Kinematics and dynamics of extragalactic globular clusters

The study of galaxies has fascinated astronomers for centuries. During my PhD I collected data from the most powerful telescopes in the world and I wondered: 'what can we learn about galaxies by studying the motion of the stellar objects which populate their outskirts?'. My results showed that galaxies can grow in size by cannibalizing smaller galaxies or by merging with galaxies of similar size in order to become a single entity. The data also showed indirect evidence for the mysterious dark matter, which appears invisible to us, but it accounts for most of the matter in the Universe.