Lisa Baldini

In February 2020, Dr Baldini joined Teesside University as Lecturer in Environmental Science in the School of Health and Life Sciences. Prior to joining Teesside, Dr Baldini was Assistant Professor in Palaeoclimate and Environmental Science in the Department of Geography at Durham University (since 2016). Prior to that Dr Baldini conducted research in the Department of Earth Sciences at Durham University first as a Marie Curie Fellow and then a Post-doctoral Research Associate.

Dr Baldini's research interests span palaeoclimate reconstruction using biogenic and inorganic carbonates, modern stable isotope systematics in meteoric precipitation and groundwater, and using geochemical fingerprinting to trace human impacts on the environment. In 2019, Dr Baldini led a successful Global Challenges Research Fund-Centre for Doctoral Training (GCRF-CDT) proposal entitled, "Maya subsistence farmer decision-making under climatic uncertainty in Central America". This multi-national collaboration (UK, USA, Belize) takes a unique interdisciplinary research approach combining meteorological monitoring, soil quality assessment, and farmer interviews to document for the first time, the impact of climate extremes and uncertainty on small-share farmers practicing rain-fed agriculture in S Belize. Also in 2019, Dr Baldini joined researchers from Durham University Biosciences and Norway on the a Leverhulme Trust-funded DurhamARCTIC Doctoral Training and Research Centre project to investigate how natural enemies and climate change in Arctic Norway might interact to increase the risk of non-native plant speices invasion over the next several decades. Dr Baldini co-supervises the two PhD students working on the above projects (2019-2022). Dr Baldini also co-supervises a recently successfully viva'd Durham Geography PhD student working on the project 'Long-term accumulation of nutrients in the environment: A case study of estimating a spatial N budget across the UK'.

Dr Baldini is co-investigator on two active Spanish government-funded archaeological projects based at the University of Cantabria, northern Spain. Both projects are multi-national collaborations that aim to reconstruct the evolution and behaviour of human groups in coastal areas of SW Europe since the Palaeolithic. Dr Baldini's palaeoclimate reconstructions at La Garma Cave have provided key insights into the role of climate in modulating human behaviour in northern Spain over the past 14,000 years.

Since 2010, Dr Baldini has conducted research in southern Belize at Yok Balum cave and across the Toledo District in collaboration with archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, palaeoclimatologists, and conservationists from institutions across the US, Europe, and Belize. In 2016 Dr Baldini published a stalagmite-based tropical cyclone reconstruction for the Western Caribbean that revealed a northward migration of storms over the past 450 years due to a combination of natural and anthropogenic factors. Work is currently underway to extend this record over the past 2000 years.