AXA Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge

Dr Kelvin Peh is the AXA Post-doctoral Fellow in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge. His research interests range from forest ecology to urban wildlife in respect to diversity and distribution. He is interested in all areas of wildlife-human conflicts and wildlife ecology in human-dominated landscapes, and in the application of his research results to the conservation/management of biological resources.

Currently, Dr Peh is working on the ecosystem service assessment project to develop and test tools for rapidly assessing the net impact of site-based conservation on the provision of ecosystem services. This project runs in collaboration with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, BirdLife International, Anglia Ruskin University and UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre.

Kelvin proposes to continue developing the theme of diversity-functioning relationship in the tropics. He plans to initiate new projects that involved large spatial data sets, in Southeast Asia and central Africa where issues such as species habitat loss and environmental degradation are becoming very pressing. His future research plans also include initiating a project to investigate the environmental impact of China’s involvement in Africa. The purpose of this project is to investigate not the political or developmental implications of China’s policies, but their ecological and social-economic consequences on Africa.