Conservation and human rights: an introduction. Summary and conclusions.

Lucy Radford
Helen Newing
Stephanie Brittain
1 minute read

Author

Lucy Radford | Senior Research Facilitator
I have always been fascinated by animals, and this led me to pursue a career in conservation after finishing my undergraduate studies in Biological Anthropology. While volunteering with various organisations as I researched different Masters degrees, I quickly realised that the area of conservation that fascinated me most was the human dimension of conservation interventions, particularly with reference to non-human primates.

Having completed a Masters in Primate Conservation, I went on to work for several years with a conservation NGO focused on the social dimensions of Barbary macaque conservation in Morocco, and then accepted a communications role at a Sumatran orangutan charity.

I am delighted to be a part of ICCS, to be immersed in the world of interdisciplinary conservation research, and to be able to support the exciting and vital work carried out by the group.

Author

Helen Newing | Research Fellow
My main research interests are in three broad areas: the relationship between conservation and human rights, voluntary standards for tropical commodity production, and applied interdisciplinary methodologies and approaches in conservation research. My field research has been in tropical forests, mainly in Amazonian Peru and in Cote d’Ivoire in West Africa. I am particularly passionate about moving towards rights-based approaches to conservation, and about advancing social science expertise amongst conservationists.
I have a mixed disciplinary background, with a BSc in zoology and psychology from the University of Reading and a PhD in antelope ecology from the University of Stirling. After my PhD I worked for five years in the NGO sector, including with WWF (on project implementation) and Oxfam (on global environmental policy) and then joined the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology at the University of Kent as a lecturer in conservation social science. I stayed there for 16 years. During that time my research was principally on collaborative wildlife management, the role of traditional ecological knowledge, and methods and research paradigms in the emerging discipline of conservation social science. I also introduced and directed an interdisciplinary Masters programme in conservation and rural development. Based on many years of teaching methods in mixed postgraduate classes the brought together students from conservation and from anthropology, I published a textbook on conservation social science methods and approaches, which remains the standard text in this field.
After leaving Kent I returned to the NGO sector, working as a freelance consultant. I joined ICCS in 2018 and since then I have focused on two areas: conservation and human rights, and voluntary standards for socially responsible production of tropical agricultural commodities (especially palm oil). I also remain passionate about building social science skills in the conservation sector, especially on qualitative and participatory methods and approaches.

Author

Stephanie Brittain | Research Fellow
My career has spanned the third sector, advocacy and policy and academic sectors, from establishing an environmental and skills-based training programme for vulnerable 16-25-year olds in a grass-roots NGO in London; to researching and advocating for sustainable and equitable agricultural practices across sub-Saharan Africa; to exploring the impacts of protected area creation on rural livelihoods in Cambodia; to drawing on local ecological knowledge to monitor species populations and their threats in Cameroon; and, most recently, to co-designing locally-managed natural resource monitoring programmes with indigenous peoples and local communities in Kenya and Vietnam.

I’ve long been fascinated by the inextricable link between people and nature, and believed that the voices and knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities should play a central role in developing conservation policy and practice. I enjoy researching and developing robust, cost-effective and ethical approaches to monitoring biodiversity in challenging environments, and for engaging with indigenous peoples and local communities. I love drawing on interdisciplinary methods to research socio-ecological systems, and translating research into outputs that inform conservation practice and policy.