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Dr. Kathryn Fitzsimmons is a geochronologist and Quaternary geologist, specialising in optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating. Her research interests include investigating interactions between humans and their environment in the past, and producing chronologic frameworks for such records. In her present position as Junior Researcher at MPI-EVA, Kathryn is investigating human responses to long term landscape and climate change in Australia, Europe and Africa, working to produce systematic and high resolution chronologic frameworks for both MPI-EVA and collaborative projects in these regions.
Prior to arriving at MPI-EVA, Kathryn was a postdoctoral fellow at the Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, where she was Academic Supervisor of the luminescence dating laboratory. During this time she worked on a number of collaborative projects relating to the history of aridity and drought in Australia, both on the semi-arid desert margins and drought-affected farming areas.
Kathryn obtained her PhD in 2007 at the Australian National University on the late Quaternary history of aridity in the central Australian desert dunefields. Her thesis used a multi-disciplinary approach, encompassing geochronology, geology, and geophysics, synthesising a large dataset of individual and fragmentary records over a wide region, and correlating the broader scale climatic variations reflected in Australian desert dune records with global environmental change.
Department of Human Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
D-04103 Leipzig
Germany
| phone: | 0049 (0) 341 3550 344 |
| fax: | 0049 (0) 341 3550 399 |
| email: | kathryn_fitzsimmons eva.mpg.de |
