PhD Student

c.r.pollard@stir.ac.uk

Chris is a PhD student studying the way people in conservation conflicts make decisions. He works on the islands around Scotland where conflict has arisen due to large numbers of wild geese damaging crops. Raised in England, Chris is no stranger to Scotland where his birdwatching parents took him and his siblings every year for summer holidays. These holidays instilled a love for nature in him, although it lay somewhat dormant as Chris’s first degree was in chemistry and pharmacology at the University of Leeds. Later, whilst working for 8 years as a Senior Drug Metabolism Scientist in big pharma, Chris got reacquainted with birdwatching and began volunteering for the RSPB on his weekends and days off. A career change followed in 2012, leaving drug metabolism and heading back into education via an MSc in Conservation Science from Imperial College London. His masters included research on monitoring and evaluation methods for small conservation NGOs. For this he spent time in Samburu, Kenya with Ewaso Lions, an NGO focussed on preventing and managing conflict caused when large predators take livestock. Chris then spent 9 months working on sustainable seafood policy at the London based NGO, ClientEarth, before taking on his PhD with the Stirling Conservation Science group (StiCS) in 2014. Chris is also on the organising committee for the British Ecological Society Scottish Policy Group who aim to bring ecologists and policymakers together to aid decision making in government and research.