Dr. Rachel Harding

Rachel Harding has joined the Submerged Landscapes Centre in her role as Seismic Mapping Researcher, as part of the AHRC-funded UNPATH’d Waters project, Rachel will contribute to the “Lands Beneath the Sea” work package. This work package uses collections to build a simulation of now-lost landscapes under the North Sea where prehistoric peoples once lived. The goal is to better understand these landscapes before sea level rise. Using the outcomes of this research and the collections framework and exploration tools, the project will then reach out to three key sample audiences: cross-disciplinary researchers, visually impaired people, and those who live far from the sea and have little connection with it.

Rachel will work on a basal surface for the simulation. This surface will be based on a synthesis of Holocene geomorphological features within the southern North Sea that have been identified and interpreted over the last 20 years by research projects carried out by the Submerged Landscape team at Bradford and more recently by wind farm developers.

Rachel previously worked on the ERC-funded Europe’s Lost Frontiers Project at The University of Bradford. In that project, she interpreted a range of geophysical data from the Irish Sea and North Sea to aid in the reconstruction of Holocene landscapes and their subsequent marine inundation. Rachel has a PhD in geosciences from The University of Manchester.