The University of Exeter - Department of Geography

Prof. Chris Turney FRSA FGS FRGS
PhD (London)

Room: Amory 419
Email: c.turney@exeter.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 1392 263331
Fax: +44 (0) 1392 263342

Broad research specialisms:

My main research interests are in past and future climates, how people respond to change, dating natural archives, and recent human evolution and migration.

Biography

Chris undertook a doctoral scholarship researching climate and chronology during the last deglaciation. He was awarded his Ph.D. in 1998 and spent the following two years working on reconstructing past climatic change in New Zealand and the timing of human colonisation of Australia.

Between 1999 and 2004 Chris lectured at Royal Holloway, University of London and Queen’s University Belfast. From 2004, he held an Australian Research Council Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship at the University of Wollongong looking at climate change and human evolution in Australia and Southeast Asia. Chris joined Exeter in 2007 where he directs the Environmental Change Research Group. He is also a member of the University of Exeter's Climate Change and Sustainable Futures Core Team, one of five groundbreaking interdisciplinary Themes identified by the University for investment.

Chris has several national and international responsibilities. He is leader of the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) project INTIMATE (INTegration of Ice, MArine & TErrestrial records 60,000 to 8000 years ago); a high profile and international North Atlantic research programme representing more than 100 active researchers that investigate rapid and extreme climate to better understand future change. Chris is also on the international science steering committee for Past Global Changes (PAGES) and is leader of their Aus2k program which aims to generate detailed Australasian climate reconstructions for the last 2000 years to decipher the mechanisms of change in the southwest Pacific. He is a Peer Review College member for NERC and an an Executive Committee Member of the Quaternary Research Association. Since 2006, Chris has been the Asian and Australasian Regional Editor for the Journal of Quaternary Science (which has an impact factor of 3, making it the second highest ranking journal in Quaternary science).

In 2007, Chris was awarded the first Sir Nicholas Shackleton Medal by the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA) for outstanding Quaternary scientist for his pioneering research into past climate change and dating the past. He is also recipient of the 2008 Philip Leverhulme Prize for contributions to understanding the evolution of the Earth’s climate over the last 50,000 years and in 2009, was honoured with the 2009 Geological Society of London’s Bigsby Medal for services to geology.

Chris is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce, the Geological Society of London and the Royal Geographical Society.

Chris has written two popular science books called Ice, Mud and Blood: Lessons from Climates Past and Bones, Rocks and Stars: the Science of When Things Happened.

Chris also has a popular science website at www.christurney.com.