Biography
I am an ecologist with a passion for research with conservation goals. My overall research aims are to understand variation amongst individuals in demographic rates and explore the consequences of this variation on population dynamics. I use long term individual-based data of wild animal populations, focussing mostly on seabirds, to examine these questions. This research area is important in understanding environmental drivers of population change and predicting future change. This is particularly relevant to seabirds, as they are currently one of the most threatened groups of vertebrates worldwide.
I started at Edinburgh Napier University in 2021 and am a lecturer in ecology. I am also a teaching fellow at the Centre for Open Learning, University of Edinburgh, and a postdoctoral fellow at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. I held a NERC postdoctoral research fellowship at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh from 2007-2016. Before this I was a teaching and research fellow at the Department of Zoology, University of Aberdeen and prior to that held a Leverhulme early career research fellowship there from 2004-2006. I did my PhD at the Department of Biosciences, University of Durham in conjunction with the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology. I have a MSc in Marine and Fisheries Science from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc in Ecology and Environmental Management from the University of Cardiff.