Professor Michael Kendall is Chair of Geophysics at the University of Oxford and the previous Head of the Department of Earth Sciences. He was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2011, the Royal Society of London in 2019, and the Royal Society of Canada in 2022. In 2024, he received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
A leading seismologist, Mike’s research has taken him from the hottest deserts to the coldest ice sheets, conducting fieldwork in locations such as Ethiopia and Antarctica. He has investigated Earth processes from its core to its surface, including plate tectonics, volcanic activity, and ice-sheet dynamics. His field experiments range from deploying ocean-bottom seismometers to monitor the Mid-Atlantic Ridge to using fibre-optic arrays to detect ice-quakes in Antarctica.
Mike’s research spans pure and applied seismology across multiple scales, integrating mineral physics, geodynamics, and engineering. He has a long-standing interest in the role of geophysics in meeting global energy demands, managing large industry-funded research consortia. A current focus is supporting the transition to Net Zero - examining both the raw materials needed for renewable energy and technologies for carbon abatement and storage. He is a Co-I on the Oxford Martin School funded project, ReSET: Rethinking Natural Resources, which looks at the role that magmatic systems can play in enabling the energy transition. He has extensive experience in carbon capture and storage (CCS) monitoring, working on many of the world’s largest CO2 storage projects.
Before joining Oxford, Mike was BGS Professor of Geophysics at the University of Bristol, where he founded the Bristol University Microseismicity Projects (BUMPS), an industry-backed research consortium. He earned his PhD at Queen’s University in Canada, was a postdoctoral researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (USA), and has held faculty roles at the University of Toronto and the University of Leeds. He has served as Vice-President (Geophysics) of the Royal Astronomical Society and President of the British Geophysical Association. He is co-founder (with Jonathan Blundy) of Oxford spinout company, Ascension Earth Resources.
