Anna Woodhead is a postdoctoral researcher, looking at change in the context of coastal communities and small-scale fisheries

Her current work is funded through EASMO, an EU BiodivERsA funded project looking at the redistribution of reef fish under climate change and the implications this has for society.

Specifically, Woodhead will be investigating how coastal communities perceive change and their willingness and ability to adapt to current and future change in coastal fisheries.

Her PhD thesis (2021) explored how coral reef ecosystem services in the Seychelles are responding to climate change. Changing ecosystem services can be difficult to conceptualise as change can originate at different points in environment-ecosystem service-wellbeing relationships. To address this, she engaged with trait-based approaches, perceptions of change, and wellbeing centred understandings of change.

Her PhD is from Lancaster University, in partnership with SRC, Bangor University and the Seychelles Fishing Authority.

Prior to the PhD, she worked as a Marine Policy Officer for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, acting as fisheries and marine protected area lead for a consortium of NGOs.

She was a research assistant at the University of Exeter, working on the health and wellbeing of Cornish fishing communities and has an MSc in Conservation and Biodiversity (University of Exeter, 2014) and a BSc. in Ecology, Evolution and Behaviour (Durham University, 2013).

She came to the SRC after a postdoc at the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity (University of York) where she worked to understand how ecosystem services are co-produced between people and the environment.

Current funding

Woodhead’s current research is funded through the 2019-2020 BiodivERsA joint call for research proposals, under the BiodivClim ERA-Net COFUND programme.

Key publications

1. Woodhead AJ, Graham NAJ, Robinson JPW, Norström AV, Bodin N, Stephanie M, Balett M-C, & Hicks CC (2021). Fishers perceptions of ecosystem service change on climate-disturbed coral reefs. People and Nature, 3: 639–657.

2. Dajka JC, Woodhead AJ, Norström AV, Graham NAJ, Riechers M & Nyström M (2020). Red and green loops help uncover missing feedbacks in a coral reef social–ecological system. People and Nature, 2: 608–618

3. Woodhead AJ, Hicks CC, Norström AV, Williams GJ & Graham NAJ (2019). Coral reef ecosystem services in the Anthropocene. Functional Ecology, 33 (6): 1023-1034

4. Woodhead AJ, Abernethy KE, Szaboova L & Turner RA (2018). Health in fishing communities: A global perspective. Fish and Fisheries, 19 (5): 839-852

5. Silk MJ, Crowley SL, Woodhead AJ & Nuno A (2017). Considering connections between Hollywood and biodiversity conservation. Conservation Biology, 32 (3), 597–606