Galaxy evolution, near and far

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The atmospheric windows in the submillimetre (submm) can be used to observe the far-infrared(IR) emission from dust-obscured activity in the early Universe. My group conducted the first large redshift survey of galaxies emitting strongly in the submm, characterising the evolution of this important galaxy population, and facilitating the detailed study of the galaxies with other telescopes. The work was announced in Nature (2003), and has a citation record in the top 0.1% of all papers in astronomy. In a complementary sense, much of the information required to understand the formation and evolution of galaxies can be gleaned from high quality `fossil record' data on nearby galaxies. My group has initiated the largest ever radial velocity and metallicity survey of red giant stars in our nearest spiral galaxy neighbor, M31. The large-scale kinematic characterisation of the outer halo and disk regions have yielded unexpected and important discoveries, namely a giant extended disk out to ~220,000 light years radius, and a non-rotating metal-poor halo analogous to that of our own Milky Way. Our kinematic characterisation of the outer disk and halo in M31 made the top-10 discoveries of 2005 in Astronomy magazine.