I am a social scientist turned ecologist by Oxford. I spent the first five years of higher education studying international development, with a particular emphasis on international agricultural development. I have always been interested in how food systems can work smarter and harder for the farmers and communities who steward them – without taxing the ecosystem unfairly.
At Oxford, I combine my passion for international development and biology in a project that seeks to understand how agroforestry systems in southeastern Madagascar affect the natural and human environments around them. My research looks at bioacoustics, DNA metabarcoding, interview, survey, and camera trap data collected from bats, birds, and humans to understand these effects across taxa. This data has been collected both by Ricardo Rocha and me through extensive fieldwork in Madagascar. I hope the conclusions my PhD draws help make agroforestry projects in Madagascar and similar contexts more sustainable for both people and the planet.
