For my undergraduate degree I studied Earth Sciences, graduating with a first class Master of Earth Sciences degree from the University of Oxford in 2024. During this degree I studied a number of Earth Sciences topics as well as gaining fieldwork and laboratory skills. Prior to my DPhil, my research primarily focussed on palaeoclimate records, with my Master's project exploring the relationship between the Miocene Climatic Optimum warming event and the Columbia River Flood Basalt large igneous province; and a summer placement at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where I used CT scanning to analyse the distribution of ice rafted debris within sediment cores from Kobbefjord, Greenland, as a proxy for Holocene melting history in the Greenland ice sheet. Multiple field courses in Scotland and completing my undergraduate mapping project in Ord, Isle of Skye, created a fascination with the geological history of Scotland, which I am now studying for my PhD.
Current Research
My DPhil research project is titled 'The Coevolution of Tectonics and Life in the Precambrian of Northwest Scotland and the Outer Hebrides'. It focuses on the formation, metamorphic, and tectonic history of the Lewisian Gneiss Complex, some of Britain's oldest rocks, on the Outer Hebrides, and how it compares with that on the mainland of Northwest Scotland. This involves fieldwork, petrology, geochemical analysis, geochronology, and palaeomagnetic data analysis. I also study microfossil assemblages within the sedimentary sequence that overlies the Lewisian Gneiss Complex on mainland northwest Scotland, the Torridonian Supergroup, to understand the evolution of life in these rocks from approximately one billion years ago.
