Our Team
FOR-ES is made up of a multidisciplinary team, led by Trinity College Dublin in collaboration with University College Dublin & Coillte, with the backing of Ireland's Department of Agriculture, Food & the Marine.
Prof Jane Stout
VP for Biodiversity & Climate Action, Provost's Office & Professor in Botany, Trinity College Dublin
Jane is an internationally renowned expert on pollinator and pollination ecology, and a prominent voice for biodiversity and its value. Her research seeks to understand how land management practices, including agriculture and urbanisation, affect ecological processes and the benefits of nature for humans. Jane works across disciplines, and with a broad range of stakeholders in public and private organisations to improve environmental policy and practice. She leads a large team of researchers in the Plant-Animal Interactions Research group in Botany, in the School of Natural Sciences in Trinity. She is co-founder & former Chair of the Board of Natural Capital Ireland, and co-founder & deputy Chair of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan
Contact: jane.stout@tcd.ie
Prof Mary Kelly-Quinn
Associate Professor,
University College Dublin
Mary’s primary research activities focus on the assessment of land-use and other anthropogenic
activities on the hydrochemical and ecological quality of surface waters. She has completed studies on the aquatic habitats of peatlands, agricultural, upland, urban and forested landscapes as well as canals and constructed wetlands. Her research group has also maintained a strength in fisheries studies, working in close collaboration with Inland Fisheries Ireland on a variety of species and systems. Further afield, she has collaborated with Operation Wallacea to develop a water quality biotic index for the Merendon Mountains region of Honduras and with the University of Addis Ababa.
Contact: mary.kelly-quinn@ucd.ie
Francesco Martini
Postdoctoral Researcher,
Trinity College Dublin
Francesco is a plant ecologist with experience in forest regeneration processes and in plant-insect
interactions. He has done field work and worked with existing datasets from a broad range of
forests, starting from his PhD project in the diverse subtropical forests of south China and following
with data from Taiwan and later from temperate primary forests in Europe. He also collaborates on
other projects such as orchid seed germination and conservation, forest diversity in Bali, and
exploring patterns of human threats within protected areas. He will be responsible for developing the ecosystem accounts.
Contact: martinif@tcd.ie
Ciarán Fallon
Director of Coillte Nature,
Managing Director of the Nature Trust
Ciarán has held a range of senior management roles in Coillte over the last ten years and has
experience working in the public and private sectors in Ireland and abroad. Ciarán holds a BSc in Engineering, an MSc in Environmental Sustainability and a PhD in Sociology which he earned for his research into environmental governance in Ireland.
Contact: ciaran.fallon@coillte.ie
Prof Yvonne Buckley
Professor of Zoology (est. 1871),
Trinity College Dublin
Yvonne is the Professor of Zoology at Trinity College Dublin. She is the co-champion of the multidisciplinary Smart & Sustainable Planet research theme and an international partner of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions headquartered in Australia. Yvonne has research interests in determining the future of how we live well on the planet, environmental decision making, plant ecology and quantitative ecology. She leads a team of post-doctoral researchers, PhD and undergraduate research students seeking to understand the fundamental drivers of animal and plant population processes in a rapidly changing world. She uses these discoveries to provide support for environmental decisions in the areas of biodiversity conservation, invasive species management and habitat restoration. Yvonne is also active in mentoring women in higher education at all levels, including through the Aurora programme.
Contact: buckleyy@tcd.ie
Kathleen Conroy
PhD Candidate,
Trinity College Dublin
Kathleen has a BSc in environmental science from University of Massachusetts Boston and a MSc in
biodiversity and conservation from Trinity College Dublin. Kathleen has a wide range of interests having done research in disease ecology, tropical ecology, and Irish hazel woodlands. After finishing her MSc, she began a dry forest and habitat restoration project in Hawaii. She then worked on a forest management project in the Sierra Nevada.
Kathleen will assist with many aspects of this project. At the end, she will deliver a decision support tool that forest managers can use to make informed decisions.
Contact: conroyk1@tcd.ie
Eoin O'Connor
Masters student, University of Groningen & Physics BSc, Trinity College Dublin
Eoin has a BSc in physics from Trinity College Dublin and is a visiting masters student from the University of Groningen, doing an MSc in Energy and Environmental Science. Eoin has a keen interest in land use change and management having written a masters thesis on the nitrogen balances of Irish and Dutch dairy farms. He carried out an internship in Camino Verde in the Tambopata region of the Peruvian Amazon, working within an agroforestry system to develop an app which promoted ethical carbon sequestration and conservation, enhancing his data collection capabilities. He will help the project with the assessment of the Bayesian Belief Network for the management support tool.
Contact: e.oconnor@student.rug.nl
Declan Little
Ecologist, Coillte Nature
& The Nature Trust
Declan is a native woodland specialist and the former CEO of Woodlands of Ireland, a registered
charity dedicated to developing native woodland projects and raising awareness among the public
and policy makers. He has worked as a researcher and lecturer and has been a key figure in shaping
Ireland’s native woodland policy over the last twenty years. Declan holds a PhD from University College Dublin in Native Woodland Soils.
Contact: declan.little@coillte.ie