Meet my amazing field team
I have the best field team I could have asked for, and so I want to highlight them, where they come from, and where they’re going after our time together.
Alison Govaerts hails from Belgium, where she completed both her Bachelor (Free University of Brussels) and Masters (University of Antwerp) degrees in Biology. For her Masters, she studied the ecotoxicology of a river system in South Africa (publication coming soon!). After her graduate studies, she worked as a research assistant on a carnivore project in a remote region of Mozambique, hoping to gain more experience with African mammals. She joined my project as her first long-term field project and has been absolutely killing it in the field and is the master of field-labwork! She plans to apply for a PhD as soon as we wrap up in May, where she hopes to focus on applied ecology and conservation of African carnivores.
Jess Gunson joins us from USA. She completed her Bachelors in Biology at the University of Florida, where she worked on an independent research project on acacia ant-plants in Kenya. After graduation, she joined the Comparative Analysis of Baboon Sociality project in Laikipia, Kenya where she was a research assistant and project manager to the Uaso Ngiro Baboon Project. Her insight and experience with olive baboons has been invaluable in our work in understanding the similarities and differences among Kinda and other baboons. She leaves us in May to join the Mara Hyena Project back in Kenya. She hopes to begin a US-based PhD in Fall 2019 studying the behavioral ecology of primates or hyenas. You can follow her hilarious fieldwork tweets @GunsonWildlife
Simon Siame is our Zambian research scout. Before this position, Simon was working as a community resource board scout within the park, and he was selected by the park to join our team and gain a promotion to a full Kasanka National Park scout based on his motivation and excellent work ethic. Despite never having worked in a research position before, Simon learned all of the baboon IDs within weeks and is our resident poop collector. He also helps the Kasanka Baboon Project by taking GPS points throughout the field day. Beyond his work in the park, Simon and I work together in his community at a local school where he teaches after-school conservation and nature lessons. He will continue working with the Kasanka Baboon Project once the fieldwork portion of my project is complete.
