Prof. Paula J. Reimer is the Director of the ¹⁴CHRONO Centre for Climate, the Environment, and Chronology in the School of Natural and Built Environment at Queen’s University Belfast. She leads the international radiocarbon calibration working group (IntCal) and is actively involved in research on carbon reservoir changes and carbon sources in sediment and soils. Paula is also interested in the use of stable isotopes in palaeodietary studies as a way of understanding radiocarbon reservoir effects on the accuracy of dating humans and animals subsisting on marine or freshwater resources.

Mr Stephen Hoper is a Senior Technician and Laboratory Manager in the ¹⁴CHRONO Centre. He has over 30 years’ experience in the radiocarbon laboratory at QUB and is the first point of contact for queries regarding sample submissions. Stephen has a chemistry background and oversees the sample pre-treatment and graphite production laboratory. He is responsible for the refinement of graphite production protocols and quality assurance within the laboratory.

Dr Maarten Blaauw is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Natural and Built Environment. He has a background in palaeoecology and previously held postdoctoral positions at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), Mathematics Research Centre CIMAT (Mexico), Uppsala University (Sweden) and Queen’s University Belfast, becoming a lecturer there in 2010. Maarten’s main interests are in numerical palaeoecology and he has almost two decades of experience in age-depth modelling and the statistical/ecological interpretation of proxy archives.

Mr Ron Reimer is a Research Fellow in the School of Natural and Built Environment. In addition to managing the database and software for the ¹⁴CHRONO Centre AMS facility, he has been involved in construction of the IntCal radiocarbon calibration curves since 2001 and is responsible for designing and maintaining the Marine Radiocarbon Reservoir Correction database and the CALIB and CALIBomb software.

Dr Gerard Barrett is a Research Fellow in the School of Natural and Built Environment. He is responsible for the operation, optimization and maintenance of the accelerator mass spectrometer (NEC 0.5 MeV) at ¹⁴CHRONO. Gerard has a background in experimental and atomic physics and has completed a masters and doctorate in dating and chronology. Along with continual efforts to improve the accuracy and precision of the radiocarbon dates produced at ¹⁴CHRONO, he also conducts research into dating methods for anthropogenic materials such as mortars and ceramics.  He also has a keen interest in early fired clay ceramics, the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition in Europe, and the use and interpretation of radiocarbon dates in chronology building.

Dr Evelyn Keaveney is a Research Fellow at in the School of Natural and Built Environment. She completed her PhD investigating freshwater reservoir offsets in 2010 and since then has been carrying out original research involving the novel use of radiocarbon as a biomarker to analyse carbon pathways in freshwater lakes. She is interested in carbon cycles, climate change and the impact of human activity on lakes and rivers. She has recently been instrumental in the construction of a Ramped Pyrolysis Combustion facility in the ¹⁴CHRONO Centre and will be using it to partition carbon sources and refine the chronologies of bulk sediment/soil/peat samples and sequences.

Kerry has been a Research Assistant at ¹⁴CHRONO since 2017 and is responsible for running the accelerator mass spectrometer alongside Dr Gerard Barrett. She is interested in ¹⁴C and C:N stable isotopes in marine molluscs both as indicators of anthropogenic input and for their viability as dating resources. Kerry was previously a Research Technician for ¹⁴Chrono, where she was involved in the operation and maintenance of the zinc reduction and hydrogen reduction graphite lines.

Michelle has been a Technician in the radiocarbon laboratory since 1993. Prior to the commissioning of the accelerator mass spectrometer, she was responsible for the operation of the liquid scintillation counters. She has also been involved in large-scale research projects providing dates and data analysis. Since 2009, Michelle has been responsible for the operation and maintenance of the isotope ratio mass spectrometer (EA-IRMS) and ¹⁴CHRONO’s carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis.

Jim has been a Technician in the radiocarbon laboratory since 1991, initially working with the benzene lines for liquid scintillation counting. He is responsible for sample pretreatments and separations on the zinc reduction graphite line and has been active in the selection of samples for major radiocarbon dating projects, including the FRAGSUS project.

Julia has been a Technician at QUB since 1993 and has been with ¹⁴CHRONO since 2011. She is responsible for the hydrogen reduction graphite line and FTIR analysis of cremated bone. Previously, Julia worked in the Geography department where she was responsible for the application of characterisation analysis equipment in geology and sedimentology research projects.

Niamh has been a Technician in the radiocarbon laboratory at ¹⁴CHRONO since 2017. She has a background in geography and quaternary science and is responsible for sample pre-treatments and separations on the zinc reduction graphite line. Niamh has been involved in the Deep Challa project, developing pre-treatment methods for complex issues in sediment dating.

Dr Svetlana Svyatko is a bioarchaeologist who specializes in palaeodietary analysis as well as chronology.  She received an MSc (Hons) in History (Department of History, Saint-Petersburg State University) in 2005, before coming to Queen’s University Belfast where she completed her PhD in Bioarchaeology in the School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology in 2009.  She was a postdoctoral research fellow in the ¹⁴CHRONO Centre from 2010 to 2018 which included time on a Leverhulme Trust grant “Freshwater reservoir effect on re-dating of Eurasian Steppe cultures”.  She has published numerous papers in both English and Russian and is currently a Visiting Research Fellow in the Centre.