ResearchDr Burrough is a National Geographic Explorer and Trapnell Fellow of African Environments at the University of Oxford (click here for her institutional webpage).
As a Quaternary (last ~2 million years of earth's history) scientist, she investigates how the landscapes and ecosystems of African drylands have responded to climate variability over long timescales. She also studies the impact of past environmental change on ancient humans and when and how our ancestors used the savanna and lake systems of central southern Africa over the last 200,000 years. You can hear more about that here in a recent talk. |
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Research Projects‘Kgalagadi Human Origins’ commencing in June 2021 is a six-year project working with National Museum of Botswana investigating the impact of extreme climate changes on human evolution in the southern Kalahari basin.
Interactions between Incipient Continental Rifting, Fluvial Systems, and Regional Climate in Southern Africa: The Okavango-Makgadikgadi Complex, Botswana {Funded by the NSF] Megalake records of Kalahari climate change. [Supported by a National Geographic Global Exploration Fund and the John Fell Fund] Landscape archaeology of the Kalahari: How did major hydrological shifts affect Stone Age mobility and landscape use in the late Quaternary? [Funded by the Leverhulme Trust] TILAKA: Testing the importance of lake-climate feedbacks for African hydroclimate variability. [Funded by the Leverhulme Trust] PotASH: Palaeolakes of the Arid Southern Hemisphere [Funded by the International Union for Quaternary Research] |
Recent PublicationsDeCort, G, Chevalier, M, Burrough, SL, Chen, C, Harrison, SP (2021) An uncertainty-focused database approach to extract spatiotemporal trends from qualitative and discontinuous lake-status histories. Quaternary Science Reviews.
Burrough SL, Barham L, Thomas, DSG (2019) Implications of a new chronlogy for the interpretation of the Middle and Later Stone of the upper Zambezi Valley. J. of Archaeological Science 23, 376-389 Burrough SL (2016) Late Quaternary environmental change and human occupation of the southern African interior in Jones, S & Stewart B (Eds) Africa from MIS 6-2: Population Dynamics and Paleoenvironments. Springer Singarayer JS & Burrough SL, (2015) Inter hemispheric dynamics of the African rainbelt during the late Quaternary. Quaternary Science Reviews 124, 48-67 Burrough SL & Willis KJ (2015) Ecosystem resilience to late-Holocene climate change in the Upper Zambezi Valley. The Holocene 25, 1811-1828 Click here for a full list of publications |
ResponsibilitiesCo-Director, Oxford Luminescence Dating (OLD) Laboratory, University of Oxford
Adjunct Fellow, Linacre College, Oxford Scientific Advisory Board Member, Humans and the Biosphere, International Union for Quaternary Science Fellow of the Higher Education Academy Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society Download a brief CV here Current PhD Students Ella Walsh: Late Quaternary hydrological change from valley fill complexes in Namibia. Lillian Maboya: Reconstructing Namibian Late Quaternary Environmental and Climate Dynamics from Palaeolake Sediments. Sam Woor: The evolution of Late Quaternary alluvial landscapes in northern Oman. |
Speedy Expertise: 7 minutes on past climates in southern AfricaPublic Engagement: Raising awareness of Botswana's hidden heritage:
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A day in the Geolife Series
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BBC Radio Oxford:
When science meets motherhood 
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