I am Associate Professor at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford (WildCRU) and the founding Chair of the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict & Coexistence Specialist Group. I work globally on human-wildlife conflict and conservation conflict resolution, with a particular focus on the hidden social causes of conflict, community-led solutions, stakeholder dialogue, and conflict prevention. Over the past 25 years I have worked with communities, NGOs and governments across a wide range of socio-political contexts in Brazil, Venezuela, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Bolivia, Mauritius, the UK, and Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
As Chair of the IUCN SSC HWCCSG, I led the development of the global IUCN Guidelines on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence and established the International Conferences on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence. In this role I also engage extensively in international biodiversity policy as part of IUCN delegations to UN conventions, supporting negotiations around Target 4 of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the development of its monitoring indicator.
For this work I received the IUCN SSC Harry Messel Award for Conservation Leadership in 2024, and in 2026 was awarded the Midori Prize for Biodiversity for global work fostering collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, helping to establish human-wildlife coexistence as a priority in international biodiversity policy, and pioneering the application of knowledge and approaches from peacebuilding and conflict resolution to biodiversity conservation.
A major part of my work is building professional capacity in human-wildlife conflict and conflict resolution internationally. Over the past decade I have designed and delivered 25 training courses for around 700 conservation practitioners, researchers, and government staff around the world. I am currently leading the development of the world’s first master’s degree in HWCC, hosted by WildCRU in the Department of Biology. Building on this, my book Negotiating Coexistence: The Art and Science of Resolving Conflicts in Conservation (Oxford University Press, 2026) provides a structured peacebuilding approach to managing complex human-wildlife conflicts.
I work extensively in the intergovernmental sector and previously served for five years as Senior Advisor on human-wildlife conflict to the Global Wildlife Program of the World Bank. I am also a technical advisor to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Royal Commission for AlUla, serve on the board of the Arabian Leopard Fund, and a Trustee of Coexistence Story. Before this, I was Head of Conservation Science at Chester Zoo, where I secured five Darwin Initiative grants and led work on human-wildlife coexistence in South Asia and Latin America.
I grew up in Indonesia, Lebanon, Germany, France, and Canada and was initially trained in zoology (BSc, Leeds) and conservation biology (MSc, DICE) before completing my doctorate in conservation social science at WildCRU (DPhil, Oxford). I later trained in negotiation at Harvard Law School and in multilateral negotiation at the United Nations, and continue to bring insights from conflict resolution and diplomacy into biodiversity conservation.
