Francis Binney

Francis is a graduate of the JICAS Island Biodiversity and Conservation Masters course. His research focuses on marine insular systems and the impacts of these on habitat and species diversity.

Currently, his research focuses on the shallow coastal marine waters around the island of Jersey, understanding their nature as a limited import export system and the impacts of fisheries within the region. Francis also works on collaborative projects focusing on Marine Protected Area networks including Jersey’s first No Take Zone, environmental heavy metal monitoring, and seagrass health monitoring. Francis joined the JICAS research fellow team in 2022.

Dr Thomas Hesselberg

Thomas is co-director for the Postgraduate Certificate of Ecological Survey Techniques at the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education and college lecturer in biological sciences at St. Anne's College, University of Oxford.

His main research interests lie within the field of behavioural ecology of insect and spiders (although he also has broder ecological interests) with a specific focus on web-building behaviour in orb spiders. He has worked in a range of different ecosystems including tropical and temperate woodland, but he has recently become fascinated by habitat islands in general and subterranean ecosystems in particular.

Dr Helen Dawson

Dr Helen Dawson is Senior Research Fellow at JICAS and Research Fellow at the Institute of Prehistory at the University of Tubingen. She has extensive fieldwork experience and a special interest in islands, which goes back to her first dig as an undergraduate in Barbados in 1997, followed by more fieldwork in the island of the Mediterranean *Sicily, Cyprus, the Cyclades), a topic on which she has published widely.