All Staff Members | Dr Alex Playford

Biography

Alex studied Zoology at Sheffield University where she became particularly interested in the study of Animal Behaviour. She then made the move to Scotland undertaking a PhD in song learning in birds with Prof PJB Slater. This was followed by further postdoctoral research in St Andrews and at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Alex then focused on teaching and has lectured at the University of Cumbria for a number of years, initially for the Animal Conservation department and now for the Wildlife and Media course at Brampton Row.

Over the last few years Alex has become interested in the conservation of native pollinators and recently co-organised the Big Buzz conference at the University of Cumbria for Cumbria Wildlife Trust.

Qualifications and memberships

1998-1999 Newcastle University PGCE

1989-1994 St Andrews University PhD

1985-1988 Sheffield University BSc Hons Zoology

Academic and research interests

Pollinator ecology and conservation

Wildlife Recording

Attitudes to animals

Song development in birds

Publications

Eweda, E.,Hargraves, B., Hewitt, C., Bennet-Margrave, A., Clarke, R., Ney, P., Playford, A., Rankin, C., Russell, V., & Postlethwaite, C (2022) Cumbria Bumblebee Atlas. An Atlas and Conservation Guide (Online resource) Cumbria Biodiversity Data Centre (CBDC) https://www.cbdc.org.uk/about-us/projects/bumblebee_atlas/

For early career (pre-2002 ) animal behaviour research see

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0021-4343