Emily Nicholson

The veski inspiring women fellowship is allowing Professor Nicholson to lead and host workshops in Melbourne, where she is bringing key players to Australia to develop a strategy to assess the world’s ecosystems by 2015, and identifying data, resourcing and research needs.

She is also using some funds to support childcare for her youngest child while undertaking these activities.

In addition, the veski inspiring women fellowship is enabling Emily to recruit a postdoctoral researcher in order to maintain her research workload while returning to work part-time.

This will greatly improve her own research output and also support her research group.

Emily’s research focusses on solving critical conservation problems: how to balance development and nature conservation, and measure change in biodiversity.

Since 2007, Emily has worked as part of an international research team to develop a new framework for assessing risks to ecosystems, called the Red List of Ecosystems, which provides critical information for setting conservation priorities.

The approach was adopted as the global standard by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s largest environmental organisation, and also by governments worldwide and in Australia.

Emily is a mother to three children, and with the support of the veski inspiring women fellowship and her institution, she will continue developing as a Victorian leader.