Dr Kimberley Hockings

The main objective of my research is to elucidate the underlying mechanisms that enable human-wildlife coexistence. I have a particular interest in the drivers of resource competition, disease transmission, and aggressive interactions between human and nonhuman great apes in shared landscapes. My team and I are also developing more robust approaches to surveying wildlife in heterogeneous human-impacted landscapes, and ways to manage the large datasets generated using remote technology.

Comprehensively examining interactions requires an understanding of the ways in which wildlife respond to the costs and benefits of anthropogenic habitats, and how local people perceive and respond to sympatric wildlife, as well as land and resource management rules. To do this effectively demands a cross-disciplinary skills base, and my research increasingly combines biological, ecological, and social science approaches. A goal of my research is to work with different stakeholders to generate locally appropriate and culturally sensitive solutions to biodiversity conservation.

I ensure that my work has real-world impact through (1) using scientific evidence to inform conservation action; (2) developing National and Regional conservation action plans; (3) collaborating with Government Organisations in the countries I work, and (4) influencing policy through active membership of professional conservation bodies including the Great Ape Section of the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group.

I conduct fieldwork in West Africa, including research on wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Bossou in Guinea, and various wildlife species including chimpanzees and colobus monkeys (Piliocolobus temminckii) at Cantanhez National Park in Guinea-Bissau. I supervise students working on human-great ape interactions across Africa, and have supervised dissertations on various aspects of wildlife behaviour and conservation across Africa, Asia, and the Neotropics. I am a member of the IUCN/SSC Primate Specialist Group (PSG) Section on Great Apes (SGA); COVID-19 working group; Section on Chimpanzee Culture and Conservation; Section on Human-Primate Interactions, and the Conservation Working Party of the Primate Society of Great Britain.

Broad research specialisms:

Human-wildlife coexistence;

Biodiversity surveys;

Great ape behaviour, ecology, and cognition;

Primate conservation.

Qualifications:

2019 Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA).

2007 Ph.D. in Evolutionary Psychology, University of Stirling, UK.

2002 B.Sc .(Hon.) in Zoology, University of Liverpool, UK.

Career:

2024- Associate Professor in Conservation Science, University of Exeter, UK

2021- Programme Lead for MSc Conservation and Biodiversity: https://www.exeter.ac.uk/postgraduate/courses/biosciences/conservation/

2019- Senior Lecturer in Conservation Science, University of Exeter, UK

2018-2019 Lecturer in Biosciences, University of Exeter, UK

2015-2018 University Research Fellow (FCT), Centre for Research in Anthropology, Portugal

2013-2014 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Oxford Brookes University, UK

2010 Visiting Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Kyoto University, Japan

2008-2012 Postdoctoral Research Fellow (FCT), New University of Lisbon, Portugal