Katherine J. Willis

Kathy Willis "is Professor of Long-Term Ecology at the School of Geography and the Environment, and director of the Oxford Long-Term Ecology Laboratory. She gained her first degree in Geography and Environmental Science from the University of Southampton, and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. In her early postdoctoral career, Prof. Willis held a Selwyn College Research Fellowship and then a NERC Postdoctoral Fellowship in the department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge. This was followed by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in the Godwin Institute for Quaternary Research, University of Cambridge.

"Professor Willis took up the post of University Lecturer in the School of Geography and the Environment in January 1999, was made a Reader in 2004, and a Professor in 2006. She established the Oxford Long-Term Ecology Laboratory in 2002 which now comprises four postdoctoral researchers, ten Ph.D. students and a technician. She is a core member of the School of Geography and the Environment's Biodiversity research cluster and a co-director of the MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation and Management.

"In addition to her position in Oxford, Professor Willis is an adjunct Professor (Professor II) in the Department of Biology, University of Bergen, Norway. She is also member of various committees including an international member of the scientific advisory board of the National Science Foundation National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), Duke University, USA, on the panel of advisers for Commonwealth Scholarship Commission and is a trustee of the Percy Sladen Memorial Fund. She was recently made a trustee of WWF-UK and also a College Member of NERC.

"Professor Willis is an associate editor of the journal The Holocene, on the editorial board of Global Ecology and Biogeography, The Norwegian Journal of Geography and Documenta Praehistorica. She has also edited two thematic issues of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B on the Evolutionary Legacy of the Ice-Ages (2004) and Biodiversity Hotspots Through Time; using the past to manage the future (2007).

"She has given recent keynotes at: Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Germany, 2006); IntraBioDiv Congress (Switzerland, 2006); Biannual International Biogeography Society Meeting (Tenerife, 2007); British Ecological Society (Sheffield, 2007); Royal Society (London, 2007); PAGES (London, 2007)."