Profile

I live with my husband, two dogs, one cat and a horse in Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire. All of my animals are bonkers but happy and not as well behaved as they should be! I love food and music but the thing that gives me the most joy in the world is galloping my horse as fast as I can x-country. I’m from Northern Ireland originally but I came to live here 2 years ago when I became a Senior Lecturer at Hartpury University Centre.

I teach students about animal behaviour and welfare for their foundation, bachelors and masters degrees. I also run a programme that helps every student achieve to the best of their ability which I think is really important. I supervise lots of students doing their research projects and this is where we work very hard but have a lot of fun answering important questions about why animals behave the way they do and how we can improve their lives.

At work, I spend a lot of time trying to be helpful by answering students questions over email. I’ll probably give a lecture for an hour and half where I really need to convince the students of why a subject is so interesting and important. Hopefully, this gets them to go away and study to find out much more for themselves. I might mark some drafts of research projects, assignments or exams where I’ll give the best feedback I can to help the student to do even better next time.  I usually need to meet with students and other staff to make plans and check everything is going the way it should.