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Mark Terry

Research Fellow, Documentary Film & Global Health

Research Fellow

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Mark Terry, PhD, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and The Explorers Club. He is also Contract Faculty with the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University in Toronto and serves as the Chair of the ADERSIM Arctic Group and Associate to the UNESCO Chair for Reorienting Education towards Sustainability.

He has worked throughout the global Arctic serving as the Scientist-in-Residence on Adventure Canada’s circumnavigation of Iceland (2018), making the first documented film of a crossing of the Northwest Passage, The Polar Explorer (2011), and teaching at Arctic universities in St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia. He has also worked in Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey and the National Antarctic Scientific Center of Ukraine documenting this research in the film The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning (2009). In the Spring of 2021, he will be releasing his third installment in his trilogy of polar documentary feature films, The Changing Face of Iceland.

He has been decorated by Queen Elizabeth for this work with her Diamond Jubilee Medal and by The Explorers Club with its Stefansson Medal, the organization’s highest honour. In 2015, Canadian Geographic Magazine named him one of Canada’s Top 100 Greatest Explorers of all time.

Mark has worked with the United Nations since 2011 on the Youth Climate Report, providing films of global scientific research to its annual climate summits known as the COP conferences. His pioneering work in documentary remediation for the UN earned him the Gemini Humanitarian Award from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. His current work with GIS mapping was recently recognized by the UN with a Sustainability Development Goals Action Award.

As a scholar, Mark has published several papers in journals and presented them at several conferences. In this past year, he has published the academic book The Geo-Doc: Geomedia, Documentary Film, and Social Change; contributed a chapter to the book Communicating in the Anthropocene; and is currently co-editing a volume of scholarly research on Geographic Information Systems entitled Mapping the Environmental Humanities: The Emerging Role of GIS in Ecocriticism. At the peak of the pandemic last year, he published a book of poems called Pandemic Poetry.

As a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, The Explorers Club, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, and member of the Canadian Council for Geographic Education, the Canadian Network for Environmental Education and Communication, the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, Mark teaches and speaks regularly through these groups and organizations about the environmental issues affecting the fragile eco-systems of the polar regions and, by extension, the world.

Mark is delighted to co-lead the Planetary Health Film Lab here at the Dahdeleh Institute for Global Health Research.

Themes

Planetary Health

Status

Alum

Events

Planetary Health Film Lab 2023 Belize Edition Debrief, with Mark Terry | September 19, 2023


4th Planetary Health Film Lab Workshop | February 14, 2023


Planetary Health Film Lab (Youth and Geomedia) Book Launch with Mark Terry | November 22, 2022


Planetary Health Film Lab 2022: Filmmaking with Indigenous Youth from Ecuador, with Mark Terry | August 31, 2022


Related Work

Updates

Partnership for Youth and Planetary Wellbeing Present Results at the Society for Applied Anthropology Conference | May 13, 2024

Planetary Health Film Lab Reports from COP28 and Belize | January 10, 2024

Recap – The Importance of Planetary Health and Indigenous Wellbeing Showcased Through Film | November 14, 2023

Recap — Experiential Education and Training at the 2022 Planetary Health Film Lab in Ecuador | July 13, 2023

Finalist Award for Best Documentary Announced at 2023 Student World Impact Film Festival | June 27, 2023

Dahdaleh Institute Members Celebrate Earth Month 2023 by Planting Trees on YorkU Campus | April 14, 2023

Application for the 2023 Planetary Health Film Lab | February 14, 2023

UNESCO Webinar Showcases Planetary Health Film Lab | February 17, 2022

Application for the 2022 Planetary Health Film Lab | February 8, 2022

The Global Youth Statement Published Post-COP26 | November 16, 2021

Releasing Soon – The Changing Face of Iceland, film by Mark Terry | March 12, 2021

Application for the 2021 Planetary Health Film Lab | March 4, 2021

Youth Climate Report selected as Honorary mention in the 2020 UN SDG Action Awards | January 25, 2021

Mark Terry featured in cover story of Eden Magazine | January 18, 2021

Amplifying the voice of youth through planetary health films | December 7, 2020

Research Fellow Mark Terry Inducted into the Royal Society of Canada | September 14, 2020

UNESCO Announces Official Partnership with Youth Climate Report | September 1, 2020

Postdoc Fellow’s Poetry Collection Featured in Toronto Sun | August 24, 2020

Awards, Best-Book List and Chair Appointment: Updates from Documentary Film & Global Health Postdoc | May 25, 2020

“The Geo-Doc” Tops List of Documentary Books to Read in 2020 | April 13, 2020

YorkU Magazine Features Planetary Health Film Lab | February 19, 2020

Postdoctoral Fellow’s New Book Published Online | February 4, 2020

Mark Terry at COP25 | December 17, 2019

Mark Terry Delivers Keynote at Fourth Annual Transatlantic Graduate Student Conference | October 28, 2019

Mark Terry Featured in “Innovatus” | October 18, 2019

Mark Terry at YorkU Sustainable Development Goals Day | September 28, 2019

Researcher Organizes YorkU Group at Climate Strike March | September 23, 2019

Mark Terry Signs Book Deal with Palgrave Macmillan | July 26, 2019

Mark Terry Co-Founds ASLE Youth & Environmental Studies Group | July 9, 2019

Dahdaleh Researchers in China, Ireland, Bangladesh and USA | June 27, 2019

Youth Climate Report Announces 2019 Themes | June 26, 2019

Dahdaleh Institute Celebrates Convocation | June 21, 2019

Mark Terry Chairs Panel “Visual Worlds of Colonial Reverberation” | June 14, 2019

Documentary Filmmaker Launches Three New Projects | May 3, 2019


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