Dr Susan Johnston (PI) Susan.Johnston@ed.ac.uk

Susan is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Senior Lecturer using genomics to understand evolutionary puzzles in natural populations and livestock. At present, her main interests are the evolution of recombination rate variation and understanding the genetic architecture of ongoing sexual conflict. She grew up on the west coast of Scotland, and did her undergrad in St Andrews (UK), PhD in Sheffield (UK), and postdocs in Turku (Finland) and Edinburgh.

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Gina Henderson (NERC E4 PhD Student, 2023 – 2027)

Gina is a PhD student investigating evolutionary genomics of immune responses in wild mammals. Previously, she did her BSc at Manchester (UK) and her MSc in Quantitative Genetics at Edinburgh.

Lisa Ammer (Darwin Trust PhD Student, 2024 – 2028)

Lisa is a PhD student investigating variation and selection on recombination in house sparrows and other passerine birds. Previously, she did her BSc and MSc at LMU Munich (Germany).

Dr Marie Raynaud (Postdoc, 2024 – )

Marie is a postdoc investigating sex-differences in recombination landscapes in house sparrows and other passerine birds. She did her PhD on recombination landscapes in salmon, water striders and stick insects using computational population genomic approaches at the University of Montpellier (France)

Katie Abson (NERC E4 PhD Student, 2023 – 2027)

Katie is a PhD Student with Jarrod Hadfield. Her project is predicting adaptive potential from genomic data and its implications for conservation. Previously, she did her BSc at Manchester (UK) and her MSc at Edinburgh.

Harry Ames (Royal Society PhD Student, 2024 – 2028)

Harry is a PhD Student with Loeske Kruuk investigating the genomic basis of inbreeding depression in Kalahari meerkats. He previously did his BSc in Nottingham (UK) and worked as a long-term field assistant on the Kalahari Meerkat Project.

Olga Takki (Darwin Trust PhD Student, 2025 – 2029)

Olga is a PhD Student with Laura Ross investigating germline restricted chromosomes (GRCs) and chromatin dynamics in fungus gnats and other insects. She previously did her Master of Science in St Petersburg (Russia), using cytogenetics to investigate chromosome structure and function in zebra finch oocytes.

Kenneth Aase (Visiting PhD Student, 2024)

Kenneth is a PhD student with Stefanie Muff at NTNU in Trondheim (Norway). He visited our group to work with us on methods for genomic prediction in wild populations, with a focus on recombination rates.

Dr John McAuley (Darwin Trust PhD Student, 2019 – 2024)

John was a PhD student investigating the causes and consequences of individual recombination rate variation in wild house sparrows in Norway. He did his BSc in Seattle (USA) and an MSc in Salford (UK).

Dr Anna Hewett (NERC E4 PhD Student, 2019 – 2023) co-supervised with Prof. Josephine Pemberton

Anna did her MSc project in our group looking at genomic signatures of intra-locus sexual conflict in the Soay sheep of St Kilda, and was then co-supervised in the group for her PhD. Previously, she did her BSc at Cardiff (UK). She recently finished her PhD in Edinburgh mapping inbreeding depression in Red deer on Rum. She’s now a postdoc in Jérôme Goudet’s lab at the University of Lausanne.

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Dr Martin Stoffel (DFG Research Fellow, 2019 – 2022) co-supervised with Prof. Josephine Pemberton

Martin was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow mapping inbreeding depression in Soay sheep. He completed his PhD at the University of Bielefeld (Germany). He is now a Research Data Scientist at the Alan Turing Institute in London.

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Dr Lucy Peters (NERC E3 PhD Student, 2017 – 2021)

Lucy completed her PhD in 2021 on the genetic architecture of antler morphology and signatures of sexual conflict in Red deer on Rum. She did her BSc in Glasgow (UK) and was a visiting student at Bielefeld (Germany) was a postdoc with Bertrand Servin (INRAE Occitanie). She’s now a postdoc at the Technical University of Munich.

Dr Alexandra Sparks (MRC PhD Student, 2013 – 2017) co-supervised with Prof. Dan Nussey

Alex completed her PhD on evolutionary genetics of helminth-specific immune responses in wild Soay sheep in 2017. She was a postdoc with Dr Hannah Dugdale at the University of Leeds, and is now a postdoc with Prof Jon Slate at the University of Sheffield.