Warm welcome to new team members
NbSI welcomes newcomers, bringing exciting new research directions. We are delighted to introduce Dr Jennifer Lucey as Deputy Director of NbSI. September 4, 2024
Dr Jen M. Lucey
Deputy Director and Senior Researcher
We are delighted to introduce Jennifer Lucey as the Deputy Director of NbSI and a Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. Jen is an expert on biodiversity and forests in oil palm landscapes. Working at the interface of science, policy and practice, her research focuses on developing NbS to transform agricultural landscapes to support biodiverse, resilient ecosystems. Following a PhD on the impacts of oil-palm-caused forest fragmentation, Jen spearheaded the Socially and Environmentally Sustainable Oil Palm Research Programme (SEnSOR 2015-2024), investigating the effects of oil palm certification on livelihoods and biodiversity. Her impact-driven research has been recognised with a NERC Early Career Impact Award and a REF2021 Impact case study.
Alongside her work as Deputy Director, Jen is leading the establishment of a new Agricultural Resilience Impact and Innovation (AGRII) Hub. The AGRII Hub will seek to accelerate the transformation of our agricultural systems, by engaging industry leaders and stakeholders to co-develop novel research and innovation across disciplines.
Klara Kaleb
Senior Research Associate
Klara‘s research focusses on how to leverage machine learning for systematic reviews of NbS and nature recovery research, working between the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, the Department of Statistics and NbSI. Klara holds a PhD in Computational Neuroscience from Imperial College London.
Xiao Zhang
Research Assistant
Xiao is modelling the GHG emissions of UK peatlands, with relevance for their crucial role in the UK Net Zero Strategy. She recently presented a research poster on the key findings. This project forms part of the Agile Sprint on ‘How can we manage uncertainties in habitat greenhouse gas emissions?‘, led by Dr John Lynch. Before joining NbSI, Xiao completed an MRes at Imperial College London, investigating the impact of pesticides on honeybee brood disease development, and the relationship between flower morphology and their pollinators.
Jon Harper
Masters student
Jon is investigating the impacts of native woodland regeneration on carbon sequestration and biodiversity in Scotland, supervised by Dr Emily Warner. This work is part of a wider project on ‘Biodiversity and ecosystem responses to woodland creation.’
Flourishing Landscapes Programme
We welcome several new team members who join the newly established Flourishing Landscapes Programme (FLP), led by NbSI’s Dr Will Thompson. This project addresses the triple challenge of livelihoods, climate change, and biodiversity loss at tropical forest frontiers, driven by a global consortium of research, civil society, and industry collaborators, and targeted in agricultural-forest matrix landscapes across Ecuador, Ghana and Viet Nam.
Dr Daniel Hending
Research Fellow
Dan is leading ecological research within the cacao agroecosystems in the Ashanti Region of Ghana (Guinean Forests of West Africa), and coffee agroecosystems in the Central Highlands of Viet Nam (Indo-Burma). Having worked on a wide range of projects spanning animal behaviour, ecology and evolution, Dan’s interests are focussed on how organisms respond to changes such as habitat degradation and fragmentation, and the development of non-invasive biodiversity assessment tools, such as bioacoustics.
Michael Ruggeri
Research Assistant
Michael is gathering evidence on practices and mechanisms to inform landscape and farm-scale management of agroforestry systems. This work includes mapping financial flows that can support restorative practices. Michael’s background spans environmental sciences, agriculture and rural development.
Phoebe Reid
Masters Student
Phoebe is exploring trade-offs between climate adaptation, biodiversity and productivity in cocoa agroforestry systems in Ghana, supervised by Dr Will Thompson.
Find out more and keep up-to-date with the Flourishing Landscapes Programme here.