Who we are

Members

Dr Pete Goddard B.Vet.Med., PhD, Dip.ECSRHM, Dip.ECAWBM, MRCVS
(Trustee) (Chair)

Dr Pete Goddard is a veterinary surgeon with a particular interest in animal welfare focusing on welfare in ruminants under extensive systems of management, and the health and welfare of wild and semi-managed animals. Pete worked at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen where he headed the Institute’s Ecological Sciences Group and is now an Emeritus Fellow at the Institute. He has published more than 70 scientific papers and has authored 9 book chapters, most recently in the 2014 edition of Livestock Handling and Transport edited by Temple Grandin. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Applied Animal Behaviour Science and a Diplomate of the European College of Animal Welfare and Behavioural Medicine (Welfare Science, Ethics and Law). For the two years, until April 2010, he was chair of the Animal Welfare Science Ethics and Law Veterinary Association (AWSELVA) and for 6 years he was a trustee of the Animal Welfare Foundation. In February 2020, Pete was appointed to the new Scottish Animal Welfare Commission.

Dr Elizabeth Mullineaux BVM&S, DVM&S, CertSHP, MRCVS RCVS
Recognised Specialist in Wildlife Medicine (Mammalian)
(Trustee)

Liz is a veterinary surgeon with a specialist interest in British wildlife. She has worked for a large wildlife centre (Secret World Wildlife Rescue) for 25yrs, both as a clinical vet and as a veterinary advisor. Liz holds a clinical doctorate from the University of Edinburgh, looking at the factors influencing badger rehabilitation and release, including the impact of bovine tuberculosis on this species. Liz writes and lectures extensively on the subject of compassionate wildlife treatment and rehabilitation, with particular emphasis on responsible veterinary care of these species. She is an active member of the British Veterinary Association (BVA) and its specialist divisions; currently Junior Vice President of the British Veterinary Zoological Society (BVZS) and a member of BVA’s Scottish Branch Council.

Dr Glen Cousquer (BSc(Hons) BVM&S CertZooMed (MSc (Outdoor Education) MSc (Education Research) PhD MRCVS IML)

Glen is a Lecturer and MSc Programme Co-ordinator in Conservation Medicine and One Health at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He is a writer, photographer, international mountain leader and veterinary surgeon who actively uses narrative and photography to help individuals, communities and organisations understand, explore and reimagine their relationship(s) with animals and the environment. His work is about connection, systems thinking, holism and empathy. Glen's interests cover a number of subject areas including human-animal relations, veterinary medicine, wild animal medicine, wildlife, birds. mountains and mountaineering, travel and tourism.

Dr Vittoria Elliott PhD, MSc

Vittoria is the Science Director at Wild Animal Initiative, an organisation working to improve the scientific basis of our understanding of wild animal welfare, investigating particularly questions about what life is like for animals in the wild, how we can measure welfare, and how we can responsibly act to improve wild animal welfare. She has been working in conservation and ecology as both a practitioner and scientist for many years including work in fish conservation and fisheries which led to her interest in better understanding and applying scientific knowledge and experience to wild animal welfare. Although there are synergies between welfare science and conservation science, Vittoria supports the placing of greater emphasis on the welfare of individuals rather than focusing purely on the population or ecosystem no matter the consequences and suffering that may result.

Dr María Díez León PhD, MSc, BSc

María is Senior Lecturer in Animal Welfare at the Royal Veterinary College, She graduated in Biology at the University of Navarra and went on to pursue an MSc. in Applied Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare at the University of Edinburgh, conducting her project at the Foulum Research Centre (Aarhus University) in Denmark. For her Ph.D. at the University of Guelph, under the supervision of Professor Georgia Mason, she investigated how housing conditions affect carnivore behaviour and brain function and the potential implications of this for conservation breeding programmes. Her postdoctoral work, also at Guelph, addressed how cage size per se affects the welfare of farmed mink.

Professor Angus Nurse BA (Hons) MSc LLM PhD SFHEA

Angus researches animal, environmental, and human rights law, green criminology and critical criminal justice at Anglia Ruskin University. He was previously Head of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Nottingham Trent University (2021 to 2023) and prior to that was Associate Professor, Environmental Justice and Director of Policing Programmes in the Department of Criminology and Sociology at Middlesex University School of Law.

Angus has research interests in green criminology, corporate environmental criminality, critical criminal justice, animal and human rights law and anti-social behaviour. He is particularly interested in animal law and its enforcement and the reasons why people commit environmental crimes and crimes against animals. Angus has also researched and published on the links between violence towards animals and human violence. His first book Animal Harm: Perspectives on why People Harm and Kill Animals was published by Ashgate in 2013, his second; Policing Wildlife: Perspectives on the Enforcement of Wildlife Legislation was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015. Angus was previously Investigations Co-ordinator for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and he spent 8 years as an Investigator for the Commission for Local Administration in England (The Local Government Ombudsman) before joining the Law School at the University of Lincoln where he spent 3 and a half years before joining Birmingham City University's Centre for Applied Criminology for two years before subsequently joining Middlesex University's School of law. Angus is co-editor of Palgrave Macmillan's international Palgrave Studies in Green Criminology book series (with Rob White from the University of Tasmania and Melissa Jarrell from Texas A & M University at Corpus Christi).

Vassili Papastavrou

Vassili is a whale biologist, author and conservationist whose research interests include the study of the welfare of cetaceans in the wild and the links between animal welfare and conservation. He has also published on ethics in wildlife research and the importance of animal welfare in conservation.

