Here you can find me in various media, including videos, podcasts, TV shows, magazine articles and interviews. Topics covered range from the archaeology of adaptation, through contemporary climate change issues, to the geopolitics of the Western Sahara conflict and the practicalities of working there.
University of East Anglia – discussing adaptation & mitigation with Nem Vaughan as part of UEA’s 2023 Future of the IPCC conference, including how the IPCC can support more ambitious adaptation address mismatches between science, policy & rapidly intensifying climate change.
Norfolk Campaign Against Climate Change – Climate change in Norfolk: extreme weather, impacts and adaptation. Part of series of talks for 2021 Norfolk Climate Summit (see here for all talks). Complete with embarrassing technical glitch at the beginning.
Green Renaissance podcast, Episode 4: Talking to Daphne Rocke about adapting to climate change, large climate risks, transformational adaptation, maladaptation, architecture, moving from academia to consultancy, working with policymakers, climate doom, climate hope and more. 21 January 2021
Smithsonian Magazine – Study Suggests At-Risk African Heritage Sites Are Often Overlooked (24 September 2020). Climate change as a threat to African heritage, based on Azania paper with with Joanne Clarke, Elizabeth Wangui and Grace Ngaruiya.
The Conversation – These African World Heritage Sites are under threat from climate change (13 August 2020). Article with Joanne Clarke, Elizabeth Wangui and Grace Ngaruiya based on our paper in Azania on climate change threats to African heritage.
news.com.au – Shedding new light on the lost civilisations of the Sahara (5 February 2019). Article on our work in Western Sahara and its wider implications for our understanding of prehistory.
Live Science – Hundreds of Mysterious Stone Structures Discovered in Western Sahara (4 February 2019). Article on my work with Joanne Clarke in Western Sahara, focusing on our research into monumental stone structures in the territory.
80 Days podcast
Season 3, episode 10. Talking to Mark Boyle about Western Sahara – archaeology, politics, and what it’s like to work and travel there, based on my fieldwork in the Polisario-controlled areas of this disptuted, non-self-governing territory. 1 April 2019
Past Horizons magazine – A refuge in the desert? (February 2010). “Nick Brooks and Joanne Clarke have been examining how prehistoric populations responded and adapted to severe climatic and environmental changes, specifically the desertification of the Saharan region between about 6000 and 4500 years ago.
Discovery Channel – Why Ancient Egypt Fell (2008). Talking about the role of climate change in the rise of ancient Egypt and the collapse of the Old Kingdom. Information on Discovery Channel. Watch on YouTube.
BBC News – Peacekeepers ‘deface ancient art‘ (31 January 2008). Quotes in coverage of vandalism of prehistoric rock art in Western Sahara by members of the MINURSO UN Peacekeeping Force, publicised following our 2007 season of archaeological and environmental fieldwork in the territory.
Saudi Aramco World – Desertification and Civilisation (2007). Article on our work in Western Sahara, and links between climatic and environmental change and the emergence of the earliest civilisations.
History Channel – The Sahara: The Forgotten History of the World’s Largest Desert (2006). Talking about the Sahara in this documentary. Find on Amazon. See Neil Genzlinger’s review in the New York Times, in which he kindly credits me with the shows “most striking tidbit,” on the Sahara as an example of rapid climate change of the kind we may experience as a result of human-caused global warming.
Earth Magazine – Down to Earth with Nick Brooks (2006). Interview in which I talk about rapid climate change, human adaptation and associated societal impacts in the prehistoric Sahara, and the lessons for how we adpat to climate change today, and how governments and international organisations approach climate change adaptation. As relevant in 2021 and in 2006.
Naked Scientists – Societies in the Sahara (2006). Talking about the Sahara as a laboratory of adaptation to severe climate change, and how prehistoric people responded to its transition from a relatively humid to a hyper-arid environment.
The Science Show – How climate affected the rise of civilisation (11 November 2006). Interview with Robyn Williams about my work in the Sahara and the idea of civilisation as “the product of a complex series of last resorts.”
Independent – Climate change linked with rise of world’s earliest civilisations (22 September 2006). News article on my work on climate change and the emergence of the earliest civilisations.
Scienceagogo – Did Civilization Emerge Thanks to a Change in the Weather? (15 September 2006). Article contrasting my BA talk on climate change as a key factor in the development of the first civilisations with Jared Diamond’s work on societal collapse.
The Guardian – Climate change caused civilisation, scientist says (8 September 2006). Article on my talk at the 2006 British Association (BA) Festival of Science about the role of rapid climate change and associated environmentak deterioration in the emergence of the worlds first civilisations.
Discovery Channel – Mystery of the Black Mummy (2003). Providing palaeo-environmental context in this documentary about the discovery of a mummified child in the Libyan Sahara, before the widespread adoption of mummification in Egypt. Watch on Amazon or YouTube.
NICK BROOKS 