Ian Swingland
| Ian Swingland | |
|---|---|
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| Born |
Ian Richard Swingland 2 November 1946 Barnet, England, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Biodiversity; academia, business and charities |
| Years active | 1968–present |
Professor Ian Swingland founded DICE (Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology) at the University of Kent in 1989. It is now recognised as one of the first interdisciplinary research and postgraduate training institutes in the world concentrating on biodiversity, communities and sustainable development. While at DICE he served as director and was elected to the first Chair in Conservation Biology in the United Kingdom.
Since 1969 Ian Swingland has worked variously as a staff consultant with bilateral/multilateral agencies and companies in conservation and biodiversity management, and advisor or member of governmental and non-governmental organizations in a number of countries. He has occupied visiting chairs on four continents, developing international partnerships, joint postgraduate programs, and carrying on his research both in evolutionary ecology, biodiversity management and sustainable development. His current conservation activities centre on sustainable conservation, agriculture and resource management particularly public-private sector management of ecosystems and conservation. Throughout his career Ian Swingland has been responsible for policy, planning, and implementation, and particularly in the last three decades for establishing and developing world-class initiatives and organizations.
Swingland is a donor to a large number of worthwhile causes which help people directly including Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology Scholarship programme and its own trust, the Durrell Trust for Conservation Biology, Hadlow College, Acid Survivors Foundation Uganda, Penan people, Kafue Trust which helps the Kafue National Park, Iwokrama International Centre for Rain Forest Conservation and Development, Samburu and Il Ngwesi Maasai in northern Kenya.
Ian Swingland is the son and only child of Flora Mary (née Fernie), born 1924 in Newcastle of Scottish parents who trained at Queen Elizabeth's School for Girls, and Mrs. Hoster’s Secretarial College where she was recruited by Special Operations Executive before working as a Senior Lecturer in the Polytechnic of Central London (which became the University of Westminster), and Hugh Maurice Webb Swingland, born 1922, an electrical engineer who rose to the rank of Director, MoD Procurement Executive after serving in the Royal Navy North Sea minesweepers during World War II. Swingland was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, London, followed by London, Edinburgh and Oxford Universities. At London University, he read zoology and social anthropology and published his first scientific paper on the location of memory in a vertebrate in Nature in 1969 while an undergraduate. After working for Shell Research International for a short time, he took a PhD in ecology in the Forestry and Natural Resources Department at Edinburgh University on a Department for International Development (formerly Foreign and Commonwealth Office/Overseas Development Administration) Scholarship and subsequently worked as a research and management biologist in the Kafue National Park, Zambia for the Government. In 1974 he joined Oxford University Zoology Department for five years funded by NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) and the Royal Society to work on the giant tortoises of Aldabra Atoll, Western Indian Ocean. He has been, or is, a Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, University of Florence, University of Auckland, Manchester Metropolitan University and Beijing Forestry University and has worked as a research mathematician for Royal Dutch Shell at Sittingbourne, Kent UK.
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