Richard Bardgett

Biography

Richard Bardgett is British ecologist and Professor of Ecology at The University of Manchester. He graduated from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1987 with a degree in Soil and Land Resource Science, and then moved to Lancaster University, where he gained his PhD in 1991. He then held posts at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research and the Universities of Manchester and Lancaster, where he established the Soil and Ecosystem Ecology Group. Richard recently returned to The University of Manchester where he is now Professor of Ecology.  Over the last twenty five years, Richard's research has led to mechanistic and conceptual advances in the area of plant-soil interactions, with a particular focus on understanding impacts of plants on soil microbial communities and feedback consequences for plant growth and ecosystem processes, especially carbon and nitrogen cycling. His research takes him to many parts of the world, but most of his current work is focussed on grasslands. Richard has published over 260 scientific papers, inlcuding many highly cited works in leading journals, such as Nature and Science, and is routinely recognised (since 2009) by Thomas Reuters as as Highly Cited Researcher in ecology and environment sciences.  He has also authored and co-authored several books, including the award winning Biology of Soil (2005), Aboveground-Belowground Interactions (2010), and his recent book Earth Matters: How Soil Underpins Civilization (2016), all published by Oxford University Press. Richard is a Senior Editor of Journal of Ecology and a long-standing member of the Editorial Boards of Ecology Letters and Ecosystems. He is a Visiting Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, Chair of BBSRC's Committee E, and member of the Board of Directors of Rothamsted, BBSRC's Research Advisory Panel, and the Netherlands Institute of Ecology Scientific Advisory Board. He was Vice President of the British Ecological Society (2011-2014) and is currently President Elect (2016-2017), and was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2006, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2011, and a member of Academia Europaea in 2015. Richard has a long-standing commitment to promoting awarness of soil biodiversuty research. To this end, he was a founder member of the Global Soil Biodiversity Initiative (GSBI), established in 2011 to create a global platform for the translation of expert knowledge on soil biodiversity into policy, and he contributed to the UN's Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soils report The Status of the World's Soil Resources (2015) and the UK Governments Soil Health Enquiry(2016) and Climate Change Risk Assessment (2017). He was also a coordinating lead author of the UK's National Ecosystem Assessment (2011). 

Research Interest

Enivironmental Sciences.