Nicholas Branch
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+44 (0) 118 378 6102
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Professor
- School Director for Recruitment and Admissions
- Recruitment and Admissions Officer, Department of Geography and Environmental Science
Areas of interest
- Late Pleistocene and Holocene climate and environmental change in Peru, Italy and the UK
- Climate resilience and food production in the Peruvian Andes: past, present and future
Postgraduate supervision
Undergraduate, master's, PhD and postdoctoral supervision:
Nicholas is keen to discuss proposals for research on Late Pleistocene and Holocene environmental change and human activities in Peru, Italy and the UK.
Research and enterprise placements
Nicholas is keen to discuss proposals for work experience in Quaternary science, archaeological science and cultural adaption to climate change.
Current PhD supervision
- Testing the resilience of traditional agriculture in the Peruvian Andes to periods of climate change and human activity (Funded by the AHRC).
- Sarah Thoma: Climate and environmental change in southern England during the last Millennium.
- Maria Rabbani: Investigating human-environmental interactions in the Zagros region (southwest Asia) during the early to mid- Holocene period – a multi-proxy approach.
- Quantifying responses to abrupt climate change in the Andes, South America: Empirical data and model synergies (Funded by the NERC).
- Andrew Reynolds: Late Bronze Age and Iron Age hoards in Wales and Marches: An investigation into patterns of selective and reflective deposition.
Previous topics have included:
- Archaeological and palaeoenvironmental application of geophysics and hydrogeochemistry to lowland wetlands in the UK, Ireland and France (Bunting)
- Archaeology, geoarchaeology and palaeohydrology of the River Walbrook, London (Myers)
- Environmental history and archaeology of SE England during the Mesolithic (Simmonds)
- Archaeology, palaeohydrology and palaeoclimatology of lowland wetlands in central Ireland (Stastney)
- Tephrochronology of the western Mediterranean (Turner); Archaeology, vegetation succession and palaeoclimatology of lowland wetlands in central Ireland (Young)
- Archaeobotany and early agriculture in the Middle East (Whitlam)
- The application of non-pollen palynomorphs to archaeological and geological archives in NW Italy (Morandi).
Research centres and groups
Research projects
- Late Pleistocene and Holocene climate and environmental change in the northern Apennines, Italy
- Holocene climate and environmental change in the Peruvian Andes
- Adaptive capacity of farming communities to climate change in the Peruvian Andes
- Climate resilience and food production in Peru (CROPP)
- Climate change and resilience in the Chillón Valley (CHILLY), Peru
- The environmental history of SE England with a specific emphasis on the history of Taxus woodland
Background
Nicholas Branch is a Professor in Quaternary Palaeoecology.
He has a BSc (Hons) in Archaeology, and MSc in Bioarchaeology (Archaeobotany), from University College London (Institute of Archaeology).
Nicholas has a PhD in Geography from Royal Holloway (University of London), Centre of Quaternary Research, where he studied the 'Late Würm Lateglacial and Holocene vegetation history and human activities of the Northern Apennines, Italy'.
He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (London), and an associate of the Walker Institute for Climate Systems Research and Soil Research Centre.