Dr Judith Bunbury

Originally studying geology and geophysics at Durham University, Judith garnered fieldwork skills in the coal and ore fields of the north of England. For her PhD, co-supervised at Istanbul Technical University and at Cambridge, she applied these skills to determine the origins of eighty small volcanoes in Western Turkey, an area that is now a UNESCO geopark.

The rich archaeological heritage of her field area led to her first postdoctoral role as the research assistant for the British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara. Her job was driving the Landrover around the archaeological sites and museums of Turkey and forming ideas around the interaction of humans and their landscape, today known as geoarchaeology. From there, she was invited to work with archaeologists in Egypt, exploring mines and quarries in the Eastern Desert, before joining teams in the Nile Valley, using ancient sediments to reveal the past movements of the Nile.

After a brief interlude getting married and selling socks for the John Lewis Partnership, she returned to the lab and the field for a postdoctoral project in Cambridge, affiliated with the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology in Dehra Dun, on the geochemistry of Himalayan rivers.

Based in the Department of Earth Sciences she has taught undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as taking a turn as Senior Tutor of St Edmund’s College. Now at Wolfson, she is combining her research interests with the role of Tutor for non-doctoral postgraduate students. She also champions well-being and postgraduate matters, on behalf of all the colleges, as associate secretary of the Senior Tutors’ Committee.