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Professor in the Department of Geography+44 (0) 191 33 41859

Biography

I am a polar geoscientist with wide research interests but a core focus on the past and future behaviour of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, and on trying to reduce uncertainty in projections of future risk of sea level rise. I have published over 130 ISI-listed international peer-reviewed papers and been awarded numerous grants from UK and international funders, including nearly £10M in the last 5 years. 

I have held a sequence of senior leadership roles, including several at Board level, in University and in the wider academic community and for charities. I continue to make a sustained wider academic contribution with regular service - often as Chair - on a range of UK and overseas panels to award grants and to evaluate research quality. I remain committed to science outreach via print, web and broadcast media and regional engagement through schools and civic society. 

I welcome enquiries from potential PhD or Masters students. 

Research Interests

My research focuses on the past history of ice sheets and environmental change, especially Antarctica but also including Greenland and a long-standing strand of research in Patagonia. 

i) Ice sheet history

Much of my work has combined glacial geomorphology and cosmogenic isotope surface exposure dating to try and infer past thickness (and extent) variations of ice sheets. Most of this has been focussed on Antarctica, including projects studying parts of both the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (Ellsworth Mountains, Amundsen Sea region, Antarctic Peninsula, Pensacola Mountains) and the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (Coats Land, Dronning Maud Land). Alongside this I have also produced some of the first detailed relative sea level curves for the Antarctic Peninsula, which provide independent constraints on former ice sheet thickness. I have also been part of similar studies in Greenland and Patagonia. 

In most of these projects I collaborate closely with modellers in a two-way process that allows the field data to be used as constraints for models and for models to direct site selection in future field campaigns. A significant output of our work on ice history has been to constrain ice sheet models, including leading an 80-author synthesis of the post-Last Glacial Maximum history of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. 

ii) Glacial isostatic adjustment

I led projects to develop a new model of glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA, sometimes called 'glacial rebound') of Antarctica, and which we continue to update. I oversee the UKANET network of ~30 GPS receivers that we have assembled thanks to UKRI-NERC funding over several grant cycles, and which continue to provide real-time data on the rate of bedrock uplift and subsidence around much of Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica. We collaborate closely with British Antarctic Survey whose engineers maintain the instruments, and with the US POLENET program who have shared key technology and maintain a network across the rest of West Antarctica. Our model of GIA has been used to correct satellite gravimetry measurements of present-day ice sheet mass balance such as the published by the IMBIE consortium.

iii) Sub-glacial access

Much of my work in recent years has been focussed on trying to retrieve samples from under the ice sheet in Antarctica. I was part of the NERC-funded Lake Ellsworth Consortiumthat aimed to drill into a subglacial lake. It was unsuccessful due to equipment failure but our long-term aim is still to retrieve water and sediment samples with the intention to study life in extreme environments and decipher long-term climate change and ice sheet behaviour. With Prof Dom Hodgson (BAS) I continue to work  on approaches to analysis of sediment cores from subglacial lakes.

In 2020 I was awarded an Advanced Grant, called INCISED, by the European Research Council. This project is to retrieve rock samples from the Antarctic bed as a way to better understand the ice sheet past history and its possible future.   I am also part of the SWAIS-2C consortium - a New Zealand-led project to retrieve long sediment cores from beneath the West Anatrctic Ice Sheet. 

iv) Glacial and climate history of Patagonia

I have worked for many years as part of a team which is determining the glacial and environmental history of Patagonia in southernmost South America using a variety of approaches including glacial geomorphology, dating of landforms, palaeoecology, and linked ice sheet-climate-GIA modelling. Recent work with Masters and PhD students has included detailed geomorphological mapping and cosmogenic surface exposure dating of the Magellan Strait and Tierra del Fuego regions.

Research interests

  • Antarctic environmental history
  • Antarctic ice sheet history
  • Antarctic ice shelf history
  • Cosmogenic dating
  • Falkland Islands palaeoenvironmental history
  • Glacial geomorphology
  • Global sea levels
  • Icelandic and Scottish deglaciation
  • Landslides
  • Raised shorelines and relative sea level change
  • South American glaciation
  • Subglacial lakes

Publications

Chapter in book

Journal Article

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

Supervision students