I was formerly Reader in Zoology at the University of St Andrews , UK and held lectureships at the University of Leicester , UK and Queen Mary College of the University of London. Before my first lectureship, I held a research fellowship at the University of East Anglia , UK, worked as a fish ecologist at Plymouth Marine Laboratory , UK, served as an aid worker for Voluntary Service Overseas in Bangladesh, and worked for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. I completed a PhD on fish ecology at the University of Aberystwyth , UK.

My research interests are in fish and marine ecology, evolutionary and behavioural ecology, statistical modelling, and in applying informative Bayesian priors to ecological and evolutionary models.

I am the author of over 150 scientific papers and six books.