Alexander More’s 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 historical 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 Long Island University in New York City.

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, Science et vie, and more than 150 other print and online publications (see media page).

His findings bring him to study government responses to environmental and public health crises. He is completing a book on 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 expeditions to sites across Europe, North America and Oceania, including several underwater surveys in the Mediterranean, North Atlantic and South Pacific. Dr. More is a published photographer, specializing in underwater, archaeological and wildlife subjects related to his research, and is the Managing Editor of Harvard’s Digital Atlas (formerly DARMC, now MAPS).

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 the Sultanate of Oman, 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 as Communications and Education Director at Blue Ocean Watch, a climate-oriented ocean non-profit. More is a fellow and director at 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.