With a background in interdisciplinary environmental science, I joined WildCRU in 2012. The majority of my research is in the regions where lions are most threatened, particularly across West, Central and the Horn of Africa. Over the last 25 years, I have supported conservation and research projects across the region, trained students and advised government and non-government organisations. My current role is to coordinate conservation research with a focus on the northern lion, working with local partners in Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia and northern Kenya, often in the framework of a National Lion Conservation Action Plan. Examples include Lion Guards programs, children’s bushcamps, large carnivores surveys, livestock damage mitigation, local PhD studies and transboundary lion monitoring. I work predominantly on the northern lion subspecies (Panthera leo leo) distributed across West, Central and the Horn of Africa (e.g. Senegal, Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia). A recurrent theme is the difficulty of conservation in these regions that host unique biodiversity but face a conservation crisis due to major political, economic and demographic challenges. In contrast to many countries in southern and eastern Africa the wildlife sector is not well developed, and there is an urgent need for capacity building at local institutions.

This work is in collaboration with national governments and partners like National Geographic, German International Cooperation, African Parks Network and the Born Free Foundation.

I was among the first researchers to highlight the threatened status of lions in 2001, and have been involved in conservation debates ever since, with particular momentum gained during the elaboration of the 2005 IUCN Lion Conservation Strategy. I am an author of the IUCN Red List Assessment for the Lion and I was involved in the creation of the African Carnivores Initiative (ACI) in 2019 as a member of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group (SG). The ACI is a forum adopted jointly by CITES (Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species) and CMS (Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species) to provide a structured platform for exchange between policy makers and other stakeholders and supported by the IUCN Cat SG.

I have previously worked at the universities of Leiden (The Netherlands) and Leuven (Belgium); I’m also a Visiting Professor at the universities of Mekele (Ethiopia) and Antwerp (Belgium) and a National Geographic Explorer.