My two roles at UWA are Deputy Director of UWA's Oceans Institute and Professor in the School of Biological Sciences.

** I am on sabbatical from Jan-July 2026 and not accepting new research students during this period. 

My research is interdisciplinary but has a grounding in physiological ecology and a strong focus on conservation and climate change. I mostly study threatened vertebrates and aim to understand their capacity to persist through rapid environmental change. Development of modelling approaches and decision tools that can inform conservation initiatives are a major interest. I have long-term research programs on assisted colonisation (conservation translocations that aim to mitigate impacts of climate change), on sex determination and survival in reptiles (especially sea turtles), and on the biology and conservation of terrestrial-breeding frog species, and their vulnerability to drying climates. These interests extend to ecosystems such as peatlands, and I co-lead a trandisplinary project 'PEAT Southwest' in the south west of Australia.

My graduate students and postdocs have diverse interests and skills - their projects currently span freshwater turtles, sea turtles, frogs, skinks, dragons, chuditch and whale sharks.

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I completed a BSc with first class honours in Zoology at the University of Tasmania in 1996, and a PhD in Environmental Physiology at The University of Adelaide in 2001. For the next couple of years I was a research fellow at Victoria University of Wellington, funded by The Royal Society of London, and afterwards spent periods at Colorado State University, the Australian National University and La Trobe University before moving to UWA in 2005 on an ARC postdoctoral fellowship. I transitioned to a teaching and research role in 2009, and since 2023 I have had two half time roles - Deputy Director of UWA's Oceans Institute and Professor in Conservation Biology.

Below are the research areas of lab members as of Semester 1 2026. Upcoming opportunites include a PhD project on seadragon genomics and conservation translocations - details here.

Postdoc

Emily Hoffmann: Conservation of sunset frogs and biodiversity of Western Australian peatlands

Project coordinator

Holly Winkle: Protecting peatland ecosystems and addressing threats in SW Australia

PhD

Carly Moir: Chuditch check-up: updating our understanding of the chuditch within the northern jarrah forest

Laura Dehne: Understanding human-megafauna relationships and their potential to drive conservation management

Levi Brown: Exploring the unrecognised biodiversity of the Ningaloo Coast: identifying and conserving the endemic herpetofauna of Cape Range National Park

Ty Russell: Conservation Macrogenetics of Short-range Wetland Endemics in Southwestern Western Australia 

Master of Science

Ha Hoang: Evaluation of the feasibility of captive-to-wild egg translocations for the western swamp turtle

Master of Biological Science

Gemma Evans: Conservation priorities for the Yinnietharra rock dragon 

Charlie Dohe: Quolls in focus, cats in frame: dual species density estimation using remote camera traps

Maya Gibson: Categorising optimal breeding sites for a threatened frog within a threatened ecosystem

Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy

Course coordinator

Wildlife Conservation (Extended Major and Combined Bachelor Masters)

Unit coordinator

BIOL5502 Managing Threatened Species and Ecological Communities

Lecturer

ENVT2221 Global Climate Change and Biodiversity

BIOL5504 Sex in the Sea