Alexandra Zimmermann

Alexandra Zimmermann is the founding Chair of the IUCN SSC Human-Wildlife Conflict & Coexistence Specialist Group and Associate Professor at the University of Oxford. She is a global leader in the field of human-wildlife conflict and conservation conflict resolution. Her work focuses on the hidden social causes of conflict, community-led solutions, policy development, dialogue and negotiation. Over the past 25 years, she has worked in a range of socio-political contexts including conflicts over jaguars in Brazil and Venezuela, elephants in India and Indonesia, tigers in Nepal, bears in Bolivia, and fruit bats in Mauritius. As Chair of the IUCN HWCCSG, she led the development of the global IUCN Guidelines on Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence and the creation of the International Conferences on HWCC. She plays an active role in international biodiversity policy, facilitating implementation and cross-sectoral collaborations. Based at the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit at Oxford University, Alexandra leads a research group, supervises doctoral students and teaches postgraduate classes. She has also trained several hundred researchers, practitioners, and government staff around the world via executive education courses on human-wildlife conflict and conflict resolution. She is a frequent independent advisor to various organisations including the World Bank, UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Royal Commission for Al Ula, the Arabian Leopard Fund, and many more. She was previously with Chester Zoo where she secured five Darwin Initiative awards and spearheaded a human-wildlife coexistence field projects in Asia and Latin America. Alexandra was raised in Indonesia, Lebanon, Germany, France, and Canada and was initially trained in zoology (BSc, Leeds) and conservation biology (MSc, DICE) before gaining her doctorate in conservation social science (DPhil, Oxford). She then trained in conflict negotiation at Harvard Law School and diplomatic negotiation at the United Nations, and seeks to bring insights from conflict studies and diplomacy into biodiversity conservation.