Meet the team

We are an interdisciplinary team of geographers and historians working collaboratively with agricultural economists, communities, musicians, and policymakers.

Television interview with a man named Matthew Hanneford from the University of Nottingham, identified as a future leader fellow, speaking on a news program called Your World NTV, with a background of green bushes and a screen displaying the NTV logo and hashtag #YourWorldNTV.

Matthew Hannaford

Dr Matthew Hannaford is a Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Nottingham. His research focuses on all aspects of climate history, predominantly in southern Africa over the past 500 years. He is especially interested in how climate histories can form “usable pasts”.

Principal Investigator
Portrait of a man with short hair and a beard, wearing a light blue button-up shirt, standing against a plain beige wall.

Pascoal Gota

Dr Pascoal Gota is a Research Associate at the University of Nottingham. Through interdisciplinary research, he bridges the gap between climate change and biocultural heritage by centring the lived experiences of communities who have stewarded cultural landscapes for generations in Mozambique.

Postdoctoral research fellow
A young woman in a light blue jacket standing in front of Niagara Falls with a cityscape in the background.

Abbie Mathewson is second-year PhD student at the University of Nottingham. Her thesis explores the gendered aspects of climate coloniality in Kenya and looks to understand how historical gendered vulnerability relates to the climate crisis today. 

PhD student

Abbie Mathewson

A man with light skin, gray hair, and a slight beard, wearing a red plaid shirt, smiling slightly in front of a plain white wall.

Harry Quealy

Dr Harry Quealy is a political ecologist and development geographer interested in historical and contemporary processes of agrarian change, socio-environmental relations and climate change adaptation. His postdoctoral work explores the relationship between colonialism, climatic extremes and disasters in Malawi and the lessons that can be learnt to inform future climate adaptation.

Postdoctoral research fellow
A young man wearing glasses and a plaid shirt, sitting outdoors under a tree with dense green leaves, sunlight filtering through.

Tinashe Takuva

Dr. Tinashe Takuva is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham. His research focuses on environmental and socio-economic histories of southern Africa, particularly Zimbabwe, since the mid-19th century, and explores the interconnectedness of environmental, social, political, and economic forces in shaping interrelationships.

Postdoctoral research fellow
A woman with dark braided hair speaking into a microphone at a podium, wearing a black and white patterned shirt, with a blurred green background.

Lilian Korir

Dr Lilian Korir is an agricultural economist whose research examines the value of agricultural information, value chains for underutilised and neglected crops, and the various aspects, outcomes, and policy implications of food security.

Affiliated researcher
A woman with shoulder-length dark hair smiling, wearing a denim shirt, standing in front of a green background.

Bárbara Direito

Dr. Bárbara Direito is a researcher at the Instituto de História Contemporânea at NOVA University Lisbon. She has been interested in different topics connected with the history of Mozambique in the 19th and 20th centuries, at the intersection of agrarian history, environmental history and the history of science, technology and medicine. 

Affiliated researcher
Professor David Nash

David Nash is Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Brighton. His research focuses on historical climatology in the Global South, with a particular interest in rainfall variability in southern Africa during the nineteenth century. He is also interested in the development of robust methodologies for climate reconstruction using written sources.

Affiliated researcher

David Nash

Dr Meghan Alexander

Meghan Alexander

Dr Meghan Alexander is an Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Nottingham, specialising in climate change adaptation. She is especially interested in how governance and policy systems evolve over time, the path dependencies and lock-ins that this can create, and the implications for enabling or constraining effective and socially just climate action.

Affiliated researcher