In the last century...
I was born in Denmark, but grew up entirely in the UK, mainly in the Essex suburbs of London. From about 1968 my parents indulged my enthusiasm for collecting fossils by arranging their summer vacations in classic areas of British geology and paleontology. Attending Cambridge University from 1974, I was subverted from paleontology into studies of orogenic belts by the glamour of the then new theory of plate tectonics. From 1977 to 1981 I worked as a postgraduate student at Edinburgh University, on the geology of the Antalya Complex, southwestern Turkey. In January 1981 I came to Memorial University of Newfoundland where I held a post-doctoral research fellowship (though embarassingly I was only truly 'post' doctoral for 13 days in this position.) From 1981 until 2000 I worked at the Geology Department of Saint Mary's University, Halifax Nova Scotia, where I taught sedimentary and structural geology, field methods, and several different flavours of introductory geology. I ventured into web-based teaching with a course entitled "The Earth:Atlantic Canada Perspective".
...Y2K onward
In the summer of 2000 I moved to a position in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, where I have taught introductory Earth science, structural geology, and geology field schools. From 2002 onwards I became involved in the restructuring of first-year Earth Science teaching, and from 2004 to 2008, I took on the job of associate chair with responsibility for undergraduate studies. From 2008 to 2023, I led the development of an outdoor teaching facility known as the Geoscience Garden, with the assistance of the University of Alberta teaching and Learning Fund. To learn more about the Geoscience Garden visit the Geoscience Garden web page. From 2025, I have embarked on phased retirement from teaching, focussing for the last two years on the development of on-line classes in introductory Earth systems science, for which I have written an on-line textbook, while also teaching sabbatical replacement classes at Acadia University.
My research continues to deal with deformed sedimentary rocks from both sedimentary and structural geological perspectives (I have generally resisted being classified as either a sedimentary or a structural geologist, though Ihave sometimes admitted to being a "deformed sedimentologist"). My research interests have been focussed in the Caledonian–Appalachian geology of Atlantic Canada and the British Isles, in the Archean Slave province of the Canadian Shield, in sedimentary basins within the Canadian Cordillera, and in the Himalayan foreland basin and foothills of Nepal. Most recently I have been working to promote Cabox Aspiring Geopark in the area around Elamastukwek, the Bay of Islands in Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland).