The Moths and Butterflies of Oxfordshire

Dr Thomas Hesselberg

Speaker and Director of Studies

Thomas is a zoologist who has studied spiders, insects and worms for more than 15 years in both temperate and tropical climates. In addition to his teaching for the Department for Continuing Education, he is a lecturer in biological sciences at St. Anne's College.

Mr Lawrence Bee

Speaker

Lawrence is an independent ecological and environmental education consultant. He has worked in the natural environment for over 30 years and has developed a varied experience as an all-round field naturalist through extensive practical, hands-on work in the field of ecology and nature conservation.

He has provided practical environmental education activities to the primary sector - most recently Rocks and Fossils workshops in Oxfordshire - to secondary and undergraduate students and to adults. He is a Council Member of the British Arachnological Society and executive member of the Oxfordshire Geology Trust. He regularly lectures on British spiders and ancient trees and woodland and leads training workshops on spider identification, plant gall identification and invertebrate survey techniques.

His particular interests include British geology, ancient trees and oak woodland, spiders, moths and plant galls: he wrote the Field Studies Council ID chart – ‘A Guide to House and Garden Spiders’, is currently writing chapters for a forthcoming book on Shotover and is the lead author on a forthcoming photographic field guide to British spiders.

Grahame Hawker

Speaker

Grahame Hawker retired from managing a nature reserve in 2024. He is Vice Chair of the Conservation and