Dr. Mark Terry is a Canadian scholar, explorer, and filmmaker. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Communications and Media Studies, York University [1] and the Department of Digital Media and Journalism, Wilfrid Laurier University. [2]
He received his PhD from York University in Toronto defending his dissertation titled The Geo-Doc: Remediating the Documentary Film as an Instrument of Social Change on January 18, 2019. [3] He received his master's degree from York University in 2015 with a thesis titled The Documentary Film as an Instrument of Social Change. In 1980, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Glendon College, York University in English and Media Studies. In 2021, he was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the country's highest academy. [4]
In 2009, Terry produced and directed the documentary feature film The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning (2009) [5] and was invited to screen it at COP15, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Copenhagen that year. [6] The film was screened 25 times at the two-week conference and viewed online 60,000 times by delegates. The screenings established a relationship with Terry and the Communications Department of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that continues to this day. [7] He was asked to produce a second film on Arctic research for the subsequent climate summit, COP16 in Cancun. The film he directed, The Polar Explorer (2010), consists of Terry profiling the research team from ArcticNet during a crossing of the Northwest Passage, and this made The Polar Explorer the first film to document a complete crossing. [8] The film was once again screened 25 times at the conference and was included in a policy-writing session as a resource. The resulting resolution – Enhanced Action on Adaptation: Section II, Subsection 25 of the Cancun Accord – was co-authored by Terry. [9]
While the medium of the documentary film was welcomed as a communications tool by the UN, a demand for more visible evidence of climate change was made. To accommodate this, Terry conceived of the Geo-Doc to provide multiple documentary shorts of climate research from around the world on one digital map. The project was an extension of the Youth Climate Report, a curation project commissioned by the UNFCCC in 2011. [10] The project called for the global community of youth to produce short video films of climate research in their home countries. From 2011 to 2015, the best films were edited together to create a feature-length documentary film that was screened for delegates attending the annual UN climate summits. In 2015, the Geo-Doc format was introduced at the Paris climate summit. It was adopted by the UNFCCC the following year as a partner program to showcase the best videos submitted to the Global Youth Video Competition. [11] The Youth Climate Report GIS Project continues to this day. [12] In 2021, the United Nations recognized this innovative form of documentary film with a Sustainable Development Goals Action Award [13] and Terry was inducted into the Order of Vaughan. [14] This work has extended to the public sector in 2023 when he was appointed the Director of the Environmental and Sustainability Program for the City of Vaughan in Canada. [15]
Terry has contributed to 80 film and television productions as a producer, director, writer, publicist, actor, and even stunt driver. As an actor, he is perhaps best known as the Alien Pilot in Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict (1997–2002) produced by Atlantis Alliance Communications and distributed by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. He is best known as a documentary filmmaker, specializing in environmental themes. In particular, many of his films made for PBS in the US and CBC in Canada focus on climate change research in the polar regions: The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning (2009), [16] The Polar Explorer (2010), Polar (2011), A Climate of Change (2014), Antarctica in Decline (2017), and The Changing Face of Iceland (2021). [17] His latest documentary on climate change impacts in Iceland premiered at the UN climate summit, COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland, on November 4, 2021. [18]
In 2011, Terry was honored by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television with its Gemini Humanitarian Award for his dedicated lifetime service to environmental filmmaking. [19] [20]
He has won 39 international awards for his film work, including back-to-back Audience Choice Awards at the American Conservation Film Festival for The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning in 2010 and The Polar Explorer in 2011. [21] His most recent film, The Changing Face of Iceland, has won 12 international Best Documentary film awards. [22]
As an explorer, Terry was made a Fellow of The Explorers Club in 2010 and a Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in 2012. [23] He has sailed all three of the major passages that connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans: the Drake Passage, the Panama Canal, and the Northwest Passage. He was commissioned by the Explorers Museum in Ireland to lead a pennant expedition through the Mindo Cloudforest of the Andes Mountains in Ecuador in 2016.
In 2010, the Canadian Chapter of The Explorers Club awarded Terry its highest honor, the Stefansson Medal, for his "unique contributions to documenting the natural world". [8] [24] In 2013, the Governor-General of Canada decorated Terry with the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for his "international humanitarian service" informing the environmental policymakers of the United Nations through his documentary film projects. [25] In 2015, Canadian Geographic Magazine named Terry one of Canada's "Top 100 Greatest Explorers". [26] In 2023, he serves as an Expedition Team Member, Climate and Climate Action, for Adventure Canada's expeditions to Iceland, Greenland, Newfoundland, Labrador, and the Arctic. [27]
While in production on the documentary The Polar Explorer, Terry was on the top deck of the Canadian Coast Guard Icebreaker, Amundsen, when the ship was photographed from a helicopter for the back of the Canadian $50 bill. As a result, Terry was captured as the sole figure on the upper deck of the ship making him the only living person on Canadian money as of 2024. [28]
Famous Quote: "The destination of discovery begins with a journey of exploration."
