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Katherine Willis, Baroness Willis of Summertown

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The Right Honourable
The Baroness Willis of Summertown
CBE FGS
Official portrait, 2024
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
Incumbent
Assumed office
8 July 2022
Life peerage
Personal details
Born
Katherine Jane Willis

(1964-01-16) 16 January 1964 (age 60)
London, England
Political partyCrossbench
Spouse
​
(m. 1992)​
Children3
Alma mater
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
ThesisLate Quaternary vegetational history of Epirus, northwest Greece (1990)

Katherine Jane Willis, Baroness Willis of Summertown, CBE, FGS[2] (born 16 January 1964)[3] is a British biologist, academic and life peer, who studies the relationship between long-term ecosystem dynamics and environmental change. She is Professor of Biodiversity in the Department of Biology and Pro-Vice-Chancellor [4] at the University of Oxford,[5] and an adjunct professor in biology at the University of Bergen. In 2018 she was elected Principal of St Edmund Hall, and took up the position from 1 October.[6] She held the Tasso Leventis Chair of Biodiversity at Oxford and was founding Director, now Associate Director, of the Biodiversity Institute Oxford.[7][8] Willis was Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 2013 to 2018.[9] Her nomination by the House of Lords Appointments Commission as a crossbench life peer was announced on 17 May 2022.

Early life and education

[edit]

Katherine Jane Willis was born on 16 January 1964 in London to Edward George Willis and Winifred Ellen Willis (née Dymond).[3] She gained an undergraduate degree in geography and environmental science from the University of Southampton, and a PhD in plant sciences from the University of Cambridge for research on the vegetational history of the late Quaternary period in Epirus, northwest Greece.[10]

Career and research

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At the University of Cambridge, Willis held a postdoctoral research fellowship at Selwyn College, a Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Plant Sciences, and a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) in the Godwin Institute for Quaternary Research. In 1999, she moved to a lectureship in the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, where she established the Oxford Long-term Ecology Laboratory in 2002. Willis was made a professor of long-term ecology in 2008,[11] and in October 2010 became the first Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity and director of the James Martin Biodiversity Institute in Zoology.[citation needed] She was also an adjunct professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Bergen, Norway.[citation needed] She is a trustee of WWF-UK,[12] a panel member on the advisory board for the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, a trustee of the Percy Sladen Memorial Trust, an international member on the Swedish Research Council's FORMAS evaluation panel, and a college member of the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).[citation needed] From 2012 to 2013 she held the elected position of director-at-large of the International Biogeography Society.[13] In 2013, she was appointed Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew,[9] on a 5-year secondment from the University of Oxford.[14] On 1 October 2018, Willis succeeded Keith Gull as Principal of St Edmund Hall, Oxford.[15]

Willis's research[16] focuses on reconstructing long term responses of ecosystems to environmental change, including climate change, human impact and sea level rise. She argues that understanding long-term records of ecosystem change is essential for a proper understanding of future ecosystem responses. Many scientific studies are limited to short-term datasets that rarely span more than 40 to 50 years, although many larger organisms, including trees and large mammals, have an average generation time which exceeds this timescale. Short-term records therefore are unable to reconstruct natural variability over time, or the rates of migration as a result of environmental change. She also argues that a short-term approach gives a static view of ecosystems, and leads to the conceptual formation of an unrealistic "norm" which must be maintained or restored and protected. Her research group in the Oxford Long-term Ecology laboratory therefore attempts to reconstruct ecosystem responses to environmental change on timescales ranging from tens to millions of years, and the applications of long-term records in biodiversity conservation. She has argued that the impacts of contemporary climate change on plant biota is uncertain and potentially not as severe as researchers envision,[17] and challenged assumptions made in the interpretation of spatially constrained temperature records.[18] Kew's State of the World's Plants report (2016) pinpoints land cover change as the major threat to global biodiversity, not climate change.[19]

Willis's research has been published in Nature,[20] Science,[21][22][23][24][25] Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B,[26] Biological Conservation.[27] and Quaternary Science Reviews.[28] With Jennifer McElwain[29] she co-authored the textbook The Evolution of Plants.[30] Her research has been funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).[31]

House of Lords

[edit]

She was nominated as a life peer by the House of Lords Appointments Commission on 17 May 2022.[32] She was created Baroness Willis of Summertown on 8 July 2022.[33] Hers was the last peerage created by Elizabeth II. She made her maiden speech on 8 September 2022 during a debate on Climate Change and Biodiversity: Food Security.[34] She sits as a non-party-political crossbench peer.[35]

Personal life

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Willis married Andrew Gant, a composer and Liberal Democrat politician,[36] in 1992. They have two sons and a daughter.[3]

