Katarzyna (Kasia) Mikołajczak

Kasia is an interdisciplinary conservation scientist. She is a postdoctoral Research Officer (Conservation and Behaviour) at Grantham Research Institute, working in the Behaviour and Attitudes theme of the forestLAB project.

Kasia’s interests lie at the nexus between social and ecological sciences, with the aim of improving biodiversity conservation to benefit both people and nature. In her PhD at Lancaster University, she studied psychological connection with nature, ecological knowledge, and values among farmers in the Brazilian Amazon, questioning entrenched beliefs about the origin and importance of intrinsic caring for nature as a motivation for conserving biodiversity. More recently, she researched farmers’ perceptions of the impacts and adequacy of rewilding as a conservation strategy for ecosystem recovery in England. She has experience of social and ecological fieldwork in Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. She also serves as a vice-chair of the Conservation Ecology Special Interest Group at the British Ecological Society. She holds a BSc in zoology from the University of Edinburgh, and an MSc in interdisciplinary conservation science from the University of Oxford.

Research interests

• Environmental Psychology
• Nature connection
• Local ecological knowledge
• Social-ecological systems
• Conservation behaviours
• Conservation and human wellbeing
• Conservation of tropical environments