Laura Thomas-Walters, University of Kent; Bob Smith, University of Kent, and Diogo Veríssimo, University of Oxford Conservationists have been working for decades to save species such as pangolins and rhinos from illegal hunting and trading. And, with fears that the coronavirus pandemic originated from the wildlife trade, there’s never been more pressure to find solutions. … [Read more…]
For many researchers, particularly in academia, publishing in peer-reviewed journals is a necessity, with major implications for their career progression. Yet, it is increasingly recognised that the current scientific publishing model is not fair and equitable, which can have severe consequences for the way science is accessed and used in nature conservation. We evaluated the … [Read more…]
A couple of weeks back I did an interview for a video explainer for Chanel 4 in the UK. It was great to have time to got into the detail and present a more nuanced perspective of the issue, beyond the headlines and soundbites that are featured in much of the press around this issue. … [Read more…]
Yesterday I gave a talk as part of the Ecology Live series organized by the British Ecological Society. I talked about some recent research around the use on online data to build a global and real time monitoring system of attitudes towards wildlife. Have a look below if that sounds interesting… It was a great … [Read more…]
Dan Challender, University of Oxford; Amy Hinsley, University of Oxford; Diogo Veríssimo, University of Oxford, and Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes, University of Oxford The early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic have been linked to a “wet” market in Wuhan, in the Hubei province of eastern China. Wet markets are common in Asia, Africa and elsewhere, selling … [Read more…]
We recently published a paper on the effective use of consumer research methods to inform demand management interventions, based on work carried out in São Tomé and Principe regarding sea turtle meat and eggs. The full text can be found here, but we have a variety of other formats we are using to disseminate our … [Read more…]
I was lucky to be involved in a paper was published last week around the ethical challenges of doing social science in a biodiversity conservation context. It was great to have a space for early career researchers to reflect on this much neglected issue. Abstract below. Full text HERE! Social science is becoming increasingly important … [Read more…]
It’s been a while since my last post. And that is because I became a dad last August! These last months have been a wonderful whirlwind of smiles, diapers and sleepless nights and I can’t wait to see what comes next! Looking back at 2019 there are two reviews published in 2019 I would like … [Read more…]
Diogo Veríssimo, University of Oxford If a piece of information is repeated often enough, it will eventually be believed, even if there is no evidence for it. One example of this features the friendly clownfish Nemo and his side-kick Dory, a blue tang fish, who you may know from the animated blockbusters Finding Nemo and … [Read more…]
This week I was in Tarija, south of Bolivia, leading a social marketing workshop to design an intervention to promote human-bear co-existence in this landscape. I have not had a lot of opportunities to work around social marketing in Latin America, which together with the fact that this is one of the first projects to … [Read more…]