Geoscience Research Directorate | Energy Science

Prof Mike Stephenson
Head of Energy Science

Professor Mike Stephenson has BSc, MSc and PhD degrees from Imperial College and University of Sheffield, and various postgraduate teaching qualifications. Originally interested in education, Mike left Britain to work as a teacher in a small rural school in Botswana for ten years and also worked in educational publishing in Africa. In the mid-1990s he decided to return to Britain to take up research and since then he has developed expertise in the petroleum geology and biostratigraphy of the Middle East, and has published around 40 papers on this region, as well as working extensively as a consultant for oil companies in the area. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society and sits on the Petroleum Group Committee, and is a member of the Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain (PESGB). He is also a board member of the Middle East Journal GeoArabia and the Arabian Journal of Geosciences. He was Secretary-General of the Commission Internationale de Microflore du Palozoique (CIMP) between 2002 and 2008, and is presently Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier journal Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology.