Research Interests

Research centers on the palynological analysis of long sedimentary sequences from both marine and lacustrine settings in southern Europe to reconstruct glacial-interglacial vegetation and environmental changes.

My previous projects have been focusing on southern Europe and include:

1. The palaeovegetation and paleoenvironmental history of Lesvos Island, Greece, during the last glacial period [Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 2-4]. This research was conducted for my PhD thesis and involved the palynological and sedimentological analysis of a set of lacustrine sequences obtained from Megali Limni. This project also included the geochemical analysis of six tephra layers recovered in the sedimentary record of Megali Limni.
2. The examination of the response of vegetation to the millennial-scale climate variability of the penultimate glacial period (MIS 6) in southwest Portugal through the palynological analysis of deep-sea core MD01-2444.
3. The investigation of the environmental conditions, and in particular of vegetation, at the Ceprano area in central Italy during the Middle Pleistocene. This project was part of a wider multidisciplinary project analysing the sedimentary record of Ceprano. The site is of pivotal value for determining the patterns of human evolution since the recovery of an early human calvarium in 1994.

Currently I am working on the palynological analysis of a marine sequence corresponding to the last Interglacial.