Ecologist.
Conservation Scientist.
National Geographic Explorer.
With a life-long passion for nature and the outdoors, an odd fascination with mathematical problem-solving, and a thirst for exploration, conservation science has always felt like the ideal career path for me.
I am a 27-year-old PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, researching how food production, sustainable livelihoods, and biodiversity conservation might be reconciled. I am conducting my fieldwork in South India (facilitating my obsession with mangos).
My career and research background have been diverse, spanning five continents and several themes, but united by a common interest in understanding biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, identifying synergies and trade-offs between conservation and human well-being, and assessing the effectiveness of conservation practices and policies.
My love for field research has led to me conducting bird surveys in a previously unexplored forest in Sumatra, identifying ecological corridors in Brazil and Guinea, and assessing chimpanzee habitat quality in Uganda. I have also managed to squeeze in occasional non-academic adventures – cycling across Bolivia, trekking in Tajikistan, and trail-running in Kenya.
Research Interests
How biodiversity conservation can best be achieved in the context of sustainable development and food security
Impact evaluations of land system policies and conservation interventions
Sustainable food systems
Species interactions, assembly and functioning of ecological communities
Nature-based solutions
I am a conservation scientist interested in conducting inter-disciplinary research on how to solve complex conservation problems, such as identifying land-use strategies and management measures to optimise trade-offs between conservation objectives and human well-being.
I am currently particularly passionate about limiting agriculture-driven biodiversity loss. I employ the land-sparing/land-sharing framework for my PhD research, where land-sparing partitions landscapes (high-yield farming coupled with land spared for habitat conservation) and land-sharing integrates both objectives in the same location (high-biodiversity-value farmland on a larger footprint of land as it tends to be lower yielding). I am exploring the merit of land-sparing and land-sharing strategies for achieving food production, human well-being, and conservation objectives in India, while accounting for the spatial heterogeneity of biodiversity and ecosystem services. As part of this, I am asking whether ‘ecological intensification’ strategies could reconcile the yields of conventional intensive agriculture with the biodiversity-value of low-intensity agriculture by amplifying ecosystem services and thus crop yield through better support of biodiversity.
In general, I am interested in understanding biodiversity and its role in maintaining the functioning of ecosystems and the benefits humans derive from them. I am keen to use these insights to help us predict and manage the response of species and ecosystems to environmental change, with applications from biodiversity conservation to nature-based solutions to climate change.
For my MSc thesis and as part of Prof Yadvinder Malhi’s Ecosystems Group at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, I studied how population declines of frugivores (especially of large-bodied animals such as forest elephants and gorillas) is affecting tropical forest functioning in Ghana and Gabon.
Expeditions and Fieldwork
Managing agricultural landscapes to optimise ecosystem service delivery, biodiversity conservation, and livelihoods in India
India // Ongoing. I am conducting intensive field surveys, from rice fields to remote forests, for my PhD research.
Moyen-Bafing (Lion) Corridor Project
Guinea // Ongoing. I am leading an expedition that is aimed to identify forest fragments that act as important ecological corridors (especially for West African lions) between Moyen-Bafing National Park, Guinea, and Niokolo-Koba National Park, Senegal.
Amazon-Cerrado ecological corridor
Brazil // 2019. I helped Instituto Araguaia identify areas that are important to wildlife movements between the Amazon flooded forest (Cantão State Park; one of the most diverse and important freshwater ecosystems in the world) and the Cerrado (the world’s most biodiverse tropical savannah). I also contributed to a pan-Amazonian map of areas that are of importance to the conservation of giant river otters.
Tropical Biology Association field course
Kenya // 2018. I attended a TBA tropical ecology and conservation course at the Mpala research centre, Kenya. My research project was focused on identifying the effect of an invasive cactus on the usage of an area by mammalian herbivores.
Rangers Without Borders
Poland, Lithuania, Belarus // 2018. I was part of this multi-disciplinary research study which has been assessing wildlife ranger livelihoods, poaching threat and anti-poaching capability, and opportunities for transboundary cooperation across Eastern Europe.
Chimpanzee diet and habitat quality
Uganda // 2017. For my BSc dissertation, I studied the ecological characteristics (e.g. fruit availability) of the territories of two chimpanzee communities that could help explain differences in their extent of tool-use to obtain food.
Sumatra Megatransect
Indonesia // 2016. I co-led the ‘Sumatra Megatransect’ - a 500 km trek across the island whilst taking a record of all the birds we encountered. As part of this expedition, we collected crucial baseline biodiversity data in a montane rainforest that was previously completely unexplored by scientists, but that is part of the largest intact forest remaining on Sumatra - the Leuser Ecosystem.
Cycling across Bolivia
Bolivia // 2015. This was my first independently organised expedition and it involved cycling the length of the Bolivian Altiplano.
Responses of wildlife to climate change in the Peruvian Amazon
Peru // 2015. I helped assess how climate change, primarily via changes in water levels, is affecting the ecology, behaviour, and populations of aquatic and terrestrial species found within the Pacaya Samiria National Reserve. Consequently, I helped devise climate-resilient and community-based conservation strategies.
Reforestation in the Osa Peninsula
Costa Rica // 2013. I assisted with the establishment of the La Gamba biological corridor (COBIGA) which is aimed to connect the lowland rainforests of the Golfo Dulce region with the upland rainforests of the Fila Cal.
Brief CV
Education
University of Cambridge. PhD Zoology (2021-2025)
Thesis: “Effectiveness of different agricultural strategies and conservation interventions in limiting food production-driven biodiversity loss in India”
University of Oxford. MSc Biodiversity, Conservation and Management. Grade: Distinction (2019-2020)
Thesis: “Changes in the prevalence of woody plant seed traits as signals of defaunation and downsizing of frugivores in Afrotropical forests”.
University of Edinburgh. BSc Hons Biological Sciences (Ecology). Grade: First Class (2014-2018)
Thesis: “Food Availability, Tool-use Opportunities, and Diet of Two Chimpanzee Communities”
Work Experience
UN Environment Programme, Communications Division, Intern (2018 – 2019)
University of California, Berkeley, Research assistant (2016 – 2017)
Awards / Grants
Whitten Studentship (2021)
Scientific Exploration Society - Inspirational and Scientific Trailblazing (2020)
MSc Biodiversity, Conservation and Management Bursary (2019)
Nigel Winser’s “Porcupine Quill” Award (2019)
National Geographic Early Careers Grant (2017)
Davis Expedition Fund (2017 & 2018)
James Rennie Bequest (2015 & 2016)
Weir Fund (2015)
Fellowships / Academic Memberships
Society for Conservation Biology’s Impact Evaluation Working Group
IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas Connectivity Conservation Specialist Group
British Ecological Society
Scientific Exploration Society
British Ornithologists' Union
Public Engagement
