Prof. Rosemary Hails

Trade-offs between provisioning and other ecosystem services from agricultural land, valuation of ecosystem services, persistence and transmission of insect pathogens, exploiting pathogens for biocontrol, the role of pathogens in regulating insect and plant populations, population ecology of feral crop plants, risk assessment of genetically modified plants and viruses.

Rosie was educated at Oxford University, receiving her BA Honours in Zoology. She then moved to Imperial College, where she studied for an MSc in Applied Entomology and then completed her PhD in insect population ecology. In later years she also completed five mathematical and statistical degree modules with the Open University.

After her PhD in insect population ecology and post-doctoral research at Imperial College London on the risk assessment of genetically-modified plants, she moved back to Oxford in 1992 to take up a post at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (then the Institute of Virology and Environmental Microbiology) to study the ecology and risk assessment of genetically modified viruses.

In July 2018 Rosie took up the position of Director of Science and Nature at the National Trust.

Rosie leads the co-ordination team for the Valuing Nature Programme, a £7 million interdisciplinary research programme funded by NERC, ESRC, BBSRC, Defra and AHRC.

She is also Chair of the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE) and a member of the Natural Environment Research Council Science Board, as well as Council member of the RSPB. She is a Visiting Professor at the University of Exeter.

She is a vice president and member of council for the British Ecological Society (BES) and in 2008 co-founded the Natural Capital Initiative in collaboration with the BES and The Royal Society of Biology.

She was a member of the expert panel and an author for the UK National Ecosystem Assessment and a member of the first Natural Capital Committee. She was awarded an MBE for services to environmental research in June 2000.