Emily Black is a senior research fellow at the University of Reading. After completing a BA in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge and a DPhil in Andean tectonics at the University of Oxford, in 2000, she was appointed a post-doctoral research fellow at the Climate Division of the National Centre for Atmospheric Science. In 2005, she took up the post of project manager of the Water, Life and Civilisation project. She has published widely in the scientific literature on a variety of topics, including Middle East climate change, African rainfall variability and seasonal forecasting.