Dr Stephanie Brittain

Dr Stephanie Brittain is a Lecturer in Conservation Science at the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE). Before this, she was a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. She holds an MSc in Conservation Science from Imperial College London and earned her PhD from the University of Oxford. Steph’s career has spanned grassroots sustainability organisations, policy and advocacy, and academia. She is part of the E3 Sharing Space for Nature Initiative and is proud to collaborate with colleagues towards impactful conservation that supports positive outcomes for both people and nature.

Steph’s research is driven by a commitment to enhance the equity and effectiveness of conservation to achieve better environmental and social outcomes. As an interdisciplinary conservation scientist, she merges ecological and social science methodologies to tackle complex challenges.

Currently, Steph works on the Transformative Pathways project, working in Kenya and Thailand to enhance and scale-up the contributions of Indigenous Peoples and local communities to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity within the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework. She also provides social research capacity building on a collaborative Darwin Initiative project in northern Ethiopia that seeks to support local traditional livelihoods to reduce pressure on the Ethiopia Wolf.

Steph has extensive experience working in Cameroon, focusing on community-based monitoring of wild meat hunting and consumption, and has also supported works in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Benin, Indonesia, and Cambodia.

• ·Co-designing community-led biodiversity monitoring and examining the impact of participation on conservation and social outcomes.
• Research to identify, recognize, support, or monitor other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) to inform international policy and practice.
• The role of local ecological knowledge in shaping effective and sustainable conservation strategies.
• The social and environmental outcomes of traditional and rights-based conservation efforts, including the impacts on community livelihoods and attitudes towards conservation.
• The design of robust and cost-effective biodiversity monitoring approaches.
• The dynamics of wild meat hunting and consumption systems, including the socio-cultural aspects of species trade and use.

Steph is committed to supporting the next generation of conservation scientists, and welcomes collaboration with peers and professionals. She would be pleased to hear from Masters and potential PhD students interested in pursuing studies that align with her research interests.

Past supervision

Justine Broers: Human-forest elephant coexistence: an interdisciplinary investigation in the Congo Basin, University of Liège (Advisor).

• 2023 – present. Honorary member, ICCA Consortium
• 2023-present. President, Social Science Working Group (SSWG), The Society for Conservation Biology.