In 2016 I began my Ph.D. with Çağan Şekercioğlu at the University of Utah. Following on from my fieldwork in Honduras, my thesis focused on birds in tropical mountains and how they are responding to climate change. In addition I researched many subjects spanning global community science data, Utah's riparian birds, birds in Amazonian agriculture, global raptor conservation, and taxonomic disagreement. My fieldwork has taken me to Tanzania, Ethiopia, Turkey, Honduras, and Australia, using point counts and mist netting to survey birds. In Utah, I ran one bird banding field station and managed another.
After finishing my Ph.D. at the University of Utah, I started a postdoc with Morgan Tingley at UCLA. I am investigating several aspects of global change ecology including the effects of climate change on migratory phenology, the role that traits play in urban tolerance, and range shifts over large spatiotemporal scales. |
I have been into birds for as long as I can remember. I grew up in rural South West England, chasing birds around the countryside and coast. For much of my life birds were just a hobby, while my interest in ecology and evolution developed in tandem, leading to my bachelor's degree at Oxford University. It was not until my master's degree at Imperial College London that I realised I could turn birds into my career.
My master's thesis took me to the coastal rainforests of Tropical North Queensland where I investigated how forest edges alter the bird community. Following this, I measured thousands of bird specimens at the Natural History Museum, London, in an effort to gather trait data for the world's birds, an effort now published as AVONET. I then joined Operation Wallacea's annual expedition in Honduras where I conducted bird point counts throughout the misty montane cloud forests. These three experiences cemented my passion for tropical ornithology, macroecology, and conservation biology. |