Dr. Jana Ilgner
Main Focus
As the Lab Manager of the Department of Archaeology Jana is responsible for the maintenance of the Department's laboratories. She supervises PhD students and postdocs in their laboratory work and is the department's health and safety officer. She is also responsible for maintaining the equipment in the department's laboratories that is needed in the measurement and preparation of archaeological samples. In addition to the routine application of established isotope methods, Jana is involved in the development of novel stable isotope methods (such as compound specific isotope analyses of dD and 13C) in the study of the human past. In particular, Jana facilitates the use of isotope methodologies in the study of intra- and inter- societal differences in prehistoric and historical human diets, the development of detailed human stable isotope ecologies, and the development of new, detailed palaeoenvironmental proxies of immediate relevance to studies of past human responses to climatic and environmental change.
Curriculum Vitae
Jana received her Master in Geography at the Technical University Dresden, Germany, where she applied U/Pb dating of zircons using Laser-ICP-MS. She received her PhD from the University of Bern, Switzerland in palaeogeoecology. For her PhD she focused on landscape and climate reconstruction applying 10Be surface exposure dating. As a visiting scientist at Brown University, USA, she focused on alkenone-paleotemperature determination and foraminifera determination for estimating past ocean productivity in the eastern equatorial Pacific. At the University of Bern she ran the stable isotope laboratory as well as the cosmogenic nuclide laboratory of the biogeochemistry and palaeoclimate research group of the Department of Geography. She has supervised BSc, MSc and PhD students in lab work and research with the research focus on climate and landscape change since the last ice age applying biomarker and stable isotope analyses (compound specific dD, 13C), as well as 10Be surface exposure dating.