Joanne Johnson

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Joanne S. "Jo" Johnson (born 1977, née Garner) is a British geologist and Antarctic scientist who has worked for the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) since 2002. She studies past environments, ice sheets and climate change, and is best known for her work on how glaciers retreat. In 2023 she was awarded the Polar Medal. A feature on James Ross Island in Antarctica, Johnson Mesa, is named after her.

Education and early life
Johnson grew up in Birmingham and attended King Edward VI High School for Girls. She earned a first‑class BSc in Geology from Durham University (Hatfield College) in 1998. She then completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2002, supervised by Sally A. Gibson, on the Magmatism of the Vitim Volcanic Field in the Baikal Rift Zone, Siberia.

Career at BAS
After her PhD, Johnson joined BAS. From 2002–2005 she studied authigenic minerals in volcaniclastic rocks from James Ross Island. From 2005–2009 she worked on the Quaternary West Antarctic Deglaciation project (QWAD) within the GRADES programme, reconstructing how Pine Island Glacier thinned in the past and showing thinning occurred thousands of years ago, similar to today. From 2015–2020 she led a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) project on millennial-scale ice-sheet change in the western Amundsen Sea Embayment, collaborating with researchers in the UK and the USA. She has worked on other West Antarctic projects and published extensively on glacial history and ice sheets.

Awards and honors
Johnson received BAS’s Laws Prize in 2008 and the Marie Tharp Fellowship (2010–2011), which supported collaboration with researchers at Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory. In 2007 the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee named a feature on James Ross Island after her. She was awarded the Polar Medal in 2023.

Personal life
Johnson is married and has two children (born 2008 and 2013). She has spoken about the challenge of balancing a scientific career with parenting. In 2021 she appeared on BBC1’s Songs of Praise, discussing her work and Christian faith, and how time in the Antarctic strengthens her faith.