David R. Bridgland

Biography

From January 2000 to 2007 I was Co-Leader of successive projects within UNESCO's International Geological Correlation Programme (IGCP: now International Geoscience Programme), the first (2000–2004) entitled 'Global correlation of Late Cenozoic fluvial deposits' and the second (2005–2007) 'Fluvial sequences as evidence for landscape and climatic evolution in the Late Cenozoic'. These were fully international projects aimed at amassing data on long-timescale fluvial archives from around the world. Their results can be appreciated from the publications they produced, more of which will appear in the future. Syntheses are provided by special issue editorials in Quaternary Science Reviews (2007, Vol. 26, Parts 22–24 (pp 2693-3016)) and Global & Planetary Change (2009, Vol. 68, issue 4). ). Nested within FLAG, these projects provided a further seven combined conference and field meetings, in Prague and Kanpur (2001), Agadir (2002), Belem (2003), Malaga (2004), Sanliurfa (2005) and Nanjing (2006).

Research Interest

My expertise and principal area of research experience is in Quaternary science, with emphasis on fluvial sequences. My early work was on the River Thames, which has a Quaternary sequence of international importance, and its tributary, the Medway (the river that divides those males born in the county of Kent into Kentish Men and Men of Kent: I number myself amongst the latter). This grounding provided a platform for a number of initiatives aimed at broadening my research into an international sphere, once I became established in Durham. My Earth-science interests have always overlapped with the oldest divisions of the archaeological record, perhaps because the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic archives from the Thames system are so extensive; my research in this area led to the award of the Henry Stopes Memorial Medal of the Geologists' Association in 2003, for 'on the Prehistory of Man and his geological environment'.