Dr. habil. Ralf Halama

Biography

Born in the beautiful Pfalz region of southwestern Germany, I studied Geology at the Universities of Mainz (Germany) and Glasgow (Scotland), receiving a Diplom (M.Sc.) in Geology in 2000. In 2003, I obtained a doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) from the University of Tübingen (Germany), with a thesis entitled “Petrological and isotope geochemical investigations of basalts, gabbros, and anorthosites of the Gardar Province, South Greenland”. I held postdoctoral positions at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (France), the University of Maryland (USA), and the Universities of Kiel and Potsdam (Germany). In 2005, I was awarded a Feodor-Lynen research fellowship from the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation. In 2011, I obtained the Habilitation with a thesis entitled “Tracking geochemical cycling using novel stable isotope tracers”. From 2015 until 2024, I was lecturer in Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology at Keele University (UK) and I joined the Institute for Geosciences and Geography at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg in 2024.

Research and Scholarship

My research interests include aspects of igneous and metamorphic petrology as well as geochemistry. Main research themes are:

  • Intraplate alkaline magmatism
  • Geochronology and element transfer of subduction zone metamorphic rocks
  • Light element stable isotopes as geochemical tracers

Past and present field areas of my research are in the Gardar Province (South Greenland), the Raspas Complex (Ecuador), the Coastal Cordillera (Chile), the Lesser Caucasus Volcanic Belt (Armenia) and the Sesia Zone (Western Alps, Italy).

I have served as topic editor for the International Journal of Earth Sciences (Geologische Rundschau) and as Chief Editor for the Journal of Mineralogy and Geochemistry (Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie). Since 2020, I am Associate Editor for Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. I have also served as committee member and treasurer for the Metamorphic Studies Group, a special interest group of the Geological Society of London and the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

Publications

Publication list @Google Scholar: ‪Ralf Halama – ‪Google Scholar