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Archive of previous news

Archive of previous news

Polar Museum short listed for Museum of the Year

The Polar Museum was one of four finalists in the prestigious Art Fund Prize 2011, the UK's foremost award for museums and galleries. The winner, announced on 15 June, was the British Museum. Also in the running were the Roman Baths Museum and the Robert Burns Birthplace Museum. The Museum was also commended in the finals of the European Museum of the Year Award 2012.

Scott Centenary Sledge Pull

Latest news on the sledge pull

Awards

(Listed most recent first)

Alison Banwell, a PhD student from the Institute, will receive one of Cambridge's 2011 Dow Chemical Company's prizes for Sustainability Innovation. She has also been chosen as the overall winner. Read more …

Professor Julian Dowdeswell has been awarded the Louis Agassiz Medal of the European Geosciences Union. The medal was established to honour outstanding scientists whose work is related to Cryospheric Sciences. The medal will be presented during the General Assembly of the Union in Vienna in April 2011.

Tina Adcock has been awarded a prestigious two-year postdoctoral fellowship by the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Tina will take up the fellowship at the Department of History, University of British Columbia, starting January 2011.

Janne Flora (PhD 2009) has been awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the Carlsberg Foundation and will remain at SPRI to study relatedness and loneliness in Greenland village life and among Greenlandic immigrants to Denmark.

SPRI has received a grant of £200,000 from the Greenland government in connection with Terto Kreutzmann's research on varieties of religious experience in Greenland today.

This year's Frederick Soddy Award, administered by the Royal Geographical Society/Institute of British Geographers, has been awarded to Evelyn Landerer of the Scott Polar Research Institute (part of the Department of Geography), to fund her PhD fieldwork on changing experiences of space and movement in Siberia.

Julian Dowdeswell awarded Louis Agassiz Medal by the European Geosciences Union

In early April 2011, Professor Julian Dowdeswell was awarded the Louis Agassiz Medal of the European Geosciences Union at their annual meeting in Vienna, Austria. The medal was awarded for 'outstanding contributions to the study of polar ice masses and to the understanding of the processes and patterns of sedimentation in glacier-influenced marine environments'.

2011 Scott Polar History Colloquium

This very successful event was held on 29 March 2011 at the Institute. For further details, please see:
The 2011 Scott Polar History Colloquium: Issues of Historical Practice in the Polar Regions.

Greenland's glaciers double in speed

The contribution of Greenland to global sea level change and the mapping of previously unknown basins and mountains beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet are highlighted in a new film released by Cambridge University this morning.

Cambridge University glaciologist Professor Julian Dowdeswell has spent three years of his life in the polar regions.

As Director of the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge, this film follows him to Greenland and the Antarctic as his research reveals the challenges we all face from climate change.

Read more ...

New Year's Honour for Dr Peter Clarkson, Emeritus Associate

Peter Clarkson

Dr Peter Clarkson, Emeritus Associate of the Scott Polar Research Institute, has been awarded an MBE in the New Year Honours List for his many and sustained contributions to both science and the organisation of science in Antarctica.

ESRC seminar series on the polar regions

Klaus Dodds (Royal Holloway, University of Liverpool) and Richard Powell (University of Liverpool) have been awarded an ESRC Seminar series award (January 2010-July 2011) for the following topic - 'Knowledges, resources and legal regimes: the new geopolitics of the Polar Regions'.

The first seminar will be held at the Foresight Centre, University of Liverpool on Thursday 25 March 2010. The three other events are being hosted in London and Liverpool over the next 18 months, with the British Library hosting the London-based seminars.

A poster giving further information is available.

Royal visit to SPRI, October 2008

Royal visit

Prince William and Prince Harry made a two-day visit to Cambridge University to meet experts on the global challenges facing society. Their meetings included a visit to the Scott Polar Research Institute, where they were met by Professor Julian Dowdeswell. Read more ...

Photograph © Cambridge Evening News

Arctic Passages

Arctic Passages, a small collaborative exhibition organised by Dr Michael Bravo with Robin Boast and his team at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology with material and archival expertise on loan from SPRI, was listed by The Times as one of their top 5 museum exhibitions in the UK! The exhibition remains open until December 1st. The website is titled '1934 Arctic Wordie Expedition', named after James Wordie, former Master of St. John's College, Cambridge.

SPRI Director awarded RGS Founder's Medal

Image as described adjacent

Our Director, Professor Julian Dowdeswell has been awarded the RGS Founder's Medal for 2008.

This is one of the two most prestigious medals awarded by the Royal Geographical Society and was presented to him at the 2008 RGS-IBG AGM on 2 June, at the Society's headquarters in central London, for his work in the encouragement, development and promotion of glaciology.

Julian joins a long list of distinguished recipients, including John Biscoe, Sir John Ross, Sir George Back, Sir James Clark Ross and Dr John Rae.

Photograph © Celene Pickard

SPRI Review 2007

SPRI Review 2007 has been published, and details the work of the Institute during that year.

£200,000 lottery win for SPRI

A world-class collection of Inuit art and artefacts at Cambridge University's Scott Polar Research Institute will be significantly bolstered after a £200,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The award, announced today, is part of a new £3million grants package handed out by the HLF to 22 museums and gallery acquisition projects across the UK. Almost 100 museums nationwide competed for this one-off scheme.

The £200,000 SPRI grant will help increase their already impressive Inuit collection with some 250 key pieces from the period 1950-1990. This will give the Institute chance to provide a fuller examination of Inuit life, traditions and culture in Canada, Alaska and Greenland.

Read more ...

2007 Ashby Prize

The Scott Polar Research Institute and Dept. of Geography are pleased to announce that Dr. Richard Powell, a former Ph.D. student (supervised by Dr. M. T. Bravo and Prof. K. S. Richards) and ESRC Research Fellow at the Scott Polar Research Institute/Geography, has been awarded the 2007 Ashby Prize by the editors of Environment and Planning 'A' in recognition of the exceptional quality of his paper on the geography of experimental field practices in the Arctic. The research for the paper was carried out as part of his doctoral work and subsequently submitted for publication. The full reference for the paper is Richard C. Powell (2007) 'The rigours of an Arctic experiment': the precarious authority of field practices in the Canadian High Arctic, 1958-1970 Environment and Planning A 39(8) 1794-1811.

Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society

Professor Julian Dowdeswell has been awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society for 2008. This is one of the two most prestigious medals awarded by the RGS.