About

Hi, I’m Sean. I am an Associate Professor in the Geology Department at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington located on the ancestral homelands of the Coast Salish Peoples.

I am a field geologist interested in the evolution of convergent margins and collisional orogens, which are among the most complex and dynamic settings on Earth. Metamorphic rocks from the exhumed middle- and lower-crust of subduction zones and mountain belts record the thermal, mechanical, and chemical processes that operated during convergence, collision, and exhumation. Our research group uses exposures of the middle and lower crust to explore those records and test models for how orogens evolve. We do this by combining field-based observations with structural geology, metamorphic petrology, and geochronology. Our current research focuses on several key themes: the structural and metamorphic evolution of subduction zones, the timescales and patterns of deformation in the middle and lower crust, and the metamorphic (chemical, thermal, and pressure) evolution of mountain belts.