Mark Terry's recent research has been published by Palgrave Macmillan in the book The Geo-Doc: Geomedia, Documentary Film, and Social Change (2020). He is currently the Chair of the ADERSIM Arctic Group, the Advanced Disaster, Emergency, and Rapid Response Simulation program at York University in Toronto, Canada. He is also an Associate of the UNESCO Chair in Reorienting Education through Sustainability. He continues his research in digital media and humanitarian communications as a research fellow at the Young Lives Research Lab and the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University in Toronto. [29] He also serves as contract faculty of environmental studies teaching the courses EU/ENVS 1010: Introduction to Environmental Documentaries and EU/ENVS 5073: Social Movements, Activism and Social Change: Underrepresented Voices in Climate Change. [30]
In 2020, York University gave Dr. Terry the President's Award for Research [31] and in 2016, honoured Dr. Terry's innovative work with the Geo-Doc with the President's Sustainability Leadership Award. [32] Terry has given more than 80 lectures at universities and academic conferences throughout the world presenting research papers on the subjects of documentary film theory, digital media, and climate change research in the polar regions. He has also given three TED Talks on the subjects of Antarctica, the Arctic, and a published book of poems entitled "Pandemic Poetry" (2020). [33] He has worked with the United Nations since 2009 providing documentary film research on the polar regions (2009, 2010, 2021). Today, he serves as the Executive Director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's Youth Climate Report, an ongoing research project since 2011, now showcasing more than 1,000 videos produced by the global community of youth aged 18 to 35.
In 2020, Palgrave Macmillan published Dr. Terry's first book The Geo-Doc: Geomedia, Documentary Film, and Social Change. In 2022, his second book, an anthology of research co-edited with Michael Hewson, a professor at Central Queensland University in Australia, was published by Rowman & Littlefield entitled The Emerging Role of Geomedia in the Environmental Humanities. In 2023, his third book focused on youth climate activism and was again published by Palgrave Macmillan: Speaking Youth to Power: Influencing Climate Policy at the United Nations His fourth book, The Youth Climate Report: A Participatory Policy Platform for Youth, has been commissioned by Palgrave Macmillan for a 2026 release. The book will analyze the more than 1,000 climate documentaries made by the global community of youth spanning 154 countries on all seven continents. The films comprise the database of Dr. Terry's Youth Climate Report, a Geo-Doc project of the United Nations.
Will Steger is a prominent spokesperson for the understanding and preservation of the Arctic and has led some of the most significant feats in the field of dogsled expeditions; such as the first confirmed dogsled journey to the North Pole in 1986, the 1,600-mile south–north traverse of Greenland - the longest unsupported dogsled expedition in history at that time in 1988, the historic 3,471-mile International Trans-Antarctic Expedition - the first dogsled traverse of Antarctica (1989–90), and the International Arctic Project - the first and only dogsled traverse of the Arctic Ocean from Russia to Ellesmere Island in Canada during 1995.
Timothy John Jarvis is an English and Australian explorer, climber, author, environmental activist, and documentary filmmaker. He is best known for his numerous Antarctic expeditions, particularly his attempted Antarctic crossing in 1999 and the period recreations of historical treks by Sir Douglas Mawson and Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Palgrave Macmillan is a British academic and trade publishing company headquartered in the London Borough of Camden. Its programme includes textbooks, journals, monographs, professional and reference works in print and online. It maintains offices in London, New York, Shanghai, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, Delhi and Johannesburg.
Robert Charles Swan, OBE, FRGS is the first person to walk to both poles.
The Extreme Ice Survey (EIS), based in Boulder, Colorado, uses time-lapse photography, conventional photography and video to document the effects of global warming on glacial ice. It is the most wide-ranging glacier study ever conducted using ground-based, real-time photography. Starting in 2007 the EIS team installed as many as 43 time-lapse cameras at a time at 18 glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, Canada, the Nepalese Himalaya, and the Rocky Mountains of the U.S. The cameras shoot year-round, during daylight, at various rates. The team supplements the time-lapse record by occasionally repeating shots at fixed locations in Iceland, Bolivia, the Canadian province of British Columbia and the French and Swiss Alps. Collected images are being used for scientific evidence and as part of a global outreach campaign aimed at educating the public about the effects of climate change. EIS imagery has appeared in time-lapse videos displayed in the terminal at Denver International Airport; in media productions such as the 2009 NOVA Extreme Ice documentary on PBS; and is the focus of the feature-length film Chasing Ice, directed by Jeff Orlowski, which premiered at the Sundance film festival in Utah on January 23, 2012. Major findings were published in 2012 in Ice: Portraits of the World’s Vanishing Glaciers by James Balog.
