Dr Thomas Pienkowski

Dr Thomas Pienkowski is a Research Fellow at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology and a member of the E3 Sharing Space for Nature initiative.

His overarching aim is to produce research that fosters a healthier planet for both people and nature. His research focuses on scaling conservation action and linking human health with nature conservation.

Before joining the University of Kent in 2025, Thomas was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Catalyzing Conservation group at Imperial College London, examining drivers and barriers to scaling conservation.

He completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2022, investigating the links between mental health and nature conservation.

He enjoys highly interdisciplinary and collaborative projects and is always looking to integrate advancements in other fields into conservation science. 

Thomas has worked on a range of cross-disciplinary conservation science topics in countries in Africa, Central America, the Caribbean, and East Asia. Thomas uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, often coupled together. 

Planetary Health and Conservation 

• Mental and physical health impacts of nature loss 
• Health impacts of conservation and restoration interventions 
• Mainstreaming nature into public health systems 

Scaling Conservation 

• Drivers and enabling conditions for scaling conservation actions (i.e., how to expand and adapt initiatives to more people and places)  
• Scaling bottlenecks and barriers, and their solutions in conservation 
• Trade-offs and synergies between scaling, effectiveness, and social justice 

Conservation Abandonment  

• Quantifying the extent and impacts of conservation abandonment (e.g., the formal rollback of projects or informal abdication of management activities)
• Causes of conservation abandonment and its mitigation measures

A full list of Thomas's publications can be found on Google Scholar.

Olivia Crowe, Imperial College London (UK): Scaling rangeland stewardship fairly: Investigating social equity in adoption pathways (secondary supervisor).