Email: leanne.melbourne@oum.ox.ac.uk
Phone: 01865 270931
Leanne works on the Museum’s temporary exhibitions and events programme. She is part of the team that develops and delivers the Museum’s Contemporary Science and Society exhibition series, which aims to collaborate with academic researchers from across the University of Oxford and beyond to engage the public with contemporary science issues. Part of Leanne’s role includes developing and marketing the events programme that accompanies the temporary exhibitions.
CV
Leanne is a researcher who uses museum and fossil collections to look at the long term impacts of environmental change on marine organisms and infer what this means for ecosystem function. Leanne previously completed a postdoc at the American Museum of Natural History focusing on climate change impacts on bivalves. She also spent a year lecturing marine micropalaeontology at the University of Bristol. Leanne has an MSci in Chemistry from the University of Bristol and a PhD which was jointly based between the University of Bristol and the Natural History Museum, London. Her PhD looked at the impact of climate change on the structural integrity of coralline algae.
Leanne is also very keen on public engagement, science communication and diversity and inclusion in science. Leanne spent two years working as the Events and Communications manager at the Linnean Society of London, the world’s oldest active biological society. She is currently on the board for the Black in Natural History Museum’s network, which aims to support and promote Black people within Natural History.
Selected Publications
LA. Melbourne and N. Goodkin. Using Museum collections to assess the impact of industrialization on mussel (Mytilus edulis) calcification. 2024, PLoS ONE 19(4): e0301874. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0301874
D. Titelboim, N.J. Rothwell, O. Lord, R. Harniman, L.A. Melbourne, and D.N. Schmidt. Unexpected increase in structural integrity caused by thermally induced dwarfism in Large Benthic Foraminifera, 2024, R. Soc. Open Sci.11:231280. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.231280
LA. Melbourne, J. Brodie, EJ. Rayfield, D. Titelboim, O.T. Lord and DN. Schmidt. Environmental impacts on structural integrity of British rhodoliths – the strength of a habitat former, 2023, Scientific Reports, 13 Article number:13473. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-40292-5
LA. Melbourne, M. Denny, R. Harniman, EJ. Rayfield and DN. Schmidt (2018). The importance of wave exposure on the structural integrity of rhodoliths. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, Vol 503, 109-119, doi: 10.1016/j.jembe.2017.11.007
LA. Melbourne, J. Griffin, DN. Schmidt, and EJ. Rayfield (2015). Potential and limitations of finite element modelling in assessing structural integrity of coralline algae under future global change. Biogeosciences, Vol 12, 5871-5883, doi:10.5194/bg-12-5871-2015