Awards and honours

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References

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  1. ^ "Lyell Fund". The Geological Society. Retrieved 30 July 2021.
  2. ^ "Oxford academics recognised in Queen's Birthday Honours". University of Oxford. 8 June 2018. Retrieved 23 June 2021.
  3. ^ a b c "Willis, Prof. Katherine Jane". Who's Who. A & C Black. 2021. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U274125. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. ^ "University Officers | University of Oxford".
  5. ^ "Professor Baroness Kathy Willis, CBE".
  6. ^ "Professor Kathy Willis elected new Principal of St Edmund Hall". University of Oxford Department of Zoology.
  7. ^ "Kathy Willis Profile at Biodiversity Institute". Archived from the original on 5 May 2015.
  8. ^ Katherine Willis, Baroness Willis of Summertown's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  9. ^ a b "Professor Kathy Willis, Director of Science". Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Archived from the original on 17 July 2014.
  10. ^ Willis, Katherine Jane (1989). Late Quaternary vegetational history of Epirus, northwest Greece. lib.cam.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. OCLC 556632964. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.335183.
  11. ^ "Kathy Willis Oxford Long Term Ecology". University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 19 May 2015.
  12. ^ "WWF-UK Trustees Biographies 2011" (PDF). wwf.org.uk.
  13. ^ "International Biogeography Society, Past Officers". biogeography.org. Archived from the original on 1 February 2014. Retrieved 23 January 2014.
  14. ^ Press Release, Kew Gardens Archived 3 February 2014 at the Wayback Machine
  15. ^ "St Edmund Hall elects new Principal". St Edmund Hall.
  16. ^ "Data". researchgate.net.
  17. ^ University of Oxford. "Can Biodiversity Persist in the Face of Climate Change?." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 14 December 2009. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091106111214.htm.
  18. ^ Seddon, Alistair W.R.; Long, P. R.; Willis, K. (2014). "Spatiotemporal patterns of warming". Nature Climate Change. 4 (10): 845–846. Bibcode:2014NatCC...4..845M. doi:10.1038/nclimate2372.
  19. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 September 2016. Retrieved 27 July 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  20. ^ Willis, K. J.; Kleczkowski, A.; Crowhurst, S. J. (1999). "124,000-year periodicity in terrestrial vegetation change during the late Pliocene epoch". Nature. 397 (6721): 685–688. Bibcode:1999Natur.397..685W. doi:10.1038/17783. S2CID 4372433.
  21. ^ Willis, K. J.; Bhagwat, S. A. (2009). "Ecology. Biodiversity and climate change". Science. 326 (5954): 806–7. doi:10.1126/science.1178838. PMID 19892969. S2CID 10981263.
  22. ^ Van Leeuwen, J. F. N.; Froyd, C. A.; Van Der Knaap, W. O.; Coffey, E. E.; Tye, A.; Willis, K. J. (2008). "Fossil Pollen as a Guide to Conservation in the Galapagos". Science. 322 (5905): 1206. Bibcode:2008Sci...322.1206V. doi:10.1126/science.1163454. PMID 19023075. S2CID 46449794.
  23. ^ Willis, K. J. (1999). "The Role of Sub-Milankovitch Climatic Forcing in the Initiation of the Northern Hemisphere Glaciation". Science. 285 (5427): 568–571. doi:10.1126/science.285.5427.568. PMID 10417383.
  24. ^ Willis, K. J.; Birks, H. J. B. (2006). "What is Natural? The Need for a Long-Term Perspective in Biodiversity Conservation". Science. 314 (5803): 1261–1265. Bibcode:2006Sci...314.1261W. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.549.5178. doi:10.1126/science.1122667. PMID 17124315. S2CID 9632680.
  25. ^ Willis, K. J. (2002). "Ecology: Enhanced: Species Diversity--Scale Matters". Science. 295 (5558): 1245–1248. doi:10.1126/science.1067335. PMID 11847328. S2CID 5344099.
  26. ^ Willis, K. J.; Bennett, K. D.; Burrough, S. L.; Macias-Fauria, M.; Tovar, C. (2013). "Determining the response of African biota to climate change: Using the past to model the future". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 368 (1625): 20120491. doi:10.1098/rstb.2012.0491. PMC 3720034. PMID 23878343.
  27. ^ Willis, K. J.; Jeffers, E. S.; Tovar, C.; Long, P. R.; Caithness, N.; Smit, M. G. D.; Hagemann, R.; Collin-Hansen, C.; Weissenberger, J. (2012). "Determining the ecological value of landscapes beyond protected areas". Biological Conservation. 147 (1): 3–12. Bibcode:2012BCons.147....3W. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2011.11.001.
  28. ^ Froyd, C. A.; Willis, K. J. (2008). "Emerging issues in biodiversity & conservation management: The need for a palaeoecological perspective". Quaternary Science Reviews. 27 (17–18): 1723–1732. Bibcode:2008QSRv...27.1723F. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2008.06.006.
  29. ^ Katherine Willis, Baroness Willis of Summertown publications indexed by Google Scholar
  30. ^ Willis, K.J. and McElwain, J.C. 2002. The Evolution of Plants. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 380 pp. ISBN 9780199292233
  31. ^ "UK Government Research Grants awarded to Kathy Willis". Research Councils UK. Archived from the original on 19 May 2015.
  32. ^ "Two new non-party-political peers – House of Lords Appointments Commission" (PDF). House of Lords Appointments Commission. 17 May 2022. Retrieved 18 September 2022.
  33. ^ "No. 63756". The London Gazette. 12 July 2022. p. 13218.
  34. ^ Baroness Willis of Summertown (8 September 2022). "Climate Change and Biodiversity: Food Security". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Vol. 824. United Kingdom: House of Lords. col. 342–345.
  35. ^ "Baroness Willis of Summertown: Parliamentary career". MPs and Lords. UK Parliament. Retrieved 18 September 2022.
  36. ^ "Gant, Andrew John". Who's Who. A & C Black. 2019. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U43512. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  37. ^ "Award winners since 1831, Lyell Fund". The Geological Society.
  38. ^ "Professor Katherine Willis". royalsociety.org.
  39. ^ "Gruppe 5: Biologi" (in Norwegian). Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Archived from the original on 10 April 2016. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
  40. ^ "Eight new honorary doctorates at UiB". University of Bergen. 3 May 2017. Retrieved 30 July 2021.
  41. ^ "Katherine WILLIS". www.thegazette.co.uk.
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