Nadia Brennan
Science journalist & long-form editorEdinburgh, Scotland
I write about the messy middle of science — the years between a promising result and a thing that actually works. Ten years on staff at national desks, now independent, mostly covering climate adaptation and public health. My favourite stories are the ones where the data and the people disagree, and you have to sit with both.
Experience
2021 — Present
Independent journalist
- Report and write long-form features on climate adaptation, usually 4,000–8,000 words.
- Two pieces cited in UK parliamentary committee evidence on flood planning.
- Work commissioned across print, audio and one very reluctant video appearance.
2017 — 2021
Senior science correspondent
- Led the paper's pandemic coverage across 2020, coordinating a desk of six reporters.
- Built the outlet's first data-led explainer format, which became its most-read recurring feature.
- Mentored three junior reporters, two of whom now run their own desks.
2014 — 2017
Staff writer
General science beat — wrote roughly forty features a year and learned to file clean copy fast.
Selected work
A three-part series on managed retreat
The Water Will Come Back
Eighteen months following four coastal villages as they negotiated whether to move inland. Won the Ashworth Prize for environmental reporting and is now taught on two journalism MAs.
Podcast, 12 episodes
Trial and Error
A limited series on clinical trials that failed and what the field learned anyway. Co-produced with Held Audio; roughly 400,000 downloads across the run.
Education
2013 — 2014
University of Edinburgh
MSc Science CommunicationDissertation on uncertainty language in climate reporting.
2010 — 2013
University of Leeds
BA English LiteratureWhat I do
- Reporting
- Long-form features, investigations, FOI requests, data journalism
- Editing
- Commissioning, structural edits, mentoring junior reporters
- Also
- Audio production, live panel moderation, teaching
References
Nadia files the piece you commissioned and then quietly hands you a better one. She is the rare reporter who will tell you when her own premise has collapsed.
She can hold a complicated scientific argument and a human story in the same paragraph without flattening either. That is much harder than she makes it look.
Awards & talks
2024
Ashworth Prize for Environmental Reporting
For 'The Water Will Come Back'.
2023
Reporting Uncertainty
On why 'scientists say' is usually a failure of nerve.