Alexandra Vasilyeva

Alexandra Vasilyeva serves as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie PhD Fellow at the University of Glasgow, specializing in Archaeology with a focus on environmental reconstruction of dryland regions. Her research integrates palynology and palaeoecology to analyze prehistoric land use patterns and human-environment interactions throughout the Holocene epoch, particularly in South African drylands.

Her primary research interests center on understanding how ancient agricultural practices shaped cultural landscapes and influenced dryland resilience. By examining pollen records and archaeological evidence, she investigates the interplay between natural climate variability and anthropogenic land cover changes to develop sustainable management frameworks for contemporary dryland regions facing desertification and climate change impacts.

She has received the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship under the European Union's Horizon Europe programme (Grant Agreement No 101120560), supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (grant number EP/Y03290X/1).

As the environmental research lead for the AGRI-DRY project (Dryland agriculture and Land use; past, present and future resilience), she directs studies on historical land management practices while collaborating with interdisciplinary teams to translate paleoenvironmental insights into modern sustainability strategies. The project addresses critical challenges including soil degradation, unsustainable land management, and climate-driven desertification across global dryland regions.