Rate My Professor Sandy Harrison

Professor Sandy P. Harrison holds the position of Professor in Global Palaeoclimates and Biogeochemical Cycles within the Department of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Reading. She obtained her BA (Hons) from the University of Cambridge, MSc from Macquarie University, Australia, and PhD from Lund University, Sweden. Harrison's distinguished career encompasses research institutions across Sweden, Germany, Australia, and the UK. Prior to her appointment at Reading in 2013, she was at Macquarie University. She concurrently serves as Distinguished Professor at Tsinghua University, China, and Co-Director of the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society.

Her research investigates the dynamic interactions between climate, the terrestrial biosphere, vegetation, and fire across geological timescales, the present, and future projections. Utilizing advanced process-based models, large-scale palaeoenvironmental data syntheses, and trait-based analyses, she evaluates and refines climate and land-surface models. Harrison is a pioneer in palaeoenvironmental data synthesis, enabling robust benchmarking of models used for future climate predictions. She co-chairs the Palaeoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project (PMIP), leads the LEMONTREE international consortium developing innovative biosphere models grounded in eco-evolutionary optimality theory, and directs the SPECIAL research group, which compiles global databases on past climate, vegetation, fire, hydrology, and speleothems to reconstruct environmental changes. Her scholarly impact is evidenced by over 67,000 citations across more than 500 publications. Harrison contributes editorially to Tellus and has delivered keynote addresses, including on climate change and natural ecosystems at the European Association of Archaeologists annual meeting.