As part of my MSc, I will be visiting Oxford for roughly six months to write my thesis on the history of the bird feather trade and use of plumage in the UK, under the supervision of Diogo Veríssimo.

Since completing my BSc in Zoology at the University of Exeter in 2017, my interest in learning about conservation policies at different scales and in a range of contexts has grown. This was perhaps partly due to my academic studies and also through working in wildlife licensing for a few years at Natural England. As a result of this growing curiosity, I decided to complete an MSc in International Nature Conservation at Göttingen University, which has given me opportunities to think about some conservation questions in new ways, in particular through social sciences lenses in some cases.

Recently, my experiences have had more of a marine focus, having just finished an interning season helping to coordinate habitat surveys in a marine park in Malaysia and currently assisting in the completion of a global report on sharks, rays and chimaeras with the IUCN SSC Shark Specialist Group.

I am looking forward to returning my focus somewhat to policy at home, and giving time to think about how behaviour change has been invoked in the past and what we can take from this for future behaviour change efforts.