Leila has responsibility for the day to day management and running of the BOU including conferences and events, the business side of our journal IBIS, communications, website development and servicing BOU Council and its Standing Committees.

Connor is a final year ENVISION DTP PhD Researcher in the School of Geography, University of Nottingham in the UK. His PhD project examines global patterns of species abundances and the processes that drive them. Outside of his PhD, Connor enjoys working on various aspects of raptor ecology and conservation. More broadly, his research focuses on three main themes: 1) human impacts on biodiversity, 2) applying novel techniques to answer ecological questions and 3) exploring how species and their habitats respond to environmental change. Since 2021, Connor has run the British Ornithologists’ Union’s #theBOUblog, as Blog Editor, where he works with authors to disseminate their research to a wider audience.

View Connor’s ResearchGate profile

View Connor’s Google Scholar profile

Ashleigh is the BOU’s Journal Publicity Officer and resident science writer. She completed a PhD in Conservation Biology with the ZSL Institute of Zoology and University College London in 2023, with her research focused on investigating hatching failure in wild and managed bird populations. She took a multidisciplinary approach which included conducting fieldwork in Aotearoa New Zealand and applying various methods such as meta-analysis, molecular techniques, microbiome analyses, and fluorescence microscopy. She is passionate about evidence-based conservation and science communication, regularly taking part in online and in-person public outreach activities as well as previously acting as Social Media Editor for the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society and volunteering with the RSPB at a city-centre nature reserve in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

View Ashleigh’s profile on ResearchGate
Follow Ashleigh on Twitter @Belfast_Ash9

Charlie is a PhD student at the University of East Anglia, UK where he primarily studies migratory birds and how exposure to different anthropogenic threats impacts population trends. He is interested in understanding how we can translate individual mortality risks to population-level risks, whilst accounting for the complex interactions between the dynamic elements of human and bird behaviour. His work uses Greater Spotted Eagles as a case study, a species he is particularly fond of. Charlie has a background working with raptors, and before starting his PhD he worked in policy and for NGOs in various capacities, including in-situ conservation of vultures in southern Africa.

Jente Ottenburghs is the BOU’s Journal Publicity Officer and resident science writer. He is a curious evolutionary biologist with a passion for writing. He obtained his PhD from Wageningen University (the Netherlands) where he studied the genetic consequences of hybridization between several goose species. After a postdoc at Uppsala University (Sweden), he returned to Wageningen University for a lecturer position in ecology. Apart from his goose work, Jente manages the Avian Hybrids Project, a website and blog that gathers the scientific literature on hybridization in birds.

Jente’s personal website
View Jente’s profile on ResearchGate
Follow Jente on Twitter @Jente_O

Steve was the BOU’s Chief Operations Officer of 25 years until July 2022. He was responsible for the day to day running of all BOU activities including social media and communications. He now spends his time birding the Orkney isle of Westray.

Dominic was appointed Editor in Chief of IBIS in 2017. He currently works as Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow and Associate Lecturer with The Open University. His PhD at the University of Edinburgh was on Barn Owls in south-west Scotland and his current research focuses on cold adaptation and physiological ecology of a range of birds (from passerines to penguins), as well as several mammal species. He is an experienced field biologist having previously worked for the National Trust for Scotland at St Abb’s Head National Nature Reserve and with the British Antarctic Survey on Bird Island (South Georgia). Currently, Dominic is based at the University of Glasgow’s field station: the Scottish Centre for Ecology and the Natural Environment (SCENE) on Loch Lomondside.

Rauri is a Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology and a Curator in the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. He obtained his PhD from the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in 2003. He is an evolutionary biologist who is fascinated by why animals are distributed unevenly around the globe. Much of his research has centered on documenting and studying patterns of species diversity and distribution across heterogeneous landscapes, particularly those inherent to mountains and arid savannas. The bulk of his research takes place in Africa but over the past decade has expanded to other continents to ask questions about the global diversification of birds. His favorite groups of birds are sunbirds. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, was awarded UC Berkeley’s most prestigious teaching award, and is a fellow of the Californian Academy of Sciences, the American Ornithologists Society, and the International Ornithologists Union. He has been an editor of Ibis since 2006.

Dan is currently an Associate Professor in Animal Ecology at the University of Turin, Italy. Following a DPhil on Blackbird ecology at the Edward Grey Institute, Oxford, Dan spent sixteen years working for the British Trust for Ornithology, most recently as the Principal Ecologist for Climate Change and head of Population Ecology and Modelling. Over 25 years’ post-doctoral experience has produced a large body of work on the ecology of birds in highly modified habitats, specifically farmland and urban areas. His current research is focussed on impacts of environmental change on biodiversity in alpine habitats, including birds, carabid beetles and dung beetles.

