Alex Bond (he/him) is the Principal Curator and Curator in Charge of Birds at the Natural History Museum in Tring and London, UK. His research focuses on anthropogenic impacts of pollution on marine birds and islands, with a particular focus on plastic pollution. He also is an advocate for improved equity, diversity, and inclusion in science. He has been chair of the Seabird Group since 2023.
Liz Humphreys works at the British Trust for Ornithology where she is the Principal Ecologist for seabirds. Her research has focussed largely on movement and foraging ecology of seabirds and understanding the impacts of the offshore wind farm industry on bird populations. As part of her job, she is involved with the delivery of the UK's Seabird Monitoring Programme. Liz has been Chair of The Seabird Group since 2019.
Andie McQuillan (they/them) is a Senior Marine Ornithologist working closely with the renewable energy sector to ensure infrastructure does not adversely impact seabird populations. They are based in Glasgow and completed a BSc in Environmental Management at Glasgow Caledonian University and an MSc in Marine Conservation at the University of Aberdeen. Their favourite seabird is the Blue-footed Booby.
Annette Fayet has been the Secretary of The Seabird Group since late 2019, where she organises our Executive Committee meetings, the AGM, and our biannual research grants programme. She is a researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, where she co-leads the long-term seabird monitoring programme on Røst in Northern Norway. Before moving to Norway, she was based at the University of Oxford in the UK, where her main field site was Skomer Island in Wales. Her research investigates drivers of foraging and migration movements in North Atlantic and tropical seabirds.
Antoine Grissot (he/him) is the membership secretary of The Seabird Group, for which he handles the member database and answers all sorts of queries. He obtained his PhD from the University of Gdańsk (Poland) ,on the breeding ecology of the Little Auk, Alle alle, breeding ecology and is now a Post-Doc at the University of La Rochelle (France) where he is working on the distribution and effects of contaminants and stress factors on North-Atlantic seabirds.
Katherine Booth Jones is a Senior Marine Ornithologist at the Scottish Government’s Marine Directorate. She has worked on a range of professional and volunteer seabird ecology projects in the UK and abroad since 2007, involving seabird monitoring, GLS/GPS tracking, diet, remote-sensing and molecular ecology. She has been a Seabird Group member for 10 years, and has volunteered for the ExComm in two other roles, as ECR rep in 2015, and Newsletter Editor (2018 – 2022). She hopes to support The Seabird Group in its mission to be a driving force for innovative seabird research and conservation in the Atlantic.
Viola Ross-Smith (she/her) is Science Communications Manager at the British Trust for Ornithology, where she edits the Trust's membership magazine and promotes BTO science, and avian ecology in general, as widely as possible. Before making the move into science communications, Viola worked as a seabird ecologist, and is still lucky enough to contribute to research projects and fieldwork. Viola is the Editor of The Seabird Group’s journal, SEABIRD, where she works alongside the journal’s Assistant Editor and Editorial Board to publish articles on the biology, conservation, identification and status of seabirds.
Ruth Dunn (she/her) is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Lancaster University and Herriot-Watt University where she researches the behaviour, energetics and ecological influence of tropical seabirds. Ruth is currently the Assistant Editor for The Seabird Group’s journal, SEABIRD, where she works alongside the journal’s Editor and Editorial Board to help articles regarding the biology, conservation, identification and status of seabirds to be published.
Amy King is currently a Senior Research Officer for the RSPB at RSPB Bempton Cliffs, and specialises in species recovery, reintroductions, island eradications and species monitoring. She will be editing The Seabird Group Newsletter, so if you have any updates, stories or events you would like to share with the seabird community, please get in touch.
Trina (Katrina) Siddiqi-Davies is a third year PhD student at Oxford looking at the migration of Manx shearwaters. Specifically, she is looking at long term changes in winter foraging, exploring links between diet and behaviour, and investigating sex differences in pre-laying behaviour and what they might mean. Trina is the group’s Social Media Manager where she updates our followers on The Seabird Group activities as well as sharing papers, grants, artwork and opportunities with the seabird community.
Kirsty Franklin (she/her) is a Conservation Scientist for the RSPB where she works on a range of seabird tracking projects aimed at identifying the potential impacts of offshore wind energy developments on seabirds. Prior to this, she completed her PhD at the University of East Anglia on Round Island petrels. For her role with The Seabird Group, Kirsty supports the Newsletter Editor (Amy) and Social Media Manager (Trina) by running the group’s Facebook page, and by helping source and format articles for the newsletter.
Lila Buckingham (she/her/they) is our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer. Lila is a postdoc at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA), based in Trondheim, Norway. She completed her PhD at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) and the University of Liverpool in 2022. Lila’s research involves using lightweight tracking devices deployed across multiple populations to assess seabird distribution, behaviour and energetics during the non-breeding season. She is currently developing an agent-based model to assess the sensitivity of six pelagic seabird species to marine stressors, as part of the MARCIS project (https://www.nina.no/english/Sustainable-society/Marcis).
Jacqui Glencross (she/her) is a third year PhD student researching the impacts of fishing on African penguin foraging behaviour at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Before her PhD, Jacqui completed her masters at the University of Tasmania, Australia, focusing on mass mortality events in Ardenna shearwaters. She is now very excited to be the new Early Career Researcher rep for The Seabird Group. Following on from The Seabird Group Conference in Cork, where she had a great time meeting fellow ECRs, Jacqui is keen to keep the feeling of community going for everyone. If you are an early career researcher, please get in touch with Jacqui if you have any questions, ideas or just want to say hello!
Jeff Stratford maintains the group's website and helps with other systems. Recently retired from the University of Plymouth where he held roles as Medical School pastoral tutor and Professional Services Team Manager, with research interests in the Neurobiology and treatment of addiction & Baysian methods in medical student assessment. His past seabird work includes beached bird surveys, Auk biometrics and monitoring.