Abi Stone

Abi is a physical geographer and Quaternary scientist interested in dryland (desert) environments, and their interaction with climatic change over timescales of hundreds of years through to the last half million years. As part of this research she explores interdisciplinary questions about ancient human-environmental interactions with colleagues in archaeology. She investigates these climatic changes by studying the landscape (dryland geomorphology), sediments (sands and carbonates), and groundwater chemistry (hydrogeology) and through applying luminescence dating and U-Th dating as geochronological methods.

Abi is the Earth History, Palaeoenvironments and Archaeology theme champion for the Manchester Environmental Research Institute (MERI), and part of both the Quaternary Environments and Geoarchaeology and Environmental Processes research groups within the Geography Department. She is a research associate of the Gobabeb Namib Research Institute and has served as the secretary of the Southern African Society for Quaternary Research (SASQUA) and been the recipient of a number of the Royal Geographical Society's awards - the Thesiger-Oman Desert Fellowship and (co-investigator for) the Walters Kundurt Fellowship. Her research is also funded by the Natural Environmental Research Council, and the Quaternary Research Association. She has worked with colleagues from across a variety of dryland environments, including Namibia, South Africa, Australia and Saudi Arabia.