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Karen Mustin

Visiting Lecturer

Federal University of Pelotas

Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

About

Karen is passionate about the natural world. A lifelong biophile, her career in conservation began with the failure to get good enough A-level grades to be a vet, and since then she hasn’t looked back. Between January 2017 and January 2018, Karen was a Marie Curie Research Fellow in the Conservation Conflicts Research Group, studying the links between governance, equity and biodiversity outcomes in protected areas. She is now a Visiting Lecturer in the Post-Graduate Programme in Animal Biology at the Federal University of Pelotas, in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Karen maintains strong links to the Conservation Conflicts Research Group and will continue to work on her projects in collaboration with other team members.

 

Karen began her career studying climate change impacts on populations using theoretical models and empirical studies of birds at the University of Aberdeen. She then spent time working at the James Hutton Institute researching the economic and biodiversity impacts of hunting in the Scottish Highlands. In January 2011, 4 days after catastrophic flooding hit the area, Karen moved to Brisbane, Australia to take up a post-doc at the University of Queensland. Australia is an inspiring place to be a conservation scientist. The landscapes are vast and varied and the biodiversity mind-boggling for a girl from a small-town in the Midlands. While there, Karen contributed to projects on connectivity restoration in fragmented habitats, monitoring of birds, climate change and nomadic birds in arid Australia and conservation of migratory shorebirds. She was then lucky enough to get a post-doc position in the state of Amapá, in the far north of Brazil, where she spent two years working on varied projects, often relating to sustainable use of non-timber forest products. While there she fell head over heels in love with the region, Brazil, Brazilians (one in particular!) and Latin America in general.

Projects

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