I grew up in Kent where I started volunteering for the Kent Wildlife Trust, doing practical conservation on nature reserves and monitoring butterflies by walking weekly transects. I studied Ecology and Conservation at Lancaster University where I was fortunate to do my undergraduate dissertation on habitat management for fritillary butterflies, in partnership with Butterfly Conservation.

After graduating with a 1^st I completed a three-month internship with the Scottish Wildlife Trust at Loch of the Lowes, before returning to Lancaster to start a PhD. I am now working to understand drivers of population decline and the influence of habitat fragmentation on one of Britain’s most threatened butterflies: the pearl-bordered fritillary.