Biography -  Claire is an Earth scientist specialising in the study of natural fires and the role that they play in regulating the Earth system. She graduated from Royal Holloway University of London with a degree in Geology in 2000. She then undertook an MSc in Micropalaeontology at University College London, graduating in 2001 before returning to Royal Holloway to undertake her PhD. She completed her PhD in 2005 entitled "Assessing the evidence for extensive wildfires at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary" and has continued to build on this fiery start ever since.

She then moved to University College Dublin to work at the Programme for Experimental Atmospheres and Climate (PEAC) facility where she focused on the relationship between ancient wildfires and variations in palaeoatmospheric composition. She was then successful in gaining a Marie Curie Research Fellowship to hold a unique position joint between BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering and the School of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh. In January 2012 she took up the position of Senior Lecturer in Earth System Science at the University of Exeter.

Claire is the team leader of a 1.52 million euro European Research Council Starter Grant that seeks to understand the impact of plant evolution on fire behaviour in ancient ecosystems. Her research is internationally recognised for integrating state-of-the-art modern experimental methods into studies of Earth’s ancient past, an approach which is well highlighted by her recently published edited book "Fire Phenomena and the Earth System an Interdisciplinary Guide to Fire Science". 

Post Doctoral Research Fellows and Research Technicians:

Dr Victoria Hudspith ERC Research Fellow - ECOFLAM

Biography - Victoria joined the PalaeoFire Lab Team at the University of Exeter in 2013 as an Associate Research Fellow.
She graduated from Royal Holloway University of London with an MSci. in Geoscience in 2008, and continued at Royal Holloway to complete her Ph.D in 2012. Her thesis, entitled “The Palaeoecological and Industrial Significance of Inertinite (Charcoal) in Late Permian Coals from the Kuznetsk Basin, Russia” sparked an interest in using coal petrography microscopy techniques to interpret ancient fire occurrence, type and return intervals. She then moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to complete a
year long postdoc, applying the techniques acquired during her Ph.D in order to gain a better understanding of fire regimes and fire-vegetation feedbacks in more modern boreal forest and tundra ecosystems in Alaska. In particular, her research to date has focussed on detailed palaeoecological observations of charcoal assemblages in a variety of ecosystems, with an emphasis on interpreting charring temperatures, an aspect of wildfire behaviour. Her current research (as part of the ECOFLAM project) focuses on developing tools for ecosystem managers and tools for better understanding the fossil record of wildfire using state-of-the-art flammability techniques.

Dr Mark Grosvenor ERC Research Technician - ECOFLAM

Biography - Mark graduated from the University of Exeter with a first class BSc Geography degree in 2009.  He then undertook a PhD within the Geography Department investigating ‘Human-environment interactions during the mid-Holocene in Cumbria’.  Mark has also been involved in a number of research projects relating to palaeoenvironmental change, in particular dealing with lake sediments, pollen analysis, and human impact.

Dr Rebecca Dewhirst ERC Research Fellow - ECOFLAM

Biography - I graduated from the University of York in 2011 with a first class degree in biology. I the

n joined
the Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences at the University of Edinburgh to undertake a PhD in plant biochemistry. I completed my PhD, entitled ‘Formation and subsequent metabolism of ascorbate oxidation products in vitro and in plant cells’ in 2015.

After my PhD I joined the wildFIRE lab here in Exeter to continue researching plant biochemistry but this time in relation to plant flammability, specifically in pine species.

Dr Chris Boulton Post Doctoral Research Associate - PyroMap

Biography - coming soon!