Alexander More - Harvard University
Appointments (Current)
Group Leader (Climate & Health) & Research Affiliate, SoHP at Harvard University, 2022-present
Associate Professor of Environmental Health, MCNHS, University of Massachusetts, Boston, 2022-Present
Assistant Research Professor, Climate Change Institute, 2017-Present
Research Associate, Max Planck – Harvard Research Center, 2016-Present
Managing Editor, MAPS at Harvard (formerly DARMC), 2016-Present
Director, Center for Environment, Climate Change Communication, Conservation, Health and Ocean research.
Appointments (Past)
Dean / Director, Honors College, Long Island University, NYC, 2019-2022
Chair, Dept. of Public Health, Long Island University, NYC, 2019-2022
Associate Professor of Environmental Health, Long Island University, NYC, 2019-2022
Group Leader (Climate & Health) & Research Associate, SoHP at Harvard University, 2018-2022
Post-doctoral Fellow, Initiative for the Science of the Human Past, Harvard University, 2015-2018
Postdoctoral Fellow, Climate Change Institute, University of Maine, 2015-2017
Lecturer on U.S. and European health and welfare, Harvard University 2015-16
Teaching Fellow and Doctoral Candidate, Harvard University, 2008-2014
Education
PhD, Harvard University
MA, Harvard University
BA, Washington University in St. Louis
Languages: English, Italian, Spanish, Danish, French, German (reading), Latin, Greek.
Reviewer for GeoHealth, JGR Atmospheres.
Alexander More is an environmental scientist and economist. His research focuses on the impact of climate change on population and ecosystem health and the economy. By using ultra-high-resolution climatic, epidemiological, ecological and archeoscientific records, More brings recent drastic environmental changes into a broader perspective, one that permits stark comparisons between current and past trends in temperature, pollution, pandemic disease, and extreme weather, all of which directly impact food production, human health, economic prosperity, and political stability. He is author of several landmark studies of the impact of climate on pandemics and pollution, and an active contributor to the fields of environmental health and planetary health. He currently holds an appointment in the Initiative for the Science of the Human Past at Harvard University, and is also Assistant Research Professor at the Climate Change Institute (University of Maine) and Associate Professor of Environmental Health at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Combining the expertise and resources of these institutions, More leads a project on the impact of climate change on human and ecosystem health and the economy in the last millennium. In addition to academic journals, his work has been featured in The Washington Post, CNN, The Guardian, Popular Science, Forbes, Smithsonian Magazine, Natural History Magazine, Der Spiegel, Archaeology Magazine, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemein, AGU's Eos, and more than 150 other print and online publications (see media page). As an expert of the interaction of the major crises of climate change and pandemics, Dr. More is a frequent media contributor. You can find his interviews and TED talk on this page.
His findings bring him to study government responses to environmental and public health crises. His forthcoming research monograph from Georgetown University Press, Commonwealth: Public Health, Climate Crises and the Venetian Origins of the Modern Welfare State, focuses traces the origins of welfare and health care policy in the western world, a long-standing interest that gained him a position in the Office of Senator Ted Kennedy while he was drafting the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
More’s interests have taken him to traditional archival repositories, as well as to fieldwork in sites across European and North America. His findings are often published in geo-databases and maps available through Harvard's Digital Historical Atlas, MAPS, of which Dr. More is a managing editor.
Raised and educated in Italy and Greece in the early part of his life, More moved permanently to New York City to complete his secondary education. He attended college in Chicago and eventually Washington University in St. Louis. Immediately after graduation, he continued his studies in an interdisciplinary PhD program at Harvard University, where he has taught ten different courses and earned as many teaching awards. He has supervised seven theses, with topics ranging from the creation and evolution of Medicaid and Medicare legislation in the United States, to the establishment of the public health system in post-revolutionary Mexico and Oman, the early history of modern foreign relations, the leading role of women in the creation of the World Health Organization (WHO), and the first food enrichment policies in interwar United States.
Dr. More is a frequent contributor in media coverage of climate change, public health and economic trends. His work extends into the non-profit world, where he has supervised a Harvard-Columbia student-run, public-health/environmental initiative in Bolivia—now a full-fledged NGO, Refresh Bolivia—securing initial funding with two grants from the Ford Fund. More also served as Managing Director of the World Ocean Forum, and serves on the board of directors of several non-profits, including Daniels Philanthropies, the Greenwater Foundation, and Blue Ocean Watch. More is a fellow of the Theodore Roosevelt Institute at LIU, a fellow and director of The Explorers Club, a former fellow of Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington, D.C. and a recipient of the Arango Fund and Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation Research Grants.
Awards, Honors and Professional Memberships
- Fellow, Royal Society for Public Health
- Fellow, Royal Geographical Society
- Member, National Environmental Health Association
- Member, American Geophysical Union
- Member, American Public Health Association
- Member, Planetary Health Alliance
- Member and UN Representative, Global Council for Science and the Environment
Fellow, Theodore Roosevelt Institute, 2019-2022 - Former fellow, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection