I did my PhD in DAMTP, and Trinity College, Cambridge in the Relativity group. I then went to Chicago for five years as a postdoctoral researcher, spending three years at Fermilab and two years as a MacCormick fellow at the Fermi Institute in the University of Chicago. I returned to the UK with a five-year PPARC Advanced Fellowship at DAMTP, and subsequently moved to Durham with a Royal Society URF, and became a Professor of Mathematics and Physics in 2005. (I am 50-50 between the Mathematics and Physics departments).

In 2006, I was awarded the Maxwell Medal by the Institute of Physics for my research in Theoretical Physics. My best known result is the Gregory-Laflamme Instability, describing an instability of black strings in higher dimensions. I am interested in any unusual aspects of gravity be they in atomic physics, the early universe or string theory.

Publications

A list of my publications can be found in the inSpire database by clicking here

Research Area

Gravitation
Particle Cosmology
Spacetime in String Theory
Extra Dimensions

Research Interests

My research centres on the interface between fundamental high energy physics and cosmology. Physics explains how nature works, and we generally use it to tell us what will (or at the quantum level what is most likely!) to happen in a given situation. Cosmology is the study of the universe, and seeks to explain what we see through our telescopes. What makes the study of particle cosmology so interesting is that we attempt to use physics we have not and can not test in the lab (the energies involved are simply too high) to answer the most fundamental question of all – how did our universe begin?

Recent Talks

Gravity and Vacuum Decay – Gravity at all Scales (August 2015)
Nonperturbative Gravity and Cosmology – RESCEU Summer School (August 2015)

Outreach

In Our Time: Perpetual Motion
Noether’s Impact in Physics – Perimeter Institute Public Lecture
In Our Time: Relativity