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Natasha Barbolini

Senior postdoctoral fellow in palaeoecology, Stockholm University

Dr Natasha Barbolini is a deep-time palaeoecologist who uses the fossil pollen record to reconstruct ancient ecosystems. Her research focuses on understanding how environmental changes impact biodiversity.

Natasha completed her PhD in South Africa, establishing a new palynostratigraphy for the Permian–Jurassic Karoo Supergroup. After holding a 3-year grant as PI at the University of the Witwatersrand, she took up a postdoc at the University of Amsterdam as part of an ERC Horizon 2020 project. This work explores the origins of the Central Asian steppes and how ecosystems have been shaped by Tibetan uplift, monsoons and Cenozoic cooling.

Natasha is one of the PIs on the Nam Co Drilling Project, Tibet (NamCore): A One Million Year Sedimentary Record From The Third Pole. The project was recently awarded funding by the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP).

Natasha is also the recipient of a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship. She is currently based at Stockholm University, investigating the evolution of arid-adapted plant species and how they may have switched pollination mode to survive cooling at the Eocene–Oligocene boundary.

Experience

  • –present
    Senior postdoctoral fellow in palaeoecology, Stockholm University

Education

  • 2014 
    University of the Witwatersrand, PhD