprus, which is great!

If I’m not teaching, then I also get to do research projects on my specialist area – microfossils.  A research day might start with putting some rocks into really strong acid to dissolve away everything except the fossils, followed by some time looking at the fossils under a microscope to say what species they are, and what they tell me about the ancient climate.

Another part of my job is outreach work – I often visit schools and science fairs and take some rocks and fossils, as well as a microscope, to show people what we can learn, and hopefully inspire schoolchildren to be the next generation of geologists and palaeontologists!