Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust Annual Lecture 2022
Professor Pete Nienow | Art and ice loss: a personal and scientific reflection mourning rapid glacier loss in the Alps
Professor Nienow will consider the scientific background to and evidence for the recent dramatic ice loss from the European Alps, so close to the heart of Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, placing some of these changes in the context of his personal research and sense of loss, informed by over two years spent living in the forefield of the Haut Glacier d’Arolla, Switzerland. He will also look at, from a glaciologist’s perspective, some of the more intriguing aspects of Barns-Graham’s art inspired by her visits to the Grindelwald Glacier in 1949, the subject of Mark Cousins’ Like a Huge Scotland on at the Fruitmarket from 5 to 27 November.
Professor Pete Nienow has been Professor of Glaciology at Edinburgh University since 2011. Much of his research has involved lengthy fieldwork in the Alps, Canadian High Arctic and Greenland. In 2016, he was awarded the Polar Medal by Her Majesty the Queen in recognition of his glaciological research in the Arctic and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) in 2019.
Professor Pete Nienow