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Teaching

• GG 1032
  A one week field trip designed to develop student understanding of both Human and Physical Geography through active participation in fieldwork. The students receive four days of lecturer-led field training during which the Spanish landscape is used to discuss many of the core concepts that are taught in the 1st year lecture courses. Over the final two days the students, in groups of 4 or 5, carry out field research projects that they have designed and developed themselves.

• GG 2043 Biogeography
  This is a second-year course taught jointly with Scott Elias, which aims to introduce students to the key concepts in biogeographical research and the basis of biodiversity.  The main themes include: dispersal strategies of organisms; the principal factors limiting species distribution at the present day (climate drivers, vegetation, physical barriers, competition and niche-specialisation, predation and parasitism); geographical centres for origination and dispersal, including coverage of plate tectonics and land bridges; natural selection and evolution; the role of past and present ecosystems; island biogeography; the Quaternary histories of different groups of flora and vertebrate and invertebrate fauna; natural and anthropogenic threats to ecosystems; extinction and the effects of disease.

• GG 3046 Mammals in a Changing World
  I teach a third-year course exploring aspects of the diversity of mammals, both at the present and in the past.  The main themes include: an introduction to mammalian evolution and the nature of the fossil record; mammalian biogeography and the factors controlling past and present mammalian distributions; the physiological and behavioural adaptations of mammals to the following environments: polar, desert, forest, grassland, montane, inland and oceanic waters; mammalian responses to environmental change; interactions between mammals and humans during the Quaternary; Pleistocene and Holocene mammalian extinctions; current threats to mammalian communities; conservation and ‘rewilding’.  The course involves a one-day fieldtrip to Wildwood, a native British mammal centre in Kent.

• GG 5223 Quaternary Mammals
  This is a week-long option course available to students taking the MSc in Quaternary Science. The course aims to provide students with a theoretical and practical understanding of the value of mammalian fossil material to Quaternary science, by providing a thorough grounding in Quaternary vertebrate (principally mammalian) palaeontology, with particular reference to the collection, description, identification and interpretation of fossil assemblages against a backdrop of Quaternary climatic and environmental change.  The detailed syllabus covers site formation processes and biases in the fossil record; techniques for the collection and processing of fossil vertebrate remains; identification and taxonomy of key mammalian groups; palaeoecology of Pleistocene vertebrates; the European Pleistocene mammalian faunal history, including the application of biostratigraphical techniques to sedimentary sequences, evolutionary trends, responses of mammals to Quaternary climatic and environmental change; Pleistocene mammals of North and South America and Australia and megafaunal extinctions.