Dr. Andrew Dugmore is Professor of Geosciences in the Institute of Geography, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh. Andy is a physical geographer with extensive field experience in the North Atlantic islands. His research is focused on high resolution studies and long-term perspectives of change in complex social-ecological systems (particularly the Scandinavian settlements of the North Atlantic). Andy’s work seeks to better understanding the causes and consequences, physical records and human memory of environmental changes over timescales from decades to millennia. A key theme is the development and application of tephrochronology; a dating technique based on the identification and correlation of volcanic ash layers. Andy has developed tephrochronology in joint projects with geographers, Earth scientists and archaeologists, and applied it in glaciology, geomorphology, palaeoecology, archaeology and broader studies of geochronology with historians and literary scholars. In addition to chronology, current joint research projects on tephra are clarifying the processes and scale of post-depositional change to freshly fallen tephra layers, and how a better understanding of these changes can enhance the reconstruction of past volcanic eruptions, hazard assessment, and potentially provide new sources of data on the nature of the land surfaces on which the tephra was deposited. Andy is currently Professor of Geosciences at The University of Edinburgh and adjunct research faculty on the CUNY Doctoral Program in Anthropology in New York and at Washington State University.