Paul Reynolds BSc (Hons), MSc

Paul is the Deputy Chair of the British Wildlife Rehabilitation Council, Chair of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Working Group and manages the North East Wildlife and Animal Rescue Centre (New Arc) wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centre in Aberdeenshire. He also provides non-clinical CPD for veterinary and wildlife professionals on a freelance basis as well as providing wildlife rehabilitation advice to multiple agencies both government and non-government related. Paul has been rescuing and rehabilitating wildlife professionally for over 10 years. He started his career rescuing and rehabilitating primates at a primate rescue centre in the UK, before moving to Ethiopia to manage a wildlife rescue and rehabilitation centre followed by a move to Costa Rica to manage a primary rainforest release site which was part of a wildlife rescue centre.
Since returning to the UK, Paul has worked to improve the wider wildlife rehabilitation sector alongside a career in the management of wildlife rehabilitation centres.

Alick Simmons BVMS, MSc, DipAABAW, MRCVS

Alick Simmons is a veterinarian, naturalist and photographer. After a period in private practice, he followed a 35-year career as a Government veterinarian, latterly as the UK Government's Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer. Alick has had much involvement in public health and disease control policy and extensive practical experience of epidemic livestock disease gained in the UK and overseas. Alick's lifelong passion is wildlife and, since leaving government service in 2015, he has sought to expand this interest. He is volunteering for the RPSB in Somerset, has become chair of the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare, a trustee of Dorset Wildlife Trust, a member of the RSPB’s Ethics Advisory Committee and a member of the National Trust’s Wildlife Management Advisory Group.  A particular interest is the ethics of wild animal management and welfare. He is devoting more time to photography and is keen to increase the rather modest total of his published photos.

Dr Miguel Somey Somarriba DVM, MSc, AFHEA, PhD 

Miguel is the Programme Co-ordinator for the MSc International Animal Welfare Ethics and Law programme at the Jeanne Marchig International Centre for Animal Welfare Education (JMICAWE). He also works with JMICAWE in its animal welfare training project in China. Miguel is a veterinarian who qualified in his native Costa Rica, and has worked for the WSPA (now World Animal Protection) in their Animals in Disasters Programme, taking part in disaster management and recovery projects in Latin America and the Caribbean following natural disasters. He has also worked with organisations providing free veterinary care in rural and indigenous communities in Central America.

Miguel moved to Edinburgh to take the MSc in Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare, and then joined the SRUC Animal Behaviour and Welfare Research team, firstly as a research assistant and then to conduct his PhD research. In the past he has worked on animal welfare research in domestic species, and has been involved in service dog training, captive animal enrichment and training, animal management during natural disaster situations, behavioural medicine and veterinary private practice.

Dr Stephen M Wickens BSc, PGCE, PhD

Stephen is an animal welfare scientist and ethologist who has worked for the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare for 20 years. Concerned with improving the way we keep and care for animals, he is particularly interested in the welfare of companion and captive wild animals, and those that we interact with in the wild. Stephen has co-ordinated and organised many national and international conferences, including meetings on wild bird care in the garden, animal populations – world resources and animal welfare, animal training, quality of life, consciousness and on advances in animal welfare science. He is also responsible for the UFAW animal welfare science outreach programme, the UFAW LINK scheme, which consists of a network of 100+ universities and academics from around the world. He has held a number of external positions. These include council member of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) and Secretary of the ASAB Accreditation Committee, where he coordinated the setting up of a system for setting standards for those treating behavioural disorders in animals and validating universities offering suitable courses in the area, founding director and council member of the UK’s Animal Behaviour Training Council and treasurer of the International Society for Anthrozoology. He has been an external board member of Marwell Zoo’s Ethics Committee since 2006.

Secretary

Libby Anderson

Libby is a retired animal welfare policy advisor, most recently for OneKind, an animal protection charity based in Edinburgh working to end animal suffering through campaigns, research and education. Like Pete, Libby is a member of the Scottish Animal Welfare Commission. The OneKind Policy Officer, Kirsty Jenkins, provides additional support.

Trustees

Dr Pete Goddard

Dr Liz Mullineaux

Dr Sandra Baker BSc, DPhil

Sandra served as a member of the WAWC from September 2014 to January 2024. She is a Knowledge Exchange Specialist at the University of Oxford and was previously a research fellow at the University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU). She has conducted research on the welfare of wild vertebrates, particularly in wildlife management, for over 20 years. Sandra’s earlier wildlife management work focused on learned food aversions for the non-lethal management of badgers, foxes and crows. Following the 2006 UK ban on strychnine poison, she investigated perceived mole damage, mole management and the opinions of farmers and other land managers on the humaneness and effectiveness of mole management methods. Leading on from that, she researched the mechanical, and likely welfare, performance of unregulated spring traps for rats, mice and moles. As a result, Sandra is now pioneering a voluntary trap approval scheme for unregulated break-back traps in the UK and working with European colleagues to devise a system for certifying break-back traps in Europe. Recently, she published a nationwide survey of public perceptions of wildlife, and wildlife management, in and around UK homes. Currently she is assessing animal welfare impacts both in vertebrate management and the welfare impacts of anthropogenic activities on marine mammals. Sandra has also studied attitudes to, and drivers of, fox hunting with hounds and she led a systematic review of animal welfare in the global wildlife trade. She is a member of the RSPB’s Ethics Advisory Committee and the Section Editor for Wild Animals at Animal Welfare journal.

Former members

Professor Piran White BSc, PhD (September 2014 to November 2016)

Dr Kathryn Arnold BSc, PhD (January 2017 to February 2019) .

Sarah Dolman BEng, MRes (September 2014 to June 2022)

Dr Chris Draper BSc(Hons), MSc, FRSB, FOCAE, PhD (September 2014 to June 2022)

Carol McKenna (September 2014 to January 2024)