Alison Richard

Anthropologist Professor Dame Alison Richard brings together her 50 years’ experience of research and conservation work on Madagascar to explain why the island can suggest ways to turn the tide on an environmental crisis sweeping the world.

Madagascar is the fourth largest island on Earth and a hotspot for biodiversity. Richard says its forests have expanded and contracted over time in response to shifts in climate, and the hand of humans is clear in changes of the last thousand years. She looks back into the distant past to the origins of Madagascar as it emerged as an island from a landlocked mass. And she captures the magic of Madagascar as well as the tensions surrounding its future.

Richard is a senior research scientist at yale University and a former vice-chancellor of Cambridge University. She has a lifelong commitment to conservation worldwide and in Madagascar, which grew out of her PhD research on the behavioural ecology of lemurs in Madagascar.