We are an interdisciplinary team of physical and social scientists. We study extreme and worst-case scenario climate change and weather events, and their potential impacts on society.
Dr Tom Matthews
Physical Science
Tom is a Senior Lecturer at King’s College London and a National Geographic Explorer.
His research interests are in the societal impacts from climate change, with a focus on severe weather events. This drives him to understand the planet’s most extreme climates. From deadly tropical heat waves and cyclones to severe, cold-weather mountain windstorms, his research aims to map the limits of Earth’s climate envelope and chart its course as it is shifted by human-caused climate change. His research has taken him from the Arctic to the Amazon, and has involved developing new weather monitoring networks at extreme altitudes, reaching all the way to the summit of Mt. Everest.
tom.matthews@kcl.ac.uk
Bluesky: @climatom.bsky.social
Tom’s National Geographic profile
Tom’s KCL Profile
Tom’s publications
Dr Tom Wood
Physical Science
Tom’s research focuses on detecting and projecting ‘unseen’ climate extremes – record-breaking extreme climate events that are unprecedented in the historical record but present potentially catastrophic risks to society.
He works with an interdisciplinary team of physical climate scientists and social scientists to explore extreme and worst-case scenario climate change under deep uncertainty, exploring the boundaries of plausibility and the potential impacts of these plausible climate extremes on society.
tom.wood@kcl.ac.uk
Bluesky: @TomWood.Science
Personal Website: tomwood.science
Tom’s KCL Profile
Dr Hebe Nicholson
Social Science
Hebe’s research focuses on the societal impacts of climate extremes.
She is a qualitative interdisciplinary researcher whose previous research explored climate migration and its governance as well as the societal impacts of climate change more broadly. In this project she studies the societal impacts of current extreme heat and considers the impacts of possible future unprecedented extreme heat events.
hebe.nicholson@kcl.ac.uk
Hebe’s LinkedIn
Hebe’s KCL Profile
Jenix Justine MSc
Physical / Social Science
Jenix is a doctoral student whose research focuses on extreme heat waves, signatures of high-impact heat events, and physiological thresholds of extreme heat.
She previously worked at a climate action NGO, working on grassroots-level intervention projects focussed on changing life and livelihoods of fisherfolks in the context of changing climate and coordinating campaigns and restoration drives across Kerala, India.
jenix.justine@kcl.ac.uk
Jenix’s KCL Profile
Dr Nausheen H Anwar
Social Science
Nausheen H Anwar is a city and regional planner whose research examines the intersections of climate change, urban futures, mobility, and governance in the Global South. Nausheen received her PhD from GSAPP, Columbia University. She works in the Human Settlements Group, on urban risk and resilience at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London, and also holds a professorial appointment in City & Regional Planning at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi. She is the founder of the Karachi Urban Lab, one of Pakistan’s leading interdisciplinary urban research centres.
Her research spans comparative urbanism, community-led development, housing and land governance, urban health, and the co-production of knowledge between researchers, policymakers, and grassroots organisations. She has published extensively on climate change and extreme heat, informality, infrastructures, land displacement, and equitable approaches to urban transformation, drawing on research and policy engagement across Africa and Asia.
nhanwar@iba.edu.pk
Nausheen’s IBA university profile
Nausheen’s IIED profile
Nausheen’s LinkedIn
Muhammad Toheed
Social Science
Muhammad Toheed is an Urban Planner, Acting Director of the Karachi Urban Lab (KUL) at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi, and a Visiting Faculty member at IBA.
His work focuses on urban planning, climate resilience, infrastructure, informality, displacement, and the governance of rapidly urbanizing cities. Combining urban planning with Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing, and qualitative research, he examines how infrastructure, climate change, and public policy shape everyday urban life, particularly in vulnerable and marginalized communities. His research explores themes including extreme heat, climate-induced displacement, urban informality, mobility, housing, and environmental justice, with a particular focus on Karachi and other rapidly growing cities in Pakistan. In the HEAT-LIVE project, he investigates the intersections of extreme heat, urban infrastructure, indoor thermal exposure, and community adaptation, with a focus on understanding how vulnerable populations experience and respond to rising temperatures in Pakistan’s hottest cities.
mtoheed@iba.edu.pk
Toheed’s IBA university profile
Toheed’s LinkedIn profile
Toheed’s ResearchGate
Soha Macktoom
Social Science
Soha is Associate Director of the Karachi Urban Lab at IBA University Karachi, and a Lecturer at the Social Sciences and Liberal Arts Department (SSLA) at IBA.
She is an architect and urban planner, whose work examines transformations in the built environment, and how architecture, design and history serve as tools for understanding the city’s informal settlements, urbanization trends, infrastructure, and climate. Her work has been published in academic journals including Urban Studies, IJURR, City, Future Anterior and Economic and Political Weekly (EPW). In this project, she looks at how planning and architecture in Jacobabad have adapted to the city’s status as the hottest place on earth, and how local adaptation practices respond to the impacts of extreme heat.
smacktoom@iba.edu.pk
Soha’s IBA university profile
Soha’s LinkedIn profile
Soha’s ResearchGate