Francine McCarthy is a renowned palynologist and Professor of Earth Sciences. She is appointed to the Department of Biological Sciences and the Environmental Sustainability Research Centre at Brock University, Ontario. She is also Research Associate in Natural History at the Royal Ontario Museum and a voting member of the Anthropocene Working Group which explores formal definitions of the current human dominated geological epoch.

Her research focuses on using microfossils to reconstruct paleoenvironmental conditions (climate, hydrology, water quality, anthropogenic impact, food-web interactions), particularly in meromictic lakes which are excellent archives of continental environments. McCarthy’s work has primarily concentrated on lakes in eastern North America, the most iconic being Walden Pond, made famous by the naturalist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau. She is leading the effort to investigate the potential of the varved sequence in the hydrologically unique Crawford Lake, as a Golden Spike, to define the Anthropocene. This venture has led McCarthy to explore the broader aspects of this topic, and to engage with artists and researchers in the social sciences and humanities as well as community members, including Indigenous leaders, in addition to her fellow natural and physical scientists.