Curriculum vitae

Education and employment

I have 2 daughters, took a total of 12 months of maternity leave in 2012, 2013 and 2014 and cared for my terminally ill mother for 12 months across 2017 and 2018.

Grants & prizes (total €1.113.590)

• Workshop grant with Dr. Miriam Liedvogel & Dr. Britta Meyer, Max Planck Society, 2018 (€20.000)

• Norddeutscher Wissenschaftspreis with Dr. Miriam Liedvogel & Dr. Britta Meyer, 2018 (€50.000)

• Project grant with the city of Wilhelmshaven, NBank, 2018 (€685.975)

• Project grant, German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU), 2016 (€125.000)

• Project grant with Dr. Miriam Liedvogel, Max Planck Society, 2016 (€70.000)

• Rubicon postdoctoral fellowship, Dutch Science Foundation (NWO), 2011 (€147.700)

• Small Ecological Project Grant, British Ecological Society, 2009 (£ 1.880)

• Ecological research Grants, Schure-Beijerinck-Popping fund, 2006 & 2009 (€7.000 & €2.805)

• Travel Grant, Dutch Science Foundation (NWO), 2006 (€3.230)

In addition, I have contributed to grants obtained by Bin-Yan Hsu (Academy of Finland, 2020), Maria Moiron (Marie Curie, 2018) and Nathalie Kürten (German Federal Environmental Foundation, 2018) to work in my group.

Selection of seminars and conference contributions

• ‘Patterns of, and processes underlying, transgenerational age effects in a long-lived seabird’, Workshop Causes and consequences of inclusive inheritance, Germany, 2019 (plenary) & Institute of Ecology, National University of Mexico, Mexico, 2019 (invited seminar)

• ‘Understanding senescence and trans-generational parental age effects in a long-lived seabird’, Congress of the European Society of Evolutionary Biology, Finland, 2019 (invited plenary)

• ‘Visdieven op de voet gevolgd’, Congress of the Dutch Ornithological Union (NOU), Netherlands, 2019 (invited plenary)

• ‘Age-specific fitness consequences of developmental conditions in a long-lived seabird’, 151st Meeting of the German Ornithological Society, Germany, 2018 (oral)

• ‘Disposable soma or disposable offspring? Partitioning fitness consequences of developmental conditions over age in a long-lived seabird’, 5th Meeting of the Evolutionary Demography Society, France, 2018 (invited plenary)

• ‘Does crime pay? Kleptoparasitic common terns raise offspring with longer telomeres at the expense of their own’, Workshop on ‘Diversity in telomere dynamics’, UK, 2017 (oral)

• ‘Partitioning fitness consequences of developmental conditions over age: a method and case study with sibling rank in a long-lived seabird’, Annual Meeting of the German Zoological Society, Germany, 2016 (oral)

• ‘Parental age and offspring performance: patterns and processes of trans-generational effects in birds’, (i) Evolutionary Ecology group, University of Oldenburg, Germany, 2015, (ii) Department of Animal Behaviour, Bielefeld University, (iii) Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology Plön, Germany, (iv) Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zürich, 2016 (invited seminars)

• ‘Ecological causes of multi-level covariance between size and first-year survival in a wild bird population’, (i) Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, UK, 2013, (ii) Department of Behavioural Biology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, 2014 (invited seminars)

• ‘Great tits growing old: patterns and processes of ageing in a wild bird population’, Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, UK, 2011 (invited seminar)

• ‘Individual variation in the rate of senescence: associations with natal conditions and early life reproduction’, European Ornithological Conference, Latvia, 2011 (invited symposium talk)

• ‘Basal metabolic rate and the rate of senescence in the great tit Parus major’, Congress of the International Society for Behavioural Ecology, Australia, 2010 (oral)

• ‘Similar patterns of age-specific reproduction in an island and mainland population of great tits, Parus major’, Hole-breeding Passerines Meeting, UK, 2010 (oral)

• ‘Great tits growing old: reproductive senescence in a wild bird population’, Department of Animal Ecology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, 2009 (invited seminar)

• ‘Individual differences and senescence in wild bird populations’, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, UK, 2009 (invited seminar with Ben Sheldon)

• ‘Individual variation in the rate of senescence: associations with natal conditions and early life reproduction’, EGI Ornithology Conference, UK, 2009 (oral)

• ‘Great tits growing old: senescence and selective disappearance along a breeding cycle’, (i) EGI Ornithology Conference, UK, 2008, (ii) Annual meeting of the Netherlands Society for Behavioural Biology, The Netherlands, 2008 (oral)

• ‘Individual patterns in reproductive senescence in great tits’, Congress of the European Society of Evolutionary Biology, Sweden, 2007 (poster)

• ‘Individual consistency and phenotypic flexibility in basal metabolic rate in great tits’, Hole-breeding Passerines Meeting, Poland, 2007 (oral)

• ‘Metabolic correlates of exploratory behaviour in great tits’, Congress of the International Society for Behavioural Ecology, France, 2006 (oral)

Workshops

• ‘Causes and consequences of inclusive inheritance’, Germany, 2019 (organiser)

