Leejiah Dorward

I am an interdisciplinary conservation scientist with broad interests in how social and ecological systems interact currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Conservation and Human Behaviour research group at Bangor University.

Conservation efforts around the world often involve numerous stakeholders with an array of different aims. These competing interests and ways of viewing and relating to the natural environment can cause severe conflicts over how the natural world is managed. I am particularly interested in situations where the interests of external conservation actors compete with those of local communities and how we can equitably align these different stakeholder’s interests.

Having completed a PhD investigating the conservation conflicts surrounding large carnivores in the Ruaha landscape (Tanzania) I am now working on the ERC-funded ConHuB project which aims to improve our understanding of what motivates people to break rules – which are often imposed on local communities by external actors. While poverty is widely assumed to be a major driver of rule breaking behaviour, we will also be investigating the role of other variables drawn from a range of disciplines, including criminology and, social and cognitive psychology.