Rate My Professor Liz Bagshaw

Dr Liz Bagshaw is an Associate Professor in Polar Environmental Change in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. She holds an M.Sc. from the University of Bristol, a PhD, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). Bagshaw currently directs the NERC Doctoral Landscape Training Partnership in the Faculty of Science and Engineering and serves as Director of the Bristol Glaciology Centre, collaborating with faculty such as Jonathan Bamber, Stephen Cornford, Fabien Maussion, and Chris Williamson. Her career at Bristol encompasses teaching, research leadership, and supervision of postgraduate students in physical geography.

Bagshaw's research centers on meltwater dynamics within glacial environments, integrating biogeochemistry, novel sensor technologies like Cryoegg, Cryowurst, and Hydrobean, and microbiology to examine nutrient cycling, phosphorus weathering, methane export, and trace element mobilization from ice sheets. Her investigations span Antarctica's cryoconite holes on Canada Glacier and subglacial systems beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet, revealing key processes in polar biogeochemical cycles. Highly influential publications include 'Evolution of the subglacial drainage system beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet revealed by tracers' (Nature Geoscience, 2013), 'The Greenland Ice Sheet as a hot spot of phosphorus weathering and export in the Arctic' (Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 2016), 'Greenland melt drives continuous export of methane from the ice-sheet bed' (Nature, 2019), 'Enhanced trace element mobilization by Earth’s ice sheets' (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020), 'Sources, cycling and export of nitrogen on the Greenland Ice Sheet' (Biogeosciences, 2016), and recent works such as 'An ice sheet-to-ocean analysis of carbon stores and fluxes in Earth's polar regions (RECCAP2, Polar Ice Sheets)' (Global Biogeochemical Cycles, 2026) and 'Ice dynamic and hydrological response to ice-dammed lake drainages at Isunnguata Sermia, West Greenland' (Journal of Glaciology, 2026). With 37 peer-reviewed journal articles, 9 other contributions, 6 book chapters, and 2 conference papers, her scholarship has shaped understanding of ice sheet contributions to global environmental change.