Amy Dickman

Amy Dickman is a professor of wildlife conservation and serves as director of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) at the University of Oxford, as well as a Kaplan senior research fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford. With nearly three decades of experience in wildlife conservation, Dickman specializes in understanding and addressing human-wildlife conflict, particularly between people and large carnivores in Africa. She is a fellow of the Linnean Society of London and chairs the board of the Arabian Leopard Fund, underscoring her commitment to carnivore conservation across multiple regions.

Dickman is recognized for founding the Ruaha Carnivore Project in Tanzania’s Ruaha landscape, an area notable for supporting significant populations of lions, endangered African wild dogs, and cheetahs. Beginning the project with a small team and limited resources, Dickman addressed high levels of lion killing through community-based conservation strategies. These included predator-proofing livestock enclosures, training herders, implementing livestock-guarding dog programs, and supporting healthcare and education initiatives in local villages. The project achieved substantial reductions in livestock losses and carnivore killings. It has since merged with Lion Landscapes, a nonprofit organization Dickman co-founded, which works to improve human-carnivore coexistence in Tanzania, Kenya, and Zambia.

Dickman’s work in wildlife conservation has been recognized with several honors, including the Rabinowitz-Kaplan Award for the Next Generation in Wild Cat Conservation, the St. Louis Zoo Conservation Award, and the Cincinnati Zoo Wildlife Conservation Award. She was a finalist for the Tusk Conservation Award for Africa and has been named one of National Geographic’s Women of Impact for her contributions to big cat conservation. Dickman is also a National Geographic Explorer and holds a full professorship at the University of Oxford. Her academic output includes more than 90 peer-reviewed research papers on carnivore behavior and conservation, with over 13,000 citations, and she serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Applied Ecology.

In addition to her research and fieldwork, Dickman advocates for evidence-based conservation policy and science communication. She regularly engages with media, policymakers, and the public to promote conservation decisions grounded in scientific research and respect for local communities. Dickman is a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature Species Survival Commission’s Cat Specialist Group and African Lion Working Group, and is a co-founder of the Pride Lion Conservation Alliance. Her work bridges academic research, practical conservation, and public engagement, contributing to ongoing efforts to address the challenges facing wildlife and human communities in Africa and beyond.