Animal conservation has been a major interest of mine ever since my parents took me on safari in Kenya when I was 12. Growing up in London I would make annual trips to Wildlife Photographer of the Year at the Natural History Museum in London, where I would spend hours looking at all the phenomenal photographs. In particular, I found the photojournalism entries fascinating and often deeply sad. These experiences inspired me to want to work in animal conservation and I pursued this by carrying at work experience at Blackpool Zoo where I helped with animal enrichment programmes. Furthermore, I carried out work experience with Professor Rob Ewers at Imperial College London helping with the Stability in Altered Forest Ecosystems (SAFE) project in Sabah, Malaysia.

I am currently a fourth year MBiol student at the University of Oxford and I have just started my masters project with Andrew Loveridge. Joining WildCRU is an incredible way to learn more about all the key research going on in the department. I will be applying a spatially explicit mark recapture model to camera trap data from across sites in KAZA-TFCA to work out the drivers behind the distribution of spotted hyaena. This project will show how the spotted hyaena can coexist with other species in the absence of humans thus highlighting negative impacts that we may have on their populations.