Visiting  Scholars

Dr Mike Simms is working with Dr Ruffell on evidence for climate change in the Late Triassic as part of their ongoing investigation of the Carnian Pluvial Episode, and with Prof Reimer on the timing and scale of Holocene sea level change on the east coast of Northern Ireland. 

Dr Gillian Allmond is working with Professor Murphy on a project to mark the 175th anniversary of the Great Famine in Ireland.  She has completed a background history to 'famine roads' in County Fermanagh and future work will identify and record the surviving stretches of the roads in the modern landscape of County Fermanagh.  Gill is also developing a research project on the history and archaeology of children within the asylum system in Northern Ireland in the Victorian and Edwardian periods. 

Dr Bell is working with Prof Eileen Murphy and a number of colleagues within the School.  This will include work on:

- the significance of decorative motifs common to a range of Bronze Age artefact types inlcuding metal work and ceramics.   

- Assist in the development of a UG module on Cognitive Thinking in relation to archaeological research. 

Dr Ross Culloch is working with Dr Louise Kregting and other colleagues, including Dr Nick Horne on assessment and quantification of environmental impacts of marine renewable energy devices on key receptors, including benthos and marine mammals.  Current collaborative work has focused on advancing collision risk modelling to be more robust, considering uncertainties in both the behavioural ecology of animals and available empirical data, using seals and tidal energy devices as a hypothetical scenario.  Other areas of work include how accurate, informative and consistent cumulative impact assessments (CIAs) are.  Where CIAs are defined as an assessment of impacts from multiple stressors (e.g. shipping, construction activity) on a given receptor (e.g. a species of marine mammal).    

Dr Pedro R. Moya-Maleno is working with Professor Patrick Gleeson on a project to approach society and religion of Celtic Iron Age in Atlantic and Central Europe.  During this visit, research will include survivals and concordances of Celtic roots in Ireland and Britain related with other context, as the Iberian peninsula, from the perspective of Long Duration Processes and Ethnoarchaeology and, among others sources, through the Archaeology, Late-Medieval texts and Folklore.

Visiting Students

Researching coastal archaeology and the impacts of climate change, using remote sensing techniques to investigate and track coastal change and develop mitigation strategies to help the sector manage the threatened coastal archaeological resource.

This PhD research will explore the potential of multi-tissue sulphur and strontium isotope analysis and isoscape modelling to reconstruct past faunal movements. As a part of this she will be building sulphur isotope bioavailability maps (‘isoscapes’) across Scotland and southwest France using various sample materials. Additionally, she will measure movement in a wide variety of Palaeolithic fauna (including cave bear, horses, reindeer, and cattle) across various sites in Europe using both strontium and sulphur isotopes then attempt to recreate their migration patterns using spatial ecology and isoscapes. This project is based at the University of Aberdeen and Queens’s University Belfast, facilitating the use  of mass spectrometers for sulphur analysis. Her supervisors are Dr Kate Britton (University of Aberdeen) and Dr Neil Ogle (QUB).

In October of 2020, Emilie began her NERC (Natural Environmental Research Council) funded QUADRAT DTP PhD in Geoscience at the University of Aberdeen. Her research is to be conducted along side the ‘Chronologies and Changing Cultures on the Mongolian Steppe’ project under the supervision of Dr. Joshua Wright (University of Aberdeen) and Prof. Paula Reimer (14CHRONO Centre @ Qub). Her research will focus on compiling existing radiocarbon dates alongside newly dated samples from both northern and southern Mongolia, and aims to explore how nomadic pastoral communities of Mongolia adapted to the dynamic and changing environments of the Eurasian Steppe during the Middle Holocene, and the Bronze and Iron Ages. This project seeks to utilize the availability of high-quality chronological data to compile a model in which the periods of north-central Mongolia can be re-examined alongside attributes associated with these chronological periods such as; subsistence, monuments, and technologies in order to cross-examine these attributes against the changing environmental conditions of the Mongolian Steppe. Emilie will be conducting 14C dating at the 14CHRONO Centre for Climate, the Environment and Chronology at Queen’s University under the guidance of Prof. Reimer.

This research will build upon past research by (a) compiling existing radiocarbon dates, (b) collecting new radiocarbon dates from animal and human bone, (c) conducting Carbon and Nitrogen Stable Isotope analysis of both animal and human remains to examine changes in subsistence, herding and grazing (d) to explore the application of stable isotope analysis of elements such as C/N and oxygen as a proxy for environmental and landscape change to explore periods of climatic change, and (e) to construct a synthesis of new and existing data into a high-resolution chronological model focused within the Egiin Gol area, in which cultural changes can be examined against environmental data to explore responses to dynamic environments and identify the ‘moments’ of change. 

My research aims to understand the impacts of climate change and mining on how the water supplies from mountain regions in South America and Central Asia will vary in future. It will combine advanced remote sensing and geomorphological mapping to outline how glaciers have changed during the Holocene (11,000 years ago to present) to place glacier change in perspective of longer-term climate change, and then assess how mining activities have contributed to present-day glacial change. These analyses will constrain a glacier model, which will then be used to quantify the relative impacts of climate change and human activities on recent glacier change. The model will then be used to project glacier change under 21^st Century climate scenarios and to quantify the impact of both climate change and mining activities on future regional water resources. The results of this project will be insightful for not only the policy makers seeking to regulate mining industries, but the populations that are dependent on glacially-derived meltwater as drought-resistant water resources.

Dr. Andrew Newton is co-supervisor of my PhD project to contribute his unique expertise in glacial geology and geomorphology, in particular the use of geological data to understand glacier change in high altitude environments, and to predict the impacts of future climate change in these environments. 

Dr. Madjid Karimirad and Mr. Bonaventura Tagliafierro are working on a research project that aims to improve design guidelines for numerical modeling of offshore moored platforms to produce renewable energy from waves and wind.  We are using an open-source code, DualSPHysics, which can perform CFD simulations using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamic (SPH) method for the fluid representation; simulations are performed using the Cirrus II supercomputer (EPCC, University of Edinburgh), on compute nodes with GPU acceleration.  Our research activities are supported by the HPC-EUROPA3 Project (INFRAIA-2016-1-730897), with the support of the EC Research Innovation Action under the H2020 Programme.

Mr Hou is a PhD student at Xiamen University, China.  He is currently working with Dr Wesley Flannery.  His research interests include Transboundary Marine Spatial Planning, formulation and evaluation of Marine Spatial Planning schemes, public participation and stakeholder engagement in marine governance.  His current project is about the comparative study of Marine Spatial Planning between China and the UK. 

I am conducting research about the social implications of renewable energy coopertatives and energy communities.  During my research exchange in Queen's University Belfast, I will interveiw several stakeholders from energy coopertatives and communities in Ireland.  Additionally, I will hold a lecture together with Prof Ellis, on Climate Justice and Just Transitions.