Jennifer Mcelwain

Professor Jennifer McElwain holds the 1711 Professorial Chair of Botany at Trinity College Dublin's School of Natural Sciences. She is currently the Head of Botany within the School and Director of Trinity College Botanic Garden. Her research and teaching have focused on the development and use of paleobotanical methods (proxies) that use fossil plants to reconstruct the evolution of Earth's atmospheric composition and climate on multimillion year timescales. She is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. In 2022 she was awarded the RIA Gold Medal in Environmental Sciences and Geosciences. Professor McElwain has published over 100 papers on the topic of climate and atmospheric change and plant evolution and two books, Tropical Arctic. Lost Plants, Future Climates and the Discovery of Ancient Greenland (University of Chicago Press) and Evolution of Plants (Oxford University Press).