My research interests have long been embedded in understanding the climate evolution of the North Atlantic Arctic, with fieldwork on Arctic Russia, Svalbard, Iceland, Greenland and over 30 campaigns to Baffin Island. In recent years I have focused on abrupt climate change and placing contemporary warming in a millennial perspective. In 1988 I was invited to a field meeting in Australia that introduced me an entirely new research environment, which challenges the Arctic for my attention. Disentangling the footprint of human colonization from climate change across Australia has sustained me for 25 years. I like to integrate my research into my teaching, especially intro courses like Global Change and Climates of the Past, using my work as "case studies" to illustrate the application of basic principles and give them life. But nothing is more rewarding than working with motivated outstanding graduate students, and watching them mature into leading research scientists.