Loeske Kruuk

Principal Investigator

I am an evolutionary ecologist with a broad range of interests in how evolution works in natural populations.

My research addresses the question of why is there so much diversity in natural populations? I have worked on a range of different animal species in different places.

I did an undergraduate degree in maths, but then realised that I wanted to be a biologist, so did a PhD in population genetics at the University of Edinburgh. I then did a postdoc at the University of Cambridge, which is when I joined the Isle of Rum red deer project. I've been working on long-term studies of wild animal populations ever since. I held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh, before moving to the Australian National University in 2012 for an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship and then Laureate Fellowship (for a short while). I moved back to Edinburgh at the end of 2021, and am now funded by a Royal Society Research Professorship and ERC Advanced Grant. I am also an Editor for Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Fellow of the Royal Society 2023

(Picture: eastern grey kangaroo, Wilson's Prom, Victoria, Aus; credit Weliton Menario Costa)