Dr Amy Prendergast is a Senior Lecturer and DECRA Fellow in the School of Geography, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences (SGEAS) at the University of Melbourne. She previously held a McKenzie Fellowship at the University of Melbourne (2016-2019) and an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Mainz in Germany (2014-2016). She received her PhD in Archaeological Science and Stable Isotope Geochemistry from the University of Cambridge in 2014. Amy’s research focuses on exploring the relationship between humans and environmental change. She studies how humans and our hominin ancestors responded to rapid environmental changes over the past several million years. She has worked at sites across North Africa, Western Asia, Southeast Asia and Australia. Amy employs geochemical records in combination with growth increment analyses (sclerochronology) from biogenic carbonates such as mollusc shells to generate high-resolution records of environmental change and seasonality. She focuses on generating records from archaeological sites to facilitate reconstructions of human-environment interaction. She is involved in both proxy development and palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. Between 2005-2009, Amy worked in government, first in the graduate program at Geoscience Australia, and then as a research scientist, leading a program of tsunami geology research at Geoscience Australia. Her work included research and capacity building and primarily focused on the Holocene geological record of past tsunamis in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Amy grew up in Melbourne and completed her undergraduate at the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Classics and Archaeology and a Bachelor of Science majoring in Earth Sciences. Her Honours in Earth Sciences focused on palaeoenvironmental reconstruction and human environment interaction in the Mallee region of northwestern Victoria.