Academic interests
I am a PhD Research Fellow at CEES and am a part of the 4Oceans ERC synergy project . This project aims to assess the importance of marine life to human societies over the last two millennia, and create a world atlas of historical marine exploitation.
I focus on human impacts on sirenians - which include manatees, dugongs, and the extinct Steller's sea cow - using aDNA from historical samples. Over the last year I have visited museums and university collections in Europe to conduct sampling and have been processing the samples in the aDNA lab at UiO. I have been successful in generating novel nuclear and mitogenome data from understudied populations, and am working with researchers internationally to better understand this endangered taxon. I have created the largest global dataset of historic sirenian material, and hope that my research will contribute towards the ongoing conservation of threatened populations of manatees and dugongs.
I am originally from the UK and my background is in Archaeology, Egyptology and Human Evolution. I did my Bachelor's degree at the University of Liverpool and my MPhil at the University of Cambridge.