Robyn Pickering

Robyn undertook her undergraduate and MSc studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She completed a PhD at the University of Bern, Switzerland in May 2009 and is currently a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) Post Doctoral Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

Robyn’s research interests lie in using isotope geochemistry to investigate the age and palaeo-environment of mainly carbonate rocks. She uses U-Pb and U-Th dating methods to provide ages for cave deposits (speleothems) and is particularly interested in the development of the associated laboratory and analytical techniques. Robyn has worked mainly on cave deposits containing early human (hominin) fossil remains and is also interested in human evolution and providing a precise chronology for evolutionary developments. She is currently working on the South African early hominin bearing cave sites near Johannesburg and the early human occupation sites of Pinnacle Points on the southern South African coast.

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