Huw Lewis-Jones is a British historian, editor, broadcaster and art director. Formerly a historian and Curator of Art at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, Lewis-Jones left Cambridge in June 2010 to pursue book and broadcasting projects. He is the Editorial Director of the independent publishing company Polarworld.
Polar seas is a collective term for the Arctic Ocean and the southern part of the Southern Ocean. In the coldest years, sea ice can cover around 13 percent of the Earth's total surface at its maximum, but out of phase in the two hemispheres. The polar seas contain a huge biome with many organisms.
Jon Bowermaster is an oceans expert, journalist, author, filmmaker, adventurer and six-time grantee of the National Geographic Expeditions Council. One of the Society’s ‘Ocean Heroes,’ his first assignment for National Geographic Magazine was documenting a 3,741 mile crossing of Antarctica by dogsled.
Sebastian Copeland is a British-American-French photographer, polar explorer, author, lecturer, and environmental advocate. He has led numerous expeditions in the polar regions to photograph and film endangered environments. In 2017, Copeland was named one of the world's top 25 adventurers of the last 25 years by Men's Journal. He is a fellow of The Explorers Club. His documentary Into the Cold was a featured selection at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival and was released on DVD timed to Earth Day 2011.
Felicity Ann Dawn Aston is a British explorer, author and climate scientist.
Students on Ice Foundation is a Canadian charitable organisation that leads educational expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic for international high school and university students. Its mandate is to provide youth, educators and scientists from around the world with learning and teaching opportunities in the polar regions, with the goal of fostering an understanding of, and commitment to building a more sustainable future.
Mark Wood FRGS, is a British explorer, professional speaker, expedition leader, and author. He served in the British Army in the Second Battalion, Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, and as a firefighter in the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service. He subsequently became an explorer, and expedition leader where he has trained and led teams for major Polar and mountain expeditions in extreme environments such as the Arctic Circle, the Himalayas, Antarctica, Alaska, and the Canadian and Norwegian High Arctic to raise awareness of climate change and creates very large virtual classrooms to talk to schools and children about these issues.
Ellen Mosley-Thompson is a glaciologist and climatologist. She is a Distinguished University Professor at Ohio State University and director of their Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center. She is known as a pioneer in the use of ice cores from the Polar Regions for paleoclimatic research and is an influential figure in climate science. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Years of Living Dangerously is an American documentary television series, spread over two seasons, focusing on climate change. The first season, consisting of nine episodes, was broadcast on Showtime in 2014. The second season, consisting of eight episodes, was broadcast on the National Geographic Channel in 2016. Executive producers included James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and series creators Joel Bach and David Gelber. Joseph Romm and Heidi Cullen were the chief science advisors. The series won an Emmy Award as Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series.
Alain Hubert is a Belgian explorer. He is a certified mountain and polar guide, a civil engineer, and the founder President of the International Polar Foundation. With the Foundation and its private partners, he built and financed the construction of the scientific research station ‘Princess Elisabeth’. This station is the first ‘Zero Emissions’ station in Antarctica, designed under the spirit of the Madrid protocol system establishing in 1992 the strictest environmental rules to date for a continent through the Antarctic Treaty System.
Terry Jean Wilson is an international leader in the study of present-day tectonics in Antarctica. She has led large, international efforts, such as Polar Earth Observing Network (POLENET), to investigate the interactions between the Earth's crust and the cryosphere in Antarctica.
Louise Tolle Huffman is an American teacher with over 30 years of teaching experience with many years focused on polar science and climate studies, and has written educational outreach books and articles on Antarctica. She is the Director of Education and Outreach for the US Ice Drilling Program Office (IDPO), responsible for outreach efforts highlighting IDPO scientists and their research results.
Before the Flood is a 2016 documentary film about climate change directed by Fisher Stevens. The film was produced as a collaboration between Stevens, Leonardo DiCaprio, James Packer, Brett Ratner, Trevor Davidoski, and Jennifer Davisson Killoran. Martin Scorsese is an executive producer.
Gabriel Filippelli is an American biogeochemist and professor of Earth sciences at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). In 2017 he began serving as the Editor in Chief of GeoHealth. Filippelli is the author of two books and many journal articles. He is the recipient of several awards and served as senior science advisor for the United States State Department from 2013–2014. His research addresses biogeochemical cycling in the environment, and the links between environmental processes and human health.
Victoria Herrmann is an American polar geographer and climate change communicator. She is the managing director of The Arctic Institute, a National Geographic Explorer, and Assistant Research Professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, where her research focuses on Arctic cooperation and politics and climate change adaptation in the US and US Territories.
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