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Kirsty Penkman

Now a Senior Lecturer in Analytical Chemistry at the University of York, Kirsty Penkman’s focus is on the analysis of proteins: their pathways of degradation, methods for their detection, and how these molecules can inform us of an organism’s life and death history. She runs the NERC-recognised amino acid dating facility, NEaar, and has been working on a dating method that covers the last three million years, a time period important for our understanding of climate change and human evolution.

“Having always loved science, but also been fascinated by the past (both our human history and that of our Earth), I feel very lucky to be able to do both in my work. My research focuses on the application of analytical chemistry to archaeological and geological questions. Fuelled by the opportunity to work in the field of archaeological science during my fourth-year MChem project at the University of Oxford, this interest took me to Newcastle for a PhD in geochemistry, and then to York with a postdoc and a Wellcome fellowship.”