My research interests focus on the generation of magma beneath volcanoes. I am interested in how magmas form, especially in continental collision zones, and what their erupted products can tell us about the inner workings of our planet. What is the chemical composition of the Earth's interior? How heterogeneous is the Earth's mantle, and how does it relate to plate tectonics? What effect do lithological variations in the source have on magma generation? These are some of the questions that I would like to help answer. 

To do this, I primarily study the geochemistry of ‘melt inclusions’: tiny droplets of magma trapped inside growing crystals. These inclusions are shielded from outside processes during magma transport, mixing, and fractionation, so they provide unique snapshots of melts deep beneath the surface. Especially those trapped in olivine—one of the earliest-forming magmatic crystals—preserve crucial information about the deep origin of magmas. Though small in size (usually less than a tenth of a millimeter across), they hold chemical clues that are often invisible in the volcanic rock as a whole. 

These olivine-hosted melt inclusions are the principal subject of my PhD. Using new analytical techniques developed at the VU, I study the radiogenic isotope, major and trace element compositions of individual inclusions. This approach is applied to a large collection of volcanic rocks from the Italian peninsula, an intercontinental collision zone characterised by large variations in subducted material in space and time. Ultimately, I hope to help advance our understanding of the nature and origin of subduction-related volcanism and crustal recycling. 

This research is carried out as part of the ERC-funded “ReVolusions” project alongside dr. Janne Koornneef, dr. Igor Nikogosian and Natascia Luciani, which aims to quantify Recycling fluxes of Earth's surface materials and Volatiles in subduction zones by use of melt inclusions. 

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