FELS Inaugural Lecture with Professor Julian Leyland Event

Time:

3:30pm

Date:

2025-12-03 15:30:00

Venue:

National Oceanography Centre, Southampton

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Event details

This is the second Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences Inaugural Lecture in our 2025-26 series that celebrates the careers of our newly appointed Professors. On Wednesday 3rd December 2025, Professor Julian Leyland from the School of Geography and Environmental Science and Professor Stephanie Henson from the School of Ocean and Earth Sciences will present their research.

Watch the lecture video

Watch all the lecture videos from the 2025-26 series here.

Professor Julian Leyland

The Life of a Particle: Sediment Journeys Across Scales and Societies

Every landscape tells a story, and sometimes that story begins with something as small as a single grain of sediment. In this inaugural lecture, Professor Julian Leyland traces the extraordinary journey of a sediment particle as it moves through water and across scales: from its microscopic structure on a riverbed, through the shifting channels of great rivers and its role in shaping Earths great deltas.

Drawing on two decades of research in physical geography, the lecture explores how sediment, often considered a passive product of erosion, is instead a dynamic agent linking geomorphic processes, ecosystems, and human societies. Professor Leyland demonstrates how innovative technologies, from X-ray computed tomography and UAV laser scanning to satellite monitoring and machine learning, are transforming our understanding of sediment movement across scales from millimeters to continents. Case studies include work on gravel-bed river dynamics, the impacts of sand mining on the Mekong River and Delta, and new global assessments of suspended sediment transport that connect local processes to global change.

Interwoven with this scientific narrative is a personal story of a geographer’s own journey, from early field experiences and academic mentorship to leadership of research projects, and a reflection on the people, family, friends and colleagues who, like the currents that carry sediment, have shaped that path.

Biography

Julian Leyland is Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Southampton and Director of the Environmental Sensing @ Southampton (ES@S) facility. He has been at the University since 2001, when he joined as an undergraduate student, before completing his PhD in 2009, since when he has since developed his academic career. Over the past two decades, he has worked extensively in river basins and coastal environments around the world, combining fieldwork, modelling, and remote sensing to understand how landscapes evolve.

His research explores how water and sediment move through landscapes, from hillslopes and rivers to estuaries and coasts, and how these processes shape the world around us. He uses a wide range of tools and technologies, from drones, boats and satellite imagery to detailed laboratory analyses, to understand how rivers and coasts respond to natural changes and human activity. Julian’s work helps reveal how sediment transport and erosion influence the stability of landscapes, and the evolving hazards that they present on the human population that depend on the world’s rivers, deltas and coasts.

Much of his current research focuses on global sediment and water dynamics, including projects that investigate how climate change, land use and sand mining affect the movement of water and sediment from source to sea.