Elin Jennings

Dr Elin Jennings is a postdoctoral research fellow in Mine Waste Geoscience at the W.H.Bryan Mining and Geology Research Centre within the Sustainable Minerals Institute. She currently works in the Mine Waste Transformation through Characterisation (MIWATCH) research group.

Elin's current research focus is on characterising legacy mine waste and Acid Mine Drainage in support to promote sustainable mining practices.

Before her PhD, Elin completed a BSc in Environmental Earth Science at Aberystwyth University. During her undergraduate years, she was awarded the Walter Idris Bursary for an independent research project on the adsorption and desorption of harmful elements on coal and ochre. Her dissertation focused on mapping potentially harmful elements around the Clydach nickel refinery in Wales, which contributed to the British Geological Survey’s urban geochemistry map of Swansea. She received the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland Award, and the Rudler Exhibition Prize for her academic achievements.

She earned her PhD from the University of Exeter, Camborne School of Mines (UK), under the supervision of Prof. Karen Hudson-Edwards and Dr. Rich Crane. Her research, conducted in collaboration with the NERC-funded Legacy Waste in the Coastal Zone project, focused on the behaviour of Acid Mine Drainage (AMD)-related metal(loid) contaminants such as arsenic, copper, and zinc in the Carnon River (UK) and their interactions with changing hydrological cycles and seawater in coastal zones. Elin’s thesis, Sources, Pathways, and Sinks of Metal(loid) Contaminants in an AMD-Affected River System, combined geology, geochemistry, and environmental science. Her fieldwork involved extensive sampling and hydrological measurements, and she developed expertise in advanced analytical techniques, including synchrotron-based XAS, XRF, ICP-OES, SEM-EDX, QEMSCAN, and ferrozine assays. She was awarded a Diamond Light Source grant to study arsenic transformations in river sediments using beamline I18.

After her PhD, Elin entered a role as a graduate research assistant in the PAMANA project. Project PAMANA aimed to provide a holistic understanding of the legacy, present and future environmental and ecological impacts of mining on Philippine River systems. The project also aimed to lay the foundations for a novel catchment monitoring and management infrastructure that informs sustainable mining practice through more effective Environmental Impact Assessment. Her role in this project focused on creating a geochemical profile of soils in the Agno Catchment and understanding the controls of their distribution (i.e. land use and geology).