Dr Alex Davey, Deputy Director of Science (Research)
My role encompasses strategic planning, leading and overseeing RBGE’s research to combat the biodiversity and climate crises in Scotland and globally, growing grant income, enhancing equity, inclusion and access, and working with external partners to deliver impact.
With field experience in South America, tropical Africa and Southeast Asia, my interests range from tropical biodiversity surveying, herbarium taxonomy and systematics, to molecular and morphological phylogenetics, palynology and palaeobotany, vegetation change, and threatened species restoration. I enjoy pushing the boundaries of traditional disciplines, working with artists, poets and social scientists to explore ways to analyse impact and raise awareness of global challenges such as plant extinction and habitat loss and their links to human health and wellbeing
My current research focuses around conservation prioritisation, drawing together synergistic outputs from our species- and habitat-level assessments. I am also working to develop our collaborative research, conservation and horticultural training in China, focused around our field station on the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain near Lijiang, Yunnan Province. I am developing programmes with colleagues within and outwith the Garden, using interdisciplinary approaches to analyse the impact of botanic gardens at local, national and global scales in urban and rural environments.
Please get in touch if you would like to discuss possibilities for collaboration with, or dissemination of, RBGE’s science.
Find me on LinkedIn and Bluesky.
For Publications please see my Google Scholar profile here.