Ian joined Curtin as a lecturer in 1998, after research positions at the University of Edinburgh, Royal Holloway University of London, and Monash University. He has a first class Honours degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge and was awarded a PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1992 for his thesis on “The metamorphic histories of some Proterozoic granulites from East Antarctica”. Ian’s initial appointment at Curtin was a joint research and teaching position within the Tectonics Special Research Centre, and he became one of the Deputy Directors of the Centre in 2003 until the end of its nine-year funding period in 2005. He was Head of the Department of Applied Geology from 2005 to 2009, Acting Director of the Western Australian School of Mines during 2010, and Head of the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences from 2018 until 2024.
Ian’s research is focused on the mineralogy, petrology, geochronology and field geology of metamorphic rocks, and their application to tectonics and Earth history. He has particular expertise in the use of thermodynamic and mineral-chemical data in the estimation of pressures–temperature histories for crustal and mantle rocks, the relationships between mineral assemblage, structure, and tectonic setting of metamorphism, and field and geochemical studies of the source, composition and spatial distribution of volatile fluids and melt during high-grade metamorphism. He has also worked on geochemical relationships in mantle eclogite and peridotite, the thermodynamic treatment of trace element partitioning in these rocks, and carbon isotope and trace element variations in diamond. Since arriving at Curtin he has also developed expertise in U–Pb isotope geochronology of accessory minerals, the use of detrital zircon age spectra in lithological and tectonic correlations, and the regional geological histories of Precambrian rocks in East Antarctica, southern Africa, Madagascar, India, Sri Lanka and Australia, and their implications for the assembly and dispersion of Proterozoic supercontinents.