I am currently carrying out a fellowship at Imperial. My work focuses on exploring Anthropocene landscape permeability for species key to human health and well-being. In short, my aim is to understand how human-modified land uses influence the permeability (i.e. ease of movement) of landscapes for range-shifting species, with a focus on species key for food system sustainability and disease spread.
Beyond her fellowship, Jessica is also a Sustainability Champion at Silwood Park and a Fellows Rep for the Department of Life Sciences. As part of her Reps role, she has also joined the Research and Fellowships committee, ECRI committee, and EDI committee.
SHEFS Global
"The primary purpose of Sustainable & Healthy Food Systems (SHEFS) is to provide new, interdisciplinary research that policymakers can use to shape food systems that will deliver healthy, accessible, affordable and sustainable food for future populations."
From 2021 - 2023, I worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow investigating the impacts of land-use change and climate change on biodiversity within South African agricultural areas, and the resilience of nature's benefits to people under such changes. I currently have 2 lead or co-lead author papers in preparation.
Grants
NERC Cross Disciplinary Research for Environmental Solutions – UCL Internal Call, Co-Investigator, Jan-Apr 2023
I worked with researchers from the Institute for Sustainable Resources at UCL on a NERC Cross Disciplinary Research grant to investigate the vulnerability of healthy diets in the UK and South Africa to pollinator losses.
Working groups
Combined effects of climate change and habitat destruction on biodiversity (2024 - Present)
I was invited to attend a workshop in Sweden run by Dr Andrew Suggitt (University of Northumbria) and Dr Alistair Auffret (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences). The aim of this workshop was to bring together land-use and climate change experts who use space-for-time and/or time series analyses to identify and discuss how different lines of evidence can be used for the benefit of biodiversity conservation (paper in preparation).
Bumblebee responses to environmental changes (2018 - 2021)
I have been fortunate enough to join Dr Tim Newbold on two trips to the University of Ottawa to work alongside Professor Jeremy Kerr and Dr Peter Soroye. This has been funded by an International Exchange Award (from the Royal Society), secured by Tim and Jeremy, to investigate how bumblebee species are responding to land-use and climate change.
Field research
GVI Field Staff (2015)
-
This staff position on Global Vision International's (GVI) remote base in Tortuguero National Park, Costa Rica, provided extensive experience in teaching an international group of volunteers how to collect biodiversity data in the field. Techniques I taught included:
-
Use of camera traps
-
Forest (by foot) and canal (by canoe) transect surveys
-
Tagging and collecting biometric data from sea turtles
-
Data input and management
-
Other responsibilities
Present
-
Sustainability Champion at Silwood Park (2024 – Present)
-
Fellows Rep for the Department of Life Sciences, Imperial (2024 – Present)
-
Early Career Rep, BES Conservation Ecology Group (2024 – Present)
Past
-
Postdoc Representative on the Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Team within The Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment (GEE; 2021 – 2023)
-
Co-organiser of Joint Group Meetings between UCL's Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research and the Centre for Life's Origins and Evolution (2022 – 2023)
-
Co-organiser of CBER’s ‘Shut up & Write’ sessions (2023) and an Athena Swan mini-hackathon (2022)
-
Member of UCL’s Green Champion Network, helping to make UCL a sustainable and heathy work place (2021 – 2023)
-
PhD Student Representative for GEE at the Division of Biosciences Staff-Student Consultative Committee (2017 – 2020).
-
This included organising, applying for funding, and managing budgets for conferences, social events, and competitions
-
-
PhD student representative for GEE at the Academic Staff Meetings (2017 – 2020).
-
Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research (UCL) Seminar Organiser (2017 - 2019)
-
PhD Student Representative on the Div. of Biosciences Wellbeing Initiative (2019)
Work culture
I strive to create a diverse, welcoming, safe, and enjoyable research culture. During my time within the Global Biodiversity Change Group at UCL, I helped to write a set of guiding principles for the group. These principles aim to improve the work culture within academia. I encourage anyone reading this to have a look at them (and please get in touch if you have feedback on how they could be improved).