Dr Andrew Brooks

Dr Andrew Brooks joined King’s as a Lecturer in Development Geography in 2011. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in southern Africa his early publications examined connections between production, consumption, and waste, as well as the geographies of combined and uneven development.

Recently his research has become more theoretically informed and focused on questions of global comparisons as well as the relationships between urban change and the environment. While retaining a deep interest in Africa, his work is increasingly focused on the UK and Portugal.

He is Chair of the Postgraduate Board of Examinations and was an Editor of the Journal of Southern African Studies (2015-19). A first book ‘Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion and Second-hand Clothes’ was published by Zed Books in 2015, with a second edition in 2019 and reprints in Spanish and Japanese. His next book was ‘The End of Development: A Global History of Poverty and Prosperity’ was also with Zed Books (2017). Andrew is completing a new book provocatively titled ‘Bullshit Comparisons’.

His work on international development, and especially the fashion sector, reached international media including Al Jazeera, BBC News, CNN, The Economist, The Guardian, Le Monde, The New York Times and Newsweek. 

Research

• Relational Comparisons
• Economic and Social Change in Southern Africa
• Environments and Urban Development 

Andrew researches a wide range of topics and seeks to understand the uneven growth of the world economy. He is interested in comparing how different patterns of consumption shape lives around the world.

A focus of his research has been political and economic change in Africa, yet ultimately his work is guided by intellectual curiosity rather than trying to fit in to a particular niche. His research in Africa has included extensive investigations of markets and politics in Malawi and Mozambique, Chinese investment in Zambia and Healthcare in Sierra Leone.

Teaching

Undergraduate

• 4SSG0141 Geographical Foundations: The Making of the Modern World
• 4SSG1008 Geography Tutorials: Critical Thinking and Techniques – field trip to UK
• 5SSG2047 Field Research in Human Geography – field trip to Lisbon
• 5SSG2063 BA Geography Research Tutorials
• 5SSG2044 Development Geography: Livelihoods and Policy Contexts

PhD supervision

Andrew is interested in supervising students working in the following areas:

• Consumption and urban environments
• Political and economic change in Southern Africa
• Relational Comparison
• Critical Development Studies
• Postcolonial Geographies of Portugal or the UK

Further details

See Andrew's research profile