Jasper Montana

Dr Jasper Montana is a Senior Lecturer at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at ANU. Jasper is also an Honorary Research Associate at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford, where he was previously a Departmental Lecturer in Human Geography and Research Fellow. Jasper holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Cambridge (King's College); an MSc in Science, Technology, Medicine and Society awarded jointly by Imperial College, London, and University College London; and a BSc in Zoology and a Diploma in Creative Arts (Media) from the University of Melbourne. Jasper has previously been a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Politics at the University of Sheffield and a Visiting Research Fellow in the Program on Science, Technology and Society at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. 

Jasper's research interests encompass science-policy relations, the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity, bridging local and global science, as well as the power and influence of concepts, metrics and technologies used to support environmental governance. Jasper's research focuses particularly on nature and biodiversity loss as a contemporary societal challenge. 

Having begun his intellectual journey as a zoologist and marine biologist in Australia, Jasper subsequently travelled the world documenting people’s diverse relations with nature with the BBC. Having worked on a series called Unnatural Histories, which questioned ‘how natural is the natural world?’, he decided to return to study and learn more about the cultural history that underpins contemporary nature conservation efforts. His PhD research carried him into the conference halls of intergovernmental negotiations where he observed the production of global biodiversity science as part of the science-policy interface for the Convention on Biological Diversity. He subsequently completed a series of postdoctoral research projects examining scientific diplomacy within the European Union and exploring conservation projects in the Caribbean. He is currently the project lead focused on Innovative methods to connect and communicate between disciplines as part of the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery at the University of Oxford. 

Jasper’s research draws from and contributes to a broad range of scholarly traditions, including science and technology studies, science communication, political ecology, sustainability science, and the interdisciplinary environmental sciences. 

In addition to academic work, Jasper has worked in natural history documentary production for the BBC and National Geographic, as director, cameraman and researcher across locations on land and underwater. He has also spent time as an intern at the United Nations Environment Programme in Germany, as a tour guide on the Great Barrier Reef, and as an animal keeper of birds, reptiles and insects.