Dr Nadia Khalaf
Honorary Appointment
Archaeology
Qualifications:
BA (Hons), MSc, PhD
Career:
I work at the Met Office as a Foundation Scientist in International Climate Services and have an honorary appointment within the Archaeology and History department.
I joined the University of Exeter in 2016 as a Post Doctoral Research Fellow in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, prior to this I was a Post Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University. My multidisciplinary research focuses on heritage management and conservation in the 'Global South', specifically African heritage and archaeology, and the use of environmental science to better understand historic landscape dynamics past and present, and the impact of climate change on heritage sites.
Recently, I was a contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II, Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Sixth Assessment Report (2022) in the African chapter, looking at heritage. I was also co-author on two papers featured in Nature Climate Change, one focusing on climate threats to heritage sites in Africa, and the other on decolonising climate heritage research.
I have been an archaeologist specialising in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Satellite Remote Sensing for over 15 years and have carried out mapping project, field surveys and excavations globally, notably in Ethiopia, Benin, and Libya, as well as Tunisia, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. I also have extensive experience in British commercial archaeology. During my career I have worked alongside many different types of partners and stakeholders across the globe and understand the importance of maintaining an open and collaborative relationship.
I have a PhD from the Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia and an MSc in Geographical Information Science from the Department of Geography, University of Leicester. I studied a BA in Archaeology and History from the University of Reading.
I am a Clore Leadership Emerging Leader 2023. I am currently Review Editor on the Editorial Board of Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology in the speciality section on Landscape and Geological Processes.
