Professor Julian Dowdeswell

Professor Julian Dowdeswell has over 40 years of experience in glaciology, with a current focus on research into how glaciers and ice caps respond to climate change. He was awarded the Polar Medal by HM Queen Elizabeth II for ‘outstanding contributions to glacier geophysics’ and served as Director of SPRI for almost 20 years. He is currently serving as the Chair of the Friends.

Julian graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1980 and studied for a master’s degree at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research in the University of Colorado and for a PhD in the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge. He has worked, on the ice and from aircraft, in Antarctica and many parts of the Arctic, including Greenland, Svalbard, Iceland and the Russian and Canadian Arctic archipelagos. He has also undertaken many periods of work on ice-breaking research vessels in the Norwegian-Greenland Sea, in the fjords and on the continental shelves of Svalbard and Greenland, and around Antarctica.

He has also represented the UK on the councils of both the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) and the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and is a past chair of the UK National Committee on Antarctic Research.

As well as the Polar Medal, Julian has also received the Founder’s Gold Medal (2008) from the Royal Geographical Society. In 2011 he was awarded the Louis Agassiz Medal by the European Geosciences Union and, in 2014, he received the IASC Medal from the International Arctic Science Committee ‘as a World leader in the field of Arctic glaciology and for his outreach and communication activities which have been instrumental for public understanding of Arctic change’. Julian has also spoken recently on polar environmental change at the World Economic Forum in Davos and represented the UK at a White House ministerial meeting on the Arctic.