Ed is Professor of Insect Ecology and Curator of Insects in the University Museum of Zoology, and a Fellow at Clare College, Cambridge. His research focusses on ways that human-modified landscapes can be managed to support biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions in both the UK (focusing on butterflies) and Southeast Asia (working in oil palm plantations).
Ed gained his BA in Natural Sciences from Girton College, before continuing to study for his PhD in the Insect Ecology Group at the Department of Zoology, Cambridge. Since then, he has worked with the Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire (BCN) Wildlife Trust, investigating butterfly diversity on chalk grassland reserves and with Imperial College, London running the Stability of Altered Forest Ecosystems Project in Sabah, Malaysia. He returned to Cambridge in 2012 to be Academic Director and Teaching Officer in Biological Sciences at the Institute of Continuing Education (ICE) and started his current role in 2016.
Ed is an enthusiastic science communicator and has been involved with supervising undergraduates and teaching on field courses in the Department of Zoology, Cambridge since 2001. He gives lectures in the Department of Zoology in all three years of the undergraduate tripos.