Dr Jacqui Wilmshurst

I am working towards a PhD in Anthrozoology and Environmental Ethics, via a project entitled 'Caring Wildly', exploring urban relationships with wild animals.   

Using multispecies autoethnography the research explores core themes of care, kinship, and coexistence. Examining cultural narratives and lived experience, it draws from a diverse range of literature and theory including multspecies care ethics, philosophical ethology, environmental ethics, and animal ethics.  

As a wildlife rehabilitator and urban dweller, I have learned that we have much to learn from our relationships (for better and for worse) with the wild animals with whom live in closest proximity; about them, about us - including our own animal and wild natures - and about how we can co-create healthier multispecies communities. 

Focusing on relationships, past and current, with three types of wild animal with whom I have ongoing relationships, both in my care and in the wild around my urban home - grey squirrels (mammals), the corvid family of birds (avian), and spiders (invertebrate) - the research explores the themes above through narrative accounts of personal interspecies relationships, and reflections on conversations and shared experiences with others in my networks and communities.

I have a previous academic background in health, social and environmental psychology, applied to human-natural environment relationships and in particular towards improved resilience and risk management for natural hazards. This research examined other 'ways of knowing' alongside conventional scientific and academic enquiry, including indigenous and traditional knowledge about the natural world and other animals.

In addition to my work as an academic, I was previously an officer in the British Army (retired as Captain) and a leader in mental health and wellbeing in large complex organisations including the BBC, Meta and TikTok. I am a Chartered Member and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Socety, in the Division of Academics, Researchers and Teachers in Psychology.

For the past decade I have been working as a consultant and senior leader in workplace health & wellbeing, learning & leadership, environment & wellbeing, and conservation psychology. 

www.jacquiwilmshurst.com