Jamie Woodward

I am a Professor of Physical Geography in the Department of Geography at The University of Manchester and an expert on river basin processes and river landscapes. I lead the group at Manchester that discovered that UK river beds could be heavily contaminated with microplastics. We were the first to show that water company assets - wastewater treatment works and combined sewer overflows - were the main supplier of microplastics to UK rivers. We linked the microplastic pollution problem to the sewage dumping scandal. This work has been published in Nature Geoscience and Nature Sustainability. I gave evidence to the UK Government Inquiry into river pollution that was published by the Environmental Audit Committee in January 2022. In October 2025 I published "A Little History of the Earth" for Yale University Press.