Prof. Rosemary Hails

Biography

Rosie was educated at Oxford University, receiving her BA Honours in Zoology. She then moved to Imperial College, where she studied for an MSc in Applied Entomology and then completed her PhD in insect population ecology. In later years she also completed five mathematical and statistical degree modules with the Open University. After her PhD in insect population ecology and post-doctoral research at Imperial College London on the risk assessment of genetically-modified plants, she moved back to Oxford in 1992 to take up a post at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (then the Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology) to study the ecology and risk assessment of genetically modified viruses. She has been appointed as a member of the UK government’s ‘Natural Capital Committee’. She also chairs the Government's Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE). In collaboration with the Society of Biology and the British Ecological Society she founded the ‘Natural Capital Initiative’ (NCI) – an independent and inclusive forum which holds events focused on the Ecosystem Approach. She is a senior research associate of Oxford University and a visiting professor at Oxford Brookes University and she was awarded an MBE for services to environmental research in June 2000.

Research Interest

Trade-offs between provisioning and other ecosystem services from agricultural land, valuation of ecosystem services, persistence and transmission of insect pathogens, exploiting pathogens for biocontrol, the role of pathogens in regulating insect and plant populations, population ecology of feral crop plants, risk assessment of genetically modified plants and viruses.