Professor Mark Williams

Mark is a multidisciplinary Earth Scientist and palaeontologist who has worked across fields as diverse as business, architecture, landscape evolution, Earth science and law. He has been an integral part of the Anthropocene Working Group since its inception, and with that group he has sought to quantify the degree of contemporary change to Earth's systems, its biosphere, atmosphere, oceans and Earth, with a particular focus on life. Mark studies the arrival of non-native species into ecosystems, and the geological signature these leave in the sedimentary record. Through such records he can compare the enormous change happening today with past intervals of biosphere disruption. Indeed, these contemporary changes may be one of the defining characteristics of a new geological epoch known as the Anthropocene. Mark's research also explores how humans might avoid causing a mass extinction of life.

Mark is an integral member and Senior Fellow of the Institute for Environmental Futures at Leicester University where he leads its Anthropocene theme. He often contributes to documentaries and news items on the Anthropocene, for example in the online journal 'The Conversation'. He is also the co-director of a laboratory for palaeontology at Yunnan University in China, where he has conducted research for several decades. And he forms a part of the Centre for Palaeobiology and biosphere evolution at Leicester. Uniquely, this enables him to combine a deep time understanding of biotic change with contemporary change.

Mark has also co-authored a number of popular science books, 'The Goldilocks Planet', 'Ocean Worlds', 'Skeletons the frame of life' and most recently 'The Cosmic oasis'. He is also the co-author of the book 'The Anthropocene a multidisciplinary approach'. 

My research focuses on understanding contemporary Earth system change from a geological context and in particular how biotic events in deep time can help us to understand and navigate contemporary change. I supervise a wonderful group of Anthropocene and deep time PhD students and post-docs focussed on this theme.

Williams, M., McGann, M., Yasuhara, M., Chaudhary, C. 2026. in press. The biosphere in the Anthropocene. Thematic set of 18 papers for Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Williams, M, Zalasiewicz, J. 2026 in press. A disharmony of the spheres in the Anthropocene. In Planetary Metaphysics. Scientific, Religious, and Philosophical Perspectives on the Human-Earth Relationship. Indiana University Press.

Sellers, H., Williams, M. et al. 2025. The stratigraphical Anthropocene is clearly recognisable in the birth-area of the Industrial Revolution. The Anthropocene Review, 12, 176-200.

Williams, M., Zalasiewicz, J., Barnosky, A. et al. 2024. Palaeontological signatures of the Anthropocene are distinct from those of previous epochs. Earth-Science Reviews 255, 104844.

Quinn, M., Gasparin, M., Williams, M. et al. 2024. Reorganising public value for city life in the Anthropocene. Organization 31, 1070-1091.

Williams, M., Zalasiewicz, J. 2022. The Cosmic Oasis. Oxford University Press. Also Chinese translation.

Vidas, D., Zalasiewicz, J., Williams, M., Summerhayes, C. 2021. Climate change and the Anthropocene. Implications for the development of the law of the sea. In: The Law of the Sea and Climate Change. Cambridge, pp. 22-48.

Wong Hearing, T., Pohl, A., Williams, M. et al. 2021. Quantitative comparison of geological data and model simulations constrains early Cambrian geography and climate. Nature Communications 12, Article number: 3868

Thomas, J.A., Williams, M., Zalasiewicz, J. 2020. The Anthropocene: a multidisciplinary approach. Polity Books. Also Chinese and Korean translations.

Hearing, T., Harvey, T., Williams, M. et al. 2018. An early Cambrian greenhouse. Science Advances, 4, eaar5690.

Hillenbrand, C., Smith, J. A., Hodell, D.A., Greaves, M. J., Poole, C.R., Kender, S., Williams, M. et al. 2017. West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreat driven by Holocene warm water incursions. Nature, 547 (7661), 43-48.

Mark teaches the core second year module on climate change for all Geography, Geology and the Environment students at Leicester. He also teaches Earth history and stratigraphy, the forensic and climate change applications of microfossils, and geological mapping skills. Mark also leads a fieldtrip to Wales each year that examines the deep history of our planet. The Anthropocene is embedded in much of his teaching. 

Some recent talks and presentations in 2024-25:

Mark Williams et al. 'Is the Technosphere causing a state shift to the Earth System in the Anthropocene', opening invited talk of NASA's Astrobiology and the Future of Life meeting, Houston, Texas, October 2024. https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/astrobiology2024/technical_program/?session_no=101

Mark Williams 'Mutualistic cities in the biosphere', May 2025, invited talk for the conference on the Symbiocene, Academy of Fine Arts, Katowice, Poland 

Mark Williams 'A disharmony of the spheres in the Anthropocene', June 2025, invited talk for the Technosignature seminar series, NASA, https://seec.gsfc.nasa.gov/News_and_Events/technosignatureSeminars.html

Mark Williams 'Earth is a sensorium'. Invited contributor to ARS Electronica, Linz, September 2025, https://ars.electronica.art/panic/en/view/Earth%20Is%20a%20Sensorium-22938ddb450c80a08f8dcd030831968b/

Some recent outputs in 2024-5 are:

As a contributor to Hannah Fry's 'Uncharted' BBC radio 4 programme on the Anthropocene, 'The Golden Spike' 30th August 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00230wc

And contribution to the award winning film 'Anthropocene the undeniable truth', broadcast on the French TV channel Arte, on January 18th 2025 at 23:20 and on Arte.tv from January 11th, 2025 https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/111677-000-A/anthropocene-l-implacable-enquete/

For several articles in The Conversation, see https://theconversation.com/profiles/mark-williams-153172/articles.