Contributors

Sandiso Mnguni

GENUS Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand

GENUS Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of the Witwatersrand I am a palaeoentomologist: I study fossil insects. My fossil insects are dated to be 90 million years old and were recovered at Orapa Diamond Mine in Botswana.

Sonali Das

Full Professor, University of Pretoria

Full Professor, University of Pretoria Prof Sonali Das holds a PhD in Statistics (University of Connecticut, USA), and is a Full Professor in the Department of Business Management, University of Pretoria. She is a C-rated SA NRF researcher, and an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute. In 2020 Prof Das was the recipient of the Mujeres Por Africa (MxA) award from Spain to pursue collaboration with Spanish Universities. In 2018 she was the Chair of the Women in Science Without Borders conference. Her work is transdisciplinary in nature where her interest lies in deciphering the underlying data generating process to answer relevant questions. She publishes widely, and supervises a group of motivated post graduate and doctoral students.

Sarah Demelo

Curator, ESCALA, Art & Special Collections, University of Essex

Curator, ESCALA, Art & Special Collections, University of Essex Dr Sarah Demelo is an art historian and curator based in Essex. She is the Curator of the Essex Collection of Art from Latin America (ESCALA), the University Art Collection, and the Library’s Special Collections at the University of Essex. Over the past twenty years, she has worked with numerous museums and collections in the UK and Canada, organising exhibitions on Latin American art and, more recently, modern and contemporary British art. She recently curated ‘Art of Dispersion: Hudinilson Jr and León Ferrari’ at Art Exchange, which explored the Brazilian xerography movement of the early 1980s and she featured in the BBC documentary ‘Banned! The Mary Whitehouse Story’ presenting on the Special Collection of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association held at the University of Essex. Her most recent exhibition is 'Restless Brilliance: The Story of J.A. Baker and The Peregrine,' telling the story of Essex naturalist and writer J.A. Baker, co-curated with Chelmsford Museum.

Stefan Caddy-Retalic

Ecologist, School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide

Ecologist, School of Biological Sciences, University of Adelaide I am interested in promoting sustainable urban landscapes, including more resilient trees, in Australia. I am also interested in using living and preserved plant collections to enhance biodiversity conservation, improve quality of life and enable new science. My research combines biomolecular techniques (stable isotopes, DNA metabarcoding) with traditional ecological survey methods (vegetation metrics, invertebrate trapping) to integrate species change from a population to biome level. My fieldwork is conducted on a climate gradient from the south coast of South Australia through the Mt Lofty Ranges, Flinders Ranges, Gammon Ranges and Stony Plains to investigate changes within species, communities and biomes to better understand the interrelationships and drivers of this change. In addition to my scientific work, I have a strong interest in working with government and have worked in environmental policy and programs for the South Australian and Commonwealth governments. I have also managed science projects for the University of Adelaide and Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN). My primary interest is in conducting research to address real world problems and bridging the gap between ecological theory and the current needs of land managers.

Scott Duke Kominers

Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration, Harvard University

Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration, Harvard University

Simon Bainbridge

Professor in English, Lancaster University

Professor in English, Lancaster University Simon Bainbridge's main research interest is in the relationship between the writing of the Romantic period and its historical contexts. He is the author of 'Napoleon and English Romanticism' (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and 'British Poetry and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars' (Oxford University Press, 2003) and the editor of 'Romanticism: A Sourcebook'. He has published widely on the evolution of mountaineering and its literature, particularly in the Romantic period, including the monograph 'Mountaineering and British Romanticism: The Literary Cultures of Climbing, 1770-1836' (Oxford University Press, 2020).