Philippa BRAKES

Philippa Brakes is a behavioural ecologist and marine mammal biologist. Her research on social learning and culture in cetaceans and other non-humans, uses a combination of theoretical and empirical techniques to unravel how these processes influence conservation and welfare outcomes for wildlife. She has worked with a wide range of vertebrate species and is also interested in how perceptions of wildlife vary across human cultures, particularly across the Pacific Islands region, as well as how adaptive and maladaptive information is transmitted within and between human and non-human cultures. She is currently a Research Fellow with Whale and Dolphin Conservation, Honorary Lecturer at the University of Exeter, a member of the IOC-UNESCO Project on Ocean Communication Messaging and Messengers  and a member of the Cetacean Ecology Research Group at Massey University in New Zealand. Since 2014, she has been leading work on animal culture and conservation through the UNEP Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals, where she is the Chair of the Expert Group on Animal Culture and Social Complexity, and is co-Chair for the newly formed IUCN CEESP-SSC Conservation of Animal Cultures Task Force.