“Defying Jaws: Changing the Narrative on Sharks”

Hannah Rudd is a marine biologist, author (Britain’s Living Seas, Bloomsbury Publishing 2023) and Tedx speaker, who has worked in global shark hotspots, including South Africa and the Maldives. She currently works in the British Isles focusing on blue sharks and angling interactions, alongside studying public perceptions of sharks, which are crafted by the media and can have dire realworld implications for shark conservation.

Less than a third of the world’s researchers are women, and, in the field of shark science, female scientists experience poor representation in the media. We need everyone at the table, not only on this issue, in order to tackle the challenges in front of us following the climate crisis and ecological emergency. During this talk, Hannah will share her personal experiences of being a woman in shark science, and provide an outline of her work.