I'm a deep-sea ecologist and Senior Lecturer in Marine Biology.

I'm interested in understanding how deep-sea fauna have evolved across a range of habitats and how their populations persist in this little-explored realm. The deep sea, which furnishes us with food, helps sequester atmospheric carbon and buffers our climate, faces the encroachment of human activity. By understanding better how deep-sea ecosystems function, deep-sea ecologists hope to inform conservation and resource management strategies and to ensure the health of this hidden world for future generations.

Biography

• Senior Lecturer, Marine Biology, University of Portsmouth, 2025
• Teaching Fellow, Marine Biology, University of Portsmouth, 2021
• PTHP Lecturer, University of Portsmouth, 2021
• Associate Researcher, University of Oxford, 2019 – 2021
• Postdoctoral Research Assistant, University of Oxford, 2016 – 2019
• Research Assistant, DeepSeas Group, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, 2014
• DPhil Zoology, University of Oxford, 2009 – 2014
• Field Assistant, SERPENT project, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, 2008
• MSc Oceanography, University of Southampton, 2007 – 2008
• BA Biological Sciences, University of Oxford, 1998 – 2001

Research Interests

• Deep-sea ecology
• Deep-sea chemosynthetic ecosystems
• Hydrothermal vent fauna
• Yeti crabs
• Evolution in the deep sea
• Population genetics/genomics
• Phylogeography
• Phylogenetics/phylogenomic
• Marine systematics
• Marine biogeography
• Transcriptomics

Teaching Responsibilities

Passing on my knowledge of marine ecology is a central part of what I do. This comes in the form of devising and presenting lecture and class content for undergraduate and postgraduate students, helping to run field courses, project coursework and laboratory practicals. A key aspect of the Teaching Fellowship will be to advance the pedagogy of marine biology i.e. to innovate in the teaching of this broad and increasingly important realm of life.

Beyond teaching a new generation of students, I work hard to promote the awareness of marine science by communicating my research and those of colleagues directly to journalists and writers and through radio, television, social media and various outreach events.