Qualifications

2004: Ph.D., Biological Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University: Intraspecific competition and life-history plasticity in the speckled wood butterfly Pararge aegeria. External examiner: Nina Wedell.

1998: MSc Conservation Biology, Manchester Metropolitan University: Male density affects female reproductive output in the speckled wood butterfly Pararge aegeria: possible consequences for the Madeiran speckled wood butterfly P. xiphia .

Career

2007- Present: Postdoctoral Researcher. Investigation of the costs of dispersal through differently fragmented landscapes: the potential trade-off between dispersal and reproduction in the speckled wood butterfly Pararge aegeria, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium (with Prof. Hans Van Dyck).

2005 – 2006: Research technician. Identification of the genetic factors that mediate evolutionary changes in flowering time in Arabidopsis thaliana, University of Manchester, UK (with Dr. Paula Kover).

2001 – 2005: Research technician. Performed large scale quantitative genetic experiments on various aspects of parental care, life history and behaviour in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides , University of Manchester, UK (with Prof Allen J. Moore).

Grants and Awards

Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour Education Grant, 2003

To develop a resource pack for A-level students to study parental care behaviours in the burying beetle Nicrophorus Vespilloides. Published 2005. It can be ordered here.

Other Scientific Activities

2008: Co-organisation (with Dr. Casper J. Breuker, Oxford Brookes University) of a symposium on Adaptive Developmental Plasticity, European Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology (Ghent, Belgium, 29 July – 1 August).

Nov 2003 - Jan 2004: Field assistent for Prof. Penny Kukuk studying a free living natural Australian population of Lassioglossum hemichalceum; a communal species of sweat bee where unrelated females interact to provide extended parental care.

Reviewer for Journals