Rebecca received a PhD from the University of New Mexico, where her dissertation focused on sexual selection in House Sparrows. After completing postdoctoral work at both the University of New Mexico and The Ohio State University, she became a faculty member at the University of Florida in 2001, where she is now a Professor in the Dept. of Biology. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers in the areas of evolutionary biology and behavioral ecology. Within these broad areas, she utilizes modern molecular genomic techniques, in combination with other types of data to address questions in: avian phylogenetics, where she has focused on reconstructing the evolutionary history among all birds as well more focused studies in specific orders; the evolution of male secondary sexual traits and display behaviors; the genetic and physiological mechanisms that underlie evolutionary change in specific traits; mating and social systems within and among species; population and conservation genetics, and more recently evolutionary genomics. She has been an editor of IBIS since 2013.

Ruedi Nager obtained a PhD on the breeding strategies of Great Tits from the University of Basel (Switzerland). He then spent post-docs with Rudi Drent in Groningen and then Jaques Blondel (Montpellier) studying physiological aspects of breeding in hole-breeders and demographic aspects of the Greater Flamingo (with Tour du Valat, Camargue). In 1996, Ruedi joined the University of Glasgow, first as a post-doctoral research assistant working on the cost of egg production in the Lesser Black-backed Gull, and then appointed a lecturer in 1999. Ruedi’s current main research interests are in seabird ecology and thermal ecology. The seabird work mainly focuses on the trophic and movement ecology of gulls, centred on a colony in the Firth of Clyde that he now studies since 2012. The thermal imaging work focuses on capturing relevant physiological measures that characterise a bird’s interactions with its abiotic and biotic environment non-invasively using infra-red thermal imaging. And there are many other things that catches Ruedi’s curiosity. Ruedi joined the IBIS editorial team in 2009.

Jeremy Wilson is Head of Conservation Science for RSPB in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where he is responsible for the strategic development and implementation of RSPB’s science programme in these countries, and in upland and marine environments throughout the UK. He has held an Honorary Chair at the University of Stirling since 2009 and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2017. He is currently a member of Scottish Natural Heritage’s Scientific Advisory Committee, UK SPA & Ramsar Scientific Working Group, and Scottish Biodiversity Strategy Science Group, and is a Vice-President of the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club. His personal research interests focus on problem-solving science to inform nature conservation, especially understanding the impacts of land management change, on biodiversity in terrestrial environments. He has supervised over 15 PhD students and has published around 160 peer-reviewed papers, research reports, and book chapters, and was lead author of Bird Conservation and Agriculture, published by Cambridge University Press in 2009. Jeremy joined the IBIS editorial team in 2006.

View Jeremy’s full RSPB profile.
Read more about the work of the RSPB Centre for Conservation Science

Patrick graduated in Geology at Imperial College in London before joining Blackwell Scientific Publications (now part of Wiley Blackwell) in 1988 as a production editor in the journals department, working on a range of titles (including IBIS) from the earth sciences to genetics and medicine. He set up as a freelance copyeditor and proofreader in 2003 and has been proofreading IBIS papers for much of that time. He is a sporadic birdwatcher and keen conservation volunteer at Chimney Meadows on the Thames in west Oxfordshire.

Angela graduated from Hull University with a BSc in Environmental Botany and Geography, went on to do a PGCE and taught Science for a number of years. After starting a family she decided on a change of direction and set up a carnivorous plant nursery and tropical butterfly house in southern Scotland. Still looking for a new challenge she later established a second hand bookshop in Wigtown (Scotland’s National booktown), specialising in natural history. This love of books lead to establishing a publishing business, Langford Press, which concentrated on wildlife art. Living in beautiful Pembrokeshire, Angela spends her spare time walking the coastal path with her dog and enjoying the wonderful wildlife of the area. Angela joined the BOU as a staff member in 2008.

Species conservation is at the heart of everything I do and I am particularly keen on waders. For the last 14 years I have worked for the RSPB where as a scientist, I was trying to figure out what we could do to reverse the declines of waders breeding in wetlands. I am now the Head of Species for RSPB England which involves me ensuring that our dedicated teams working at the forefront of conservation are doing the right things for our priority species focused on the most important places for those species. I have been working with the BOU for 7 years where I currently chair the Ibis Management Committee and sit on Council and I love the open and friendly feeling of being part of the ornithology community that is the BOU. When not working I am either out on my bike, enjoying my dogs or visiting friends and family.