Dr Jennifer Clear is the Head of Geography & Environmental Science at Liverpool Hope University. She graduated from the University of Liverpool with a BSc in Geography, MSc in Environment and Climate Change, and a PhD on “Holocene fire and vegetation dynamics in the northern European forests”. Jennifer is a palaeoecologist (like a palaeontologist for plants instead of dinosaurs). Her research focuses on understanding human) activity and climate change as drivers of past environmental change. She quantifies past disturbances such as storms, pathogens and fires by using sedimentary records from terrestrial, lacustrine and marine environments. She combines these long-term geological records with short-term instrumental and dendroecological (tree ring) records to monitor past change and model future scenarios to inform environmental conservation and management.