Biography

Dr Stuart Robinson completed his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees (B.A. in Geology, 1998; DPhil in Geology, 2002) in Oxford (at St Edmund Hall) before undertaking research positions at Columbia University in New York, the University of Reading and University College London, where he was also a lecturer. Stuart returned to Oxford in 2013 and joined St Anne’s in 2016.

Stuart’s research focuses on how components of the Earth system (e.g. climate, carbon cycling, oceanography) has operated in the geological past, with a particular interest in periods of extreme greenhouse warmth, such as the Mesozoic (250 to 65 million years ago). Warm intervals in Earth history, characterised by an absence of polar ice sheets, high sea levels, and major perturbations to ocean chemistry, provide examples of how the Earth system works under very different boundary conditions to the present day. Understanding the processes operating in the geological past can help inform our understanding of how our planet may evolve in the future in response to anthropogenic CO2 release.

Stuart uses a multidisciplinary approach drawing on geology, palaeontology and geochemistry to reconstruct Earth history. He has conducted fieldwork in many parts of the world and participated in two scientific ocean drilling expeditions