I’m interested in marine biodiversity, and the past, present and future of the marine environment. I pursue this interest using macroecolgical methods – essentially, statistical experiments on large biological databases. Since 2008, I have been able to do this thanks to a Royal Society University Research Fellowship which I hold in the Department of Animal & Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield. The kinds of ecological questions I work on span many temporal and spatial scales, and require me to adopt methods from various related disciplines including statistics, evolutionary biology, palaeontology, economics, sociology. So, I’m very interested in how interdisciplinary research works, and how it could be made to work better. I’m interested more generally in how science is communicated, and how it is represented both in the science and news media, and more generally in our culture (e.g. in literature). All of this has stemmed from a love of natural history, which I try to maintain whenever possible by exploring nature in my garden, walking in the Peak District or wherever else I find myself, snorkelling when the water’s warm enough, kayaking when it’s not. I share thoughts on all of the above on Twitter as @tomjwebb.