• ‘Expertise in management and supervision’, Germany, 2018

• ‘Diversity in telomere dynamics’, UK, 2017

• ‘Heterogeneity in individual life-history trajectories over age’, Norway, 2015

• ‘Theoretical models of transgenerational effects and developmental plasticity’, UK, 2012

• ‘Wild animal model biannual meeting’, France, 2011

• ‘Bayesian population analysis using WinBUGS’, Switzerland, 2011

• ‘Longitudinal studies of senescence’, The Netherlands, 2009 (organiser)

• ‘Modelling individual histories with state uncertainty’, France, 2008

• ‘Avian personality’, The Netherlands, 2007

• ‘Individual variation in basal metabolic rate’, The Netherlands, 2007

• ‘Senescence in wild populations’, UK, 2006

Teaching experience

Since 2014, I annually (i) give lectures on life-history evolution (6 hours), (ii) supervise student seminars on current themes in ornithology (2 hours), (iii) run a practical on the ecology of colonial seabirds (2 weeks), and (iv) co-organise scientific seminars (5-10) for the University of Oldenburg. For the University of Groningen, I run a practical on animal ecology research (6 weeks). In addition, I have (co-)supervised, and am supervising, the following students:

• Nathalie Kürten, PhD student Oldenburg, 2018-2021

• Kristin Piening, Bsc student Oldenburg, 2019

• Andrea Parisi, Msc student Middlesex University London, 2019

• Fairlie Kirkpatrick Baird, Msc student Imperial College London, 2019

• Jasmine Somerville, Msc student Imperial College London, 2019 (→ PhD @ University of Exeter)

• Niamh Bothwell, Msc student Imperial College London, 2019

• Sina Boettcher, Bsc student Oldenburg, 2018

• Vanessa Schreiber, MSc student Rostock, 2018 (→ PhD @ Stockholm University)

• Mark Hase, MSc student Rostock, 2018 (→ PhD @ University of Siegen)

• Hanna Kurz, BSc student Vechta, 2018

• Finnja Mattig, Jugendforscht, competed in 2018 (→ 3^rd place)

• Björn Köhler, BSc student Oldenburg, 2018

• Marie Bourgeois, MSc student Lyon, 2017

• Nathalie Kürten, MSc student Oldenburg, 2017 (→ PhD @ IAR)

• Anika Neu, MSc student Berlin, 2016 (→ PhD @ University of Greifswald)

• Alessio Paoletti, MSc student Groningen, 2016

• Svenja Wahlen, MSc student Oldenburg, 2016

• Matthias Herold, MSc student Oldenburg, 2016

• Amke Loots, MSc student Oldenburg, 2016

• Mara Ruiz Minano, MSc student Groningen, 2015 (→ PhD @ University of Tasmania)

• Marie Bourgeois, BSc student Montpellier, 2015

• He Zhang, PhD student Oldenburg, 2013-2014 (→ Statistician @ University of Copenhagen)

• Sina Lange, BSc student Oldenburg, 2014

Academic service

I am on the editorial boards of Journal of Animal Ecology and Journal of Ornithology, a member of the advisory board of the German Ornithological Society and a member of the British Ecological Society, German Ornithological Society and Society for the Study of Evolution. I served as a Council member of the Waterbird Society in the period 2016-2018. I have examined theses (2) and reviewed papers for the American Naturalist (3), Animal Behaviour (1), Ardea (1), the Auk (1), Current Biology (1), Ecology (2), Ecology Letters (3), Evolution (4), Evolutionary Ecology (1), Functional Ecology (2), Ibis (2), Journal of Animal Ecology (12), Journal of Ornithology (14), Methods in Ecology and Evolution (1), Oecologia (2), Oikos (2), PLoS ONE (1), Proceedings of the Royal Society B (11) and Seabirds (1). I have also reviewed grants for the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (2) and Natural Environment Research Council (1), the Polish National Science Centre (1) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (1).

Other relevant experience

I hold licences for animal experimentation in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK and a ringing permit in Germany. I act as an Animal Welfare Officer within the Institute of Avian Research. My statistical skills include mixed models, mark-recapture survival analyses and quantitative genetic modelling using MLwiN, E-surge and R. I have organised/organise seminars for the Edward Grey Institute and Institute of Avian Research, and have co-organised a symposium on ‘Longitudinal studies of senescence’ for the Benelux Congress of Zoology (2009), a Waterbird Society Meeting (2013) and a workshop on 'Causes and consequences of inclusive inheritance' (2019).

Outreach

I strongly believe that scientists (and biologists in particular) should share their fascination for, and developing insights in, the natural world with a wide audience. With my team members, I therefore provide public tours (e.g. Meereswelten 2016) and give public talks (e.g. Science Pub, Science Slam). I am also collaborating with the city of Wilhelmshaven to establish a museum at our field site, maintain an academic Twitter account (@CommonTerns), participate in interviews for radio items and newspaper articles, and contribute to television programmes (BBC’s The One Show, NDR's ‘Unser Norden’, ARTE’s ‘Wild medicine’, Friesischer Rundfunk’s daily news). Since 2019, I am a deputy chairman of the Nordwestdeutschen Universitätsgesellschaft, co-organising outreach events.