Meet the Lecturers
MSc Island biodiversity and conservation
Professor José María Fernández-Palacios
José María is a Professor of Ecology at the University of La Laguna, Tenerife. His research interests include Island Biogeography and Ecology, as well as Forest Dynamics (laurisilva, pine forest and thermophilous forest) and Palaeoecology (Vegetation and climate history of the LGM and Holocene in Macaronesia).
Dr Nathan Gregory
A conservation biologist with more than 20 years of experience, Nathan is currently the Acting Director of Science and Stewardship at the Irvine Ranch National Natural Landmarks managed by the Irvine Ranch Conservancy (IRC), a non-profit, non-advocacy organization that works on behalf of multiple landowners to protect, restore, and enhance the natural resources of the wildlands in Orange County, California, USA.
Professor Julia Fa
With more than 30 years experience in academic research and teaching in conservation science, Julia’s work embraces a broad set of disciplines including biology, economics, anthropology, and development. Crucially, Julia pursues emerging issues that impinge significantly upon the long-term future of global biodiversity, such as defaunation of tropical rainforests, the impact of loss of wildlife on people dependent on it, climate change or the impact of diseases on wildlife and humans. The fundamental underpinning of her research and career is to advance scientific knowledge but also use it for practical purposes. .
Dr Kostas Triantis
Kostas is a biogeographer with broad interests in island biogeography, macroecology, community ecology, evolution, and conservation biology. His research interests span diverse themes such as diversity theory, species-area relationship, scale in ecological and biogeographical analysis, ecological modelling and environmental heterogeneity.
Claudia Martans
Claudia qualified in Panama in 1996 and worked from 1996 until 2014 as an independent consultant in environmental law and draftsman for different companies and governments in Latin America. She advised companies such as Coca Cola Panama, Nestle Panama, GDF Suez (Panama and Costa Rica) and local ministries such as the Ministry of Health, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Environment, the Panama Canal Authority and the Maritime Authority in Panama. She is a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Caritas Think Tank Group in Jersey.
Professor Robert Whittaker
Rob Whittaker has a BSc in Botany and Geography from the University of Hull (1980), an MSc in Ecology from University College North Wales (1982), and a doctorate from University College Cardiff (1985), where he studied vegetation succession on recently deglaciated terrain, in the Jotunheimen, Norway. He joined the Oxford School of Geography and the Environment in 1986, having previously worked for a year as a research officer at Birkbeck College, London. In 1990 he was appointed to a university lectureship and a fellowship at St Edmund Hall. In 1999 he was awarded the title of Reader and, in 2004, Professor of Biogeography.