Graeme S. Cumming

Graeme grew up (well, mostly) in Harare, Zimbabwe, where he went to Saint George’s College. He studied Zoology and Entomology to the honours level at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. He then moved to Oxford University, U.K., on a Rhodes Scholarship. While at New College, Oxford, Graeme completed his doctorate on ‘The Evolutionary Ecology of African Ticks’ under the supervision of Drs. Sarah Randolph and David Rogers. From Oxford he moved to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, funded by a D. H. Smith Postdoctoral Fellowship from The Nature Conservancy (TNC). In Madison he worked with TNC and Professor Steve Carpenter at the Center for Limnology on applying species-based models to management and conservation-related problems in freshwater systems. After two years as a postdoc, he was hired as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Wildlife Ecology and Conservation at the University of Florida. Graeme returned to Africa at the end of 2005 and occupied the Pola Pasvolsky Chair in Conservation Biology at the University of Cape Town until end June 2015, when he moved to his current position.

Graeme is currently developing a new project theme on spatial resilience and scale in coral reef-associated social-ecological systems while (1) writing up data and results from field research on southern African waterbirds and their parasites; (2) continuing an NRF-funded project on organism-focused models of ecosystem service provision; and (3) continuing a James S. McDonnell Foundation-funded program on the importance of spatial variation and network membership for the social-ecological resilience of protected areas.