I am a DPhil student in the aquatic navigation group.

Research Interests

I am interested in the neurobiological and cognitive processes involved in learning and memory, principally in the context of navigation. The way in which animals encode space in order to navigate their environment is dependent on both the sensory modalities available to them and the physical nature of the environment in which they reside. In particular, I am interested in animals inhabiting aquatic environments. Unlike terrestrial animals, aerial and aquatic animals are not limited to travelling over a two-dimensional surface; they are required to navigate in three dimensions. As a result, they must encode information about both the horizontal and vertical axes in order to pinpoint their location relative to a goal. I aim to determine how animals are able to achieve this through lab-based navigational decision- making experiments using fish as a model system.    

Education

I completed a BSc in Neuroscience at the University of Nottingham and later an MSc in Evolutionary and Behavioural Ecology at Exeter. Immediately prior to coming to Oxford I spent a year conducting research on the effect of 24-hour enrichment on captive cathemeral lemurs at Bristol Zoological Gardens with support from UFAW and Bristol Conservation and Science Foundation.