I reconstruct the vegetation, fire and climate histories of southern Africa’s biodiversity hotspots.

I generate palaeoecological data from the fossil pollen, fungal spores and charcoal preserved in wetland sediments and rock hyrax middens, to work out how these landscapes have changed over the last tens of thousands of years.

The southern margin of South Africa holds both globally exceptional plant diversity and one of the world’s richest archaeological records of early modern human behaviour. Those two things are usually studied apart. I work in the space between them, on the environmental history that connects them, and on what that history tells us about how these ecosystems will respond to future climate change.

I am a Senior Researcher at the Evolutionary Studies Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, and a Research Associate at Nelson Mandela University. I lead the National Research Foundation African Origins Platform project Past dynamics and distribution of South Africa’s biodiverse systems (Grant 136507).

Palaeoecology

Palaeoenvironments

Palaeoclimatology

Montage of fynbos plants and pollen grains forming the shape of South Africa's southern and western coastline, representing the Cape Floristic Region

Research

Current projects across the Greater Cape Floristic Region, including the NRF African Origins Platform grant, our field sites and our collaborators.

The Palaeolab

A palaeoecology laboratory built for South African palaeoscience: microscopy, sample processing, a searchable digital pollen reference collection for the Cape Floristic Region, and weekly airborne pollen monitoring.

Join the group

Honours, Masters and doctoral projects in pollen, charcoal, phytoliths and fungal spore analysis, at the Evolutionary Studies Institute from 2027. Enquiries welcome any time.

  • 1,281 citations, h-index 22, i10-index 29 (Google Scholar, August 2026)
  • Vice-President, Southern African Society for Quaternary Research (SASQUA), 2026–2028
  • Past Vice-President, International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA), 2020–2023
  • Past President, SASQUA, 2019–2022
  • Featured in Nature “Where I Work”, Scientific American and The Conversation