Bridget Emmett, CREAF International Scientific Committee member, new President of the British Ecological Society

Bridget Emmett, researcher at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH, UK) and member of CREAF's International Scientific Committee, has been confirmed as President of the British Ecological Society (BES) from January 2023. More than 1,000 members of the world's oldest ecological society, founded in 1913 with the aim of a reality in which nature and people thrive, took part in the vote. The new president's aim is "to make the British Ecological Society more inclusive and relevant to its members, to foster a stronger community and to raise the profile of ecological science in the face of growing social and environmental challenges". Emmett takes over from Yadvinder Malhi, Professor at Oxford University.

The new president aims to make the British Ecological Society more inclusive, foster a stronger community and raise the profile of ecological science in the face of growing social and environmental challenges.

Bridget Emmett has been a Fellow of the British Ecological Society since she gained her PhD. She explains she joined the Society "to work togethe with other students beyond my own lab and to be inspired by some of the best ecologists working today". She is head of the soils and land use science area at the UKCEH, where she has been a member of the senior management team since 2001 and coordinates the work of over 80 researchers, as well as around 40 PhD students.

Her most recent research focuses on the impacts of air pollution, climate change and land management, combining long-term experiments, national monitoring and modelling. "Most of my current projects involve leading large, multi-partner programmes to build consensus on the current state of our knowledge and support policy development," she says.

Inspiring CREAF's roadmap

As a member of CREAF's International Scientific Committee, Bridget Emmett helps define the center's research strategy and to evaluate its results periodically.

As a member of CREAF's International Scientific Committee, Bridget Emmett helps to define the centre's research strategy and regularly evaluates its results. She also advises the management team to ensure the excellence of the research it promotes. This is a joint task in collaboration with the other members of the Committee: Ivan Janssens, researcher at the Research Group of Plant and Vegetation Ecology, Antwerp University (Belgium); Ophélie Ronce, researcher at the Institut des Sciences de la Evolution de Montpellier (France); Rob Jackson, researcher at the Nicholas School of the Environment (USA), director of the University Centre for Plant and Vegetation Ecology (France) director of the University's Global Change Centre and Duke's Stable Isotope Mass Spectrometry Laboratory; John Grace emeritus professorat the University of Edinburgh (Scotland) and director of the Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Science at the same university; and Pep Canadell, researcher at the CSIRO (Australia) and executive director of the Global Carbon Project.

In the same vote in which Emmett was elected president of the BES, the rest of the representatives of the Board of Trustees, who will steer the course of the British Ecological Society in the coming years, were chosen. They are Tim Coulson of Oxford University, new vice-president and chair of the membership committee; Markus Eichhorn of University College Cork (Ireland), new honorary treasurer of the Society; Rob Freckleton of Sheffield University, new chair of the publications committee; Thorunn Helgason of Edinburgh University, new board member; and Rick Stafford of Bournemouth University, confirmed for a second term as chair of the policy committee.