Simon Preston Pooley

Simon grew up in game reserves in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He studied the history of science and society at Birkbeck University of London, and modern (environmental) history at the University of Oxford. Following Junior Research Fellowships at Oxford and Imperial College London, in 2016 he took up the Lambert Lectureship in Environment (Applied Herpetology) at Birkbeck.

Simon is now Lambert Reader in Human-Wildlife Coexistence. He is active in wildlife conservation through the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), chairing working groups for the Human-Wildlife Conflict and Coexistence Specialist Group, and the Crocodile Specialist Group.

Simon is based in London, where he is a visiting researcher at the Zoological Society of London, allowing lunchtime visits to their okapi. In 2026, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Linnean Society.