Professor Peter Coxon's job in Trinity College Dublin consists of research, teaching and administration, but it often takes him to some of the world's more remote locations. Anne Byrne reports

The first work-related text message I ever received came beeping on to my mobile phone recently courtesy of Professor Peter Coxon of TCD.

Having organised an interview, I enter the museum building in TCD, pass between the skeletons of two giant Irish deer and follow Coxon up the wide marble staircase. Bright orange socks glow about his ankles, linking his black Doc Martin shoes and his blue denim jeans. A blue fleece completes the attire.

The vigour of his stair-climbing as much as his attire signify that this is a man who spends a large portion of his time outdoors. As it turns out, one of the landscapes he has recently been researching is situated high in the Indian Himalayas.

Upstairs in his office, a motorbike helmet sits on one chair, a microscope and computer fill another corner and the window faces out on to one of Trinity's immaculately groomed squares.

Already a fellow of TCD, Coxon has recently been invited to become a member of the Royal Irish Academy. There are just over 300 RIA members, so this is an honour that is not lightly bestowed.

He grins as he says it must mean he's on the right track. "The academy plays an important role in bringing together the arts and sciences. Every university has its own approach - the academy makes an effort to pull these together. It also operates at an international level." A knock on the door and he hands some slides over to his wife, Catherine, who lectures in the department. Their two-year-old daughter, Rebecca, has a cold and has been up most of the night (as have her parents). Balancing work and childminding is a juggling act for them at present, he says.

Background reading for this interview was supplied by the RIA in the form of the the new Survey of Clare Island (volume 2: geology). Coxon contributed a chapter on the Quaternary history - i.e. the last 2 million years. It is somewhat daunting in its technicality and the apparent location of many of its finding in a different timeframe. What's this BP?

Coxon explains that BP means Before Present, with the present being the 1950s. "Radiometric dating has to stop at 1950, when weapons testing began to increase the level of radiocarbon in the atmosphere. If you radio-carbon dated you or me, you would come up with a date hundreds of years in the future. Four or five years ago, I attempted to radiocarbon date a medieval trackway in Kerry only to find it too was located in the future, possibly due to the fallout of Chernobyl."

Coxon's fascination with his subject is evident but he comes to geology and TCD by accident. "I studied biology and geography at Sussex University. It was a combined degree and I was really interested in biochemistry.

"My final year geography course was about climate change and Quaternary history. It was excellent. I had already got a PhD studentship to study plant biology and chemistry but I changed my mind and went to Cambridge to study environmental history in eastern Europe in the Quaternary period." He says the influence of an interesting teacher, particularly one who is an active researcher, can be immense.

Having spent three "fantastic" years in Cambridge, he was writing up his thesis when a lectureship in geography was advertised in TCD . "My supervisor told me to apply for interview practice. I was offered the job, and jumped at it. It was a fantastic opportunity. Jobs were very scare in the late 1970s." However, he arrived with one suitcase, unsure just how long he would stay.

"I fell in love with the place, especially the landscape of the west. I met my wife here in 1980. She was a postgraduate student." Coxon duly progressed up the ladder from lecturer to senior lecturer to associate professor in 1992. He has spent two field seasons at the Himalayan glacial limits in Ladakah in eastern Cashmere and in Himachalpradesh. "We were studying what climate has done over the past one and a half million years. We know a huge amount about the climate of northwest Europe and northern America but very little about the more remote regions of the world. To produce climate models we need information from the whole surface of the planet.

"One of the interesting findings was that the rate of retreat of the glaciers since 1850 is massive. These smaller glaciers reacted very quickly to climate change . . . global warming is happening very fast. This is the first thing we teach our first-year students." Coxon travelled with a group form the Royal Holloway, trekking rather than climbing, he says. They camped at 5,000 metres and he says there was a sense of loneliness, just a few shepherds and sheep and unbelievable scenery.

Another remote landscape that fascinates him is Mayo's Clare Island: "Lough Avullin is a fossil lake - you can walk across although it's a bit quaky in the middle." Eleven metres of peat provide a continuous record of the last 10,000 years. The early samples are of tundra with grasses, sedges and artic plants thriving in the freezing cold. "Then, the north Atlantic current switched on and the climate warmed up rapidly, perhaps in a 10-year period. Nine thousand years ago, the island was wooded with oak, hazel, birch, pine and ash. By 7,500 years ago, alder had established itself . . . the forests were cut down in prehistory with the wood used to fuel fulacht fiadh (ancient cooking pits), to make trackways and houses . . ." But it is Clare Island's "trim line", a line that marks the edge of a glacier, that most interests Coxon. "The glaciers stopped in Clew Bay, pinned by Clare Island, some 17,000 to 14,000 years ago." Once the limits are known, the glacier can be modelled and thickness can be calculated.

Back on the island of Ireland, Coxon is working on a landscape in Connemara, parts of which appear to be have been relatively unaltered by the past 5 million years. The Ireland of 5 million years ago was like the Everglades in the southeastern US today. Pollen analysis is used to confirm the type of ancient landscape. A local man, Patrick, tipped Coxon off. Locals often provide the best information on landscapes, says Coxon, as they have an eye for the unusual.

But, lest the wrong impression be given, Coxon says data and samples are collected in the field but most of the work is carried out in a lab. His job consists of research, teaching and administration. "I have run the geography exams for the past three years. It's really hard work."