Becky Morris

Dr. Becky Morris serves as an Associate Professor at the University of Southampton, actively supervising PhD students and leading internationally funded research projects. Her academic work bridges theoretical ecology with practical applications in tropical and agricultural systems, focusing on biodiversity conservation, climate change impacts, and social-ecological resilience across multiple continents.

Her research spans tropical forest ecology, ecosystem services, and climate adaptation in vulnerable communities. Key interests include higher-order interactions in ecological networks, biodiversity policy across forest modification gradients, and agroecological approaches for subsistence farmers in Papua New Guinea. She employs interdisciplinary methods combining field experiments, network theory, and participatory techniques like photovoice to examine human-environment relationships under climate stress.

Analysis of her publication record reveals consistent focus on ecological network stability mechanisms and climate resilience in tropical systems. Her work demonstrates how higher-order species interactions influence ecosystem robustness beyond pairwise relationships, with direct applications for conservation policy and smallholder farming adaptation. Recent publications increasingly integrate social dimensions, highlighting unintended consequences of agricultural interventions and long-term resource use changes in Melanesian communities.

Dr. Morris currently supervises PhD candidate Anna Stanworth (INSPIRE project) and leads multiple externally funded initiatives, including the Royal Society-supported project on rare species importance in tropical forests and the El Niño resilience project in Papua New Guinea. Her research collaborations span institutions in the UK, Papua New Guinea, and the Czech Republic, with field sites across tropical montane ecosystems.