Professor Mary Gagen

Professor, Geography

Telephone number

+44 (0) 1792 602501

Email address

Academic Office - 239
Second Floor
Wallace Building
Singleton Campus
Available For Postgraduate Supervision
Media Commentator

About

I am a broadly trained physical geographer with a research specialism in climate change. I am interested in exploring how environmental change impacts our planet’s forests, and the elements of the carbon and water cycles played out in forests, and in the records of past global change that ancient trees contain. I currently carry out research in the northern Boreal forest areas of Fennoscania and in lowland tropical rainforest in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo. My research is funded by Research Council’s UK, National Geographic, the European Union and Welsh Government.

I teach a broad physical geography curriculum at foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate level. subject areas include: climate of the last thousand year, techniques in palaeoenvironmental reconstruction, dendroclimatology and stable isotope methods. I also teach key skills for scientists and run a work placement module for geography students. I am interested in educational outreach activities and run Swansea’s College of Science outreach programme S4, funded by the Welsh Government’s National Science Academy.

Areas Of Expertise

  • Palaeoclimate
  • Climate change
  • Tree ring science
  • Dendroclimatology
  • Carbon isotopes
  • Science outreach
  • Public science engagement

Career Highlights

Teaching Interests

GEG252MB Geographical Field Work Skills: Malaysian, Borneo

The module is concerned with identifying and defining geographical questions within the tropical rainforest environment of the Sabah, Malaysian Borneo and applying relevant geographical skills, knowledge and techniques to these questions.

GEG358 Climate of the last 1000 years

The aim of this module is to provide the participants with the relevant skills to place the widely reported anthropogenic influences upon climate into the perspective of a naturally changing climatic system. The module focuses upon the techniques used to reconstruct changes in climate over the last 1000 years and presents reconstructions at differing temporal scales. 

Research