Dr Daniel Ingram

Dr Daniel Ingram is a Research Fellow and member of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology.

Prior to joining the University of Kent in 2022, Dan held postdoctoral research positions in wildlife conservation at the University of Stirling and the Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research (CBER), University College London (see Biome Health Project funded by WWF-UK). Dan has a range of practical, academic, and consultancy experience across the fields of conservation, ecology, and sustainability.

At the broadest level, Dan is ultimately interested in efforts towards a wilder, healthier, and more sustainable world. Dan’s work is dedicated to progressing conservation outcomes through equitable and inclusive scientific research and on-the-ground conservation that aims to curb biodiversity loss, ensure that natural resource use is sustainable, restore natural ecosystems, and encourage nature reconnection and pro-environmental behaviours.

Dan is fortunate to support a number of wildlife conservation bodies as an advisor or Trustee, and in 2023, he was appointed an Associate Editor of leading conservation journal, Conservation Letters.

Dan, his research group, and collaborators work to build an evidence-base to inform conservation policy and practice to benefit nature, climate, and people. Our approach to research is strongly interdisciplinary, valuing both quantitative and qualitative approaches to better understand how to tackle environmental and societal challenges. We are interested in ways to improve conservation effectiveness through designing, monitoring, and evaluating interventions in collaboration with implementing practitioners and local stakeholders.

We work across a wide range of topics, spanning terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in the UK and abroad, including but not limited to the following research themes:

• Natural resource use, and the sustainability of foraging, hunting, and gathering.
• (Re)wilding, Ecosystem restoration, species reintroduction.
• Sustainable living and pro-environmental behaviours.
• Impacts of environmental change on biodiversity and people.
• Nature connection, biodiversity, and human-wellbeing/health linkages.

Dan established the Food and Nature Programme to investigate the interlinkages between food systems and nature. He currently has a Future Leaders Fellowship and is the Principal Investigator of a new research programme investigating Wildlife Consumption in Urban Tropical Africa, funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Dan is also one of the founders of the WILDMEAT Project which aims to develop a global evidence-base on the hunting, consumption, and trade of wildlife, to inform sustainable management and policy decisions.

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

Undergraduate

• WCON5450: Conservation Policy and Practice
• WCON5460: Conservation and Communities
• WCON5180: Contemporary Conservation Science

Postgraduate

• SACO7010: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Conservation

Current PhD Students

• Pilia Chiging, University of Kent & Zoological Society of London (UK): Impacts of changing sociocultural terrain on human-nature relations and hunting sustainability among the Indigenous Peoples of Arunachal Pradesh, India (Joint primary supervisor).
• Joseph Hedges, University of Kent (UK): Investigating the influence of competing land uses on forest livelihoods and biodiversity in an Indonesian Biosphere Reserve (Co-supervisor).
• Anna Stuart, University of Kent (UK): Interdisciplinary study on the role of OECMs and genomic erosion on species’ population viability (Co-supervisor).
• Leanne Riddoch, University of Kent (UK): Conservation implications of wild meat consumption in urban centres of Cameroon (Primary supervisor).
• Emily Millerchip, University of Sussex (UK): Perennial crops for sustainable cities (Joint primary supervisor).
• Sean Denny, University of California, Santa Barbara (USA): Evaluating policy levers to reduce unsustainable wildlife exploitation at regional and global scales (Co-supervisor).
• Markéta Swiacká, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague (Czech Republic): Using community-based approaches to assess the threats to pangolins (Pholidota) in the cross-border area of the Congo Basin (Co-supervisor). 

Alumni PhD Students

• Katie Spencer, University of Kent (UK): Interactions between environmental change and exploitation on Borneo’s mammalian megafauna (Co-supervisor).
• Franklin T. Simo, Université de Yaoundé I (Cameroon): Diversity and ecology of the large and medium-sized terrestrial mammal communities in the forest-savannah mosaic habitats of Cameroon: Scaling up pangolin and wild felid conservation. (Advisor).
• Alain D.T. Mouafo, Université de Dschang (Cameroon): Ethnozoology and ecological drivers of Giant pangolin (Smutsia gigantea, Illiger 1815) distribution and abundance in a mosaic forest-savannah transition area of Center Cameroon (Advisor).
• Tulshi Laxmi Suwal, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology (Taiwan): Ecology and Human Dimensions of Pangolin Conservation in Nepal (Advisor).

• Associate Editor: Conservation Letters
• Trustee: The Pangolin Project (NGO), Kenya
• Scientific Advisor: African Aquatic Conservation Fund, Senegal
  
• Steering Committee, Field Science Focal Point: IUCN SSC Pangolin Specialist Group
• Subject Editor: African Journal of Ecology