I am a Senior Lecturer in Ecology in the Department of Biology at the University of York, and also an active member of the interdisciplinary York Centre for Cross-disciplinary Systems Analysis. I am a behavioural ecologist. My research on organisation of social groups, using ants as a model system, combines theoretical modelling with lab and field experiments to identify the individual behaviours underlying adaptive group processes. Key areas of work include: Collective foraging & communication networks; Collective decision-making & distributed systems; Division of labour & organisational resilience; Invasive species & successful behavioural strategies; Collective behavioural syndromes; Distributed colony organisation (polydomy) in ants; Response of social insect systems to habitat change.