Joel Q.G. Spencer

Ph.D., University of Glasgow

Joel joined the department in the summer of 2007 following a postdoctoral appointment in Austria. Joel will be teaching graduate courses in dating techniques, with emphasis on his specialty, optically stimulated luminscence. This is a relatively new field that has exciting possibilities, including dating catastrophic events such as tsunamis, landslides, and floods that have occurred in the past hundred thousand years or so. This capability has applications in archaeology as well as geology, and Joel's lab, one of only a handful in the United States, will likely attract students and scholars from both fields.

Information about Joel's research publications is available here .