Julie is a Supernumerary Teaching Fellow at St John's College and a researcher in the School of Geography and the Environment. At St John's, she is responsible for the delivery of all physical geography college teaching, and she contributes to the Final Honours School options course The Quaternary Period.
Julie was awarded her PhD from Aberystwyth University in 2013. Her research focused on the luminescence dating of river systems in Pakistan and relating changing fluvial activity to the collapse of the Harappan civilisation.
Her current research interests include palaeoenvironmental reconstruction in low latitude regions, Bronze and civilisation collapse and societal responses to climatic variability, and the development and application of the optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating technique.
Julie's current research is focused on a number of key areas:
- Understanding the relationship between society and environment, with a particular focus on the use of luminescence dating to develop chronologies of landscape change that can be used to assess the role of environmental variability in the collapse and transformation of ancient civilisations.
- Exploring the role of climatic variability and environmental change on the Indus Civilisation in Pakistan and India.
- Investigation of the physical properties of quartz luminescence signals with a view to extending the dateable age range of optically stimulated luminescence dating.
- Investigating the physical properties of luminescence signals in saturation, with the aim of improving the precision and accuracy of equivalent dose and age determinations, as well as working towards extending the dateable age range of using the OSL signal from quartz.
- Refining and improving the quantification of empirically derived and modelled environmental dose rates in trapped charge dating contexts.
She is author of DRAC: Dose rate and Age Calculator for trapped charge dating and a contributor to the R Package: Luminescence - Comprehensive Luminescence Dating Data Analysis.
Forthcoming
- Discher, M., Martin, L., Durcan, J.A., King, G.E., Tsakalos, E., Christodoulakis, J. and Lang, A., (forthcoming) Calculating or simulating the dose rate? A comparison. Radiation Measurements.
- Durcan, J. (forthcoming) Optimising quartz luminescence lifetime determinations using isothermal decay methods. Radiation Measurements.
- Durcan, J.A., Thomas, D.S.G., Gupta, S., Pawar, V., Singh, R.N. and Petrie, C.A. (forthcoming) Holocene landscape dynamics in the Ghaggar-Hakra palaeochannel region at the northern edge of the Thar Desert, northwest India. Quaternary International.
2019
2018
2017
2016
- Kreutzer, S., Dietze, M., Burow, C., Fuchs, M.C., Schmidt, C., Fischer, M., Friedrich, J., Mercier, N., Smedley, R.K., Durcan, J.A., King, G.E., and Fuchs, M. (2016) Luminescence: Comprehensive Luminescence Dating Data Analysis. R package version 0.6.4.
2015
2012
- Clift, P.D., Carter, A.C., Giosan, L., Durcan, J.A., Duller, G.A.T., Macklin, M.G., Alizai, A., Tabrez, A.R., Danish, M., VanLaningham, S. and Fuller, D.Q. (2012) U-Pb Zircon dating evidence for a Pleistocene Sarasvati river and capture of the Yamuna River. Geology, 40: 211-214.
- Giosan, L., Clift, P.D., Macklin, M.G., Fuller, D.Q., Constantinescu, S., Durcan, J.A., Stevens, T., Duller, G.A.T., Tabrez, A., Adhikari, R., Gangal, K., Alizai, A., Filip, F., VanLaningham, S. and Syvitski, J.P.M. (2012) Fluvial dynamics and the fate of the Harappan civilisation. PNAS, 109(26): 1688-1694.
2011
2010
2009
2008
- Thomas, D.S.G., Bailey, R.M., Shaw, P.A., Durcan, J.A. and Singarayer, J.S. (2008) Late Quaternary highstands at Lake Chilwa, Malawi: frequency, timing and possible forcing mechanisms in the last 44 ka. Quaternary Science Reviews, 28(5-6): 526-539.
