Liz Harper is Professor of Evolutionary Malacology at the University of Cambridge (UK).  She works and lectures in the Department of Earth Sciences and the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences.  She is a Fellow of Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge.

Having graduated with a BA(Hons) from Cambridge University, she did her PhD on the evolution of cementation on oysters at the Open University, returning to Cambridge as a Junior Research Fellow and then Royal Society University Research Fellow. Shell microstructure and mineralogy in both molluscs and brachiopods are major strands of her research. Most of her work is focussed on modern taxa but fossils can be included.  Liz aims to use a range different biological and geological techniques to understand the variability of microstructures and mineralogical make-up of shelled organisms and to assess the potential to track these as signals in phylogeny, environmental adaptation, sclerochronology and susceptibility to environmental change.  She also has a strong interest in predator-prey relationships and their evolution.

She has been working with scientists (both neontologists and palaeontologists) from the British Antarctic Survey for at least 30 years.