Profile

I live in Scarborough, South Africa, the last village before the tip of the Cape Peninsula. When I’m not at my desk or in the field, I enjoy being out hiking in the mountains, running with the dogs on the beach or kayaking at sea. I am currently a full-time mother but I hope to soon be sharing my time between my son and science.

I studied environmental sciences in Portugal and completed my MSc in environmental management and policy in Sweden. I worked for a while as an environmental consultant in Europe and Africa. It was the six years I spent in Africa, involved in conservation and development consulting projects, that inspired me to learn more about biodiversity. I started my academic journey in 2010, with desktop modelling of macro-ecological patterns of African vertebrates under climate change for my PhD. I was supervised by Miguel Araújo and Mar Cabeza, and defended my thesis at the Centre for Macroecology, Ecology and Evolution in Copenhagen.

I moved back to Cape Town in 2014 for my first postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Statistics in Ecology, Environment and Conservation (SEEC), where I worked with Res Altwegg on range shifts of passerine birds in South Africa. I then moved to a group focused on physiological and evolutionary ecology, the CLIME Lab. My research with Susana Clusella-Trullas has taken me to the field to study ectothermic animals and the thermal landscapes they experience on the ground.

CONTACT
Department of Botany and Zoology
DST-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology
Stellenbosch University
Private Bag X1, Matieland 7602
South Africa

rgarcia at sun.ac.za
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