Dr. Rebecca Hamilton

Biography

Rebecca Hamilton is a Visiting Lecturer at the Australian National University and has joined the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney in 2023. Her research focuses on using palaeoecology to investigate how landscapes and hydroscapes respond to various drivers of change, notably climate, fire, and human disturbance. Hamilton's palaeoecological research predominantly spans tropical Asia and Australia, covering time scales from decades to millions of years. Key areas of her interest include historical ecology and the socio-ecological mapping of data to reconstruct shifting social perspectives and their influence on landscape expressions over time. She seeks to understand how societies remember, value, and manage protected sites, especially in the context of accelerating global change. Before her current role, she held research fellowships at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany from 2020 to 2023 and at the Australian National University from 2017 to 2019.

Research Interests

Experience