Dr Willow Neal

Hello!

My name is Willow Neal (They/Them) and I am an Associate Lecturer at The Open University. I completed my undergraduate degree in Environmental Science in 2019 at the OU and my MSc in Conservation Ecology at Oxford Brookes in 2020. I finished my PhD in 2025, which looked at urban woodland butterfly conservation supervised by Dr. Phil Wheeler and Yoseph Araya.

My main research interests are in conservation ecology, where insects and woodlands are my passion. I also have an affinity for urban nature as well, and am interesting in wider scale conservation management for plants and pollinators. I am also interested in citizen science, working with Dr. Kaustubh Adhikari on the OSC project "Butterfly Wing Diversification & Evolution with Citizen Science" [link]. You can read a more detail blog post about this here.

I also have a great interest in equality and inclusion and scholarship research. I'm leading a SoTL project about a potential LGBTQ+ degree awarding gap in STEM degreees titled: Evaluating an LGBTQ+ awarding gap and supporting our queer student community: An intersectional perspective [link].

I am an Associate Lecturer on modules SDT 306 Environment: responding to change, S397 Terrestrial Ecosystems and SXE 390 Environmental Science Practical Project. 

I am also the Project Officer for the Weston OpenLiving Labs [link].