Dr Andy Carr

University of Leicester

Dr Andy Carr obtained his PhD in palaeoenvironments and luminescence dating at the University of Sheffield, where he also worked as a postdoctoral researcher charting the history of coastal dune formation and sea level change in South Africa. Since then, he has been a lecturer and Associate Professor at the University of Leicester, where he has taught a wide range of physical geography and earth science courses. He has supervised PhDs across a broad range of topics, spanning palaeoecology, geomorphology, geochronology and organic geochemistry.

Research interests

Andy is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemical, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Leicester. His primary research interests concern luminescence dating techniques and the climatic histories and landscape evolution of desert regions. His work using luminescence dating is focused particularly on chronologies for Middle and Later Stone Age archaeological sites in South Africa, as well as the use of luminescence methods for sediment tracing in river catchments. He has also worked on several projects utilising stable isotopes and plant biomarkers as palaeoclimatic proxies, most notably in the analysis of rock hyrax midden archives.

Current Projects and Collaborations

Andy is currently the Principal Investigator for the new Leverhulme Trust project: “Only the Scatters Remain: A New Approach to Surface Archaeology in Deserts” which is investigating the preservation of, and potential chronologies for, surface archaeological scatters in the Karoo of South Africa. He is also working on several projects dating Middle Stone age rock-shelter deposits in Lesotho and South Africa, in collaboration with researchers from South Africa, France, Portugal the Netherlands and the United States.