Above the floating tongue of Battye Glacier, with the Amery Ice Shelf in the background, Antarctica
Michael Hambrey joined the Centre for Glaciology in September 1997, became its Director in June 1998, and Professor of Glaciology in April 1999.
Mike’s research interests include:
He has undertaken fieldwork in Norway (four seasons), the Swiss Alps (4 seasons), Chilean Patagonia (1 season), the Cordillera Blanca in Peru (1 season), the Nepalese Himalaya (1 season), the Canadian Arctic (1 season), the Yukon (1 season), Svalbard (15 seasons) and Antarctica (9 seasons). The Antarctic work has been undertaken with the Ocean Drilling Program, the national programmes of New Zealand, Germany, Australia and the USA, the international Cape Roberts Drilling Project, and most recently (2002 & 2006) the British Antarctic Survey.
Mike’s career prior to Aberystwyth began with graduation with a BSc in Geography & Geology in 1970, and a PhD in Glaciology in 1974, both from the University of Manchester. From 1974-1977 he was Post-Doctoral Research Assistant in Structural Glaciology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich. He moved to the University of Cambridge in 1977 holding a series of research posts in the Department of Earth Sciences and at the Scott Polar Research Institute, where he worked primarily on Arctic geology and a compilation of Earth's pre-Pleistocene glacial record. Concurrently, he was Fellow of St Edmund's College. Leaving Cambridge in 1991, he was appointed Professor of Quaternary Geology at the then Liverpool Polytechnic, now Liverpool John Moores University, where he was responsible for developing the Earth Science degree and initiating the Physical Geography degree. For shorter periods he has been Visiting Fellow at the Victoria University of Wellington (three times), Guest Scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (Bremerhaven) (also twice), and most recently (2006) Visiting Professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver.
Mike was awarded the Polar Medal by HM The Queen in 1989. In 2006 his work in glaciology and glacial geology was recognised by the naming of ‘Hambrey Cliffs’ on James Ross Island, Antarctic Peninsula. In 1993 he obtained Chartered Geologist status (C.Geol.) from the Geological Society. The first edition of his book with Jürg Alean, Glaciers, earned the Earth Science Publishers (USA) Outstanding Publication Award in 1995.
Mike is currently Chair of the Working Group on ‘Debris transport in glaciers’ of the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences, UK Earth Science delegate to the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, a member of the UK National Antarctic Research Committee, a member of the Awards Committee of the Geological Society. Previously he served as Scientific Editor for the Journal of Glaciology (1995-2001) and the Journal of the Geological Society (1997-2000), and was a member of the Editorial Board of Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology and Palaeoecology (1987-97). He was President of the British Branch of the International Glaciological Society from 1995-97, and has been a member of the Stratigraphic Commission for Svalbard. From 2000 to 2003 he served on the NERC Earth Science Peer Review Committee.
Current Research Grants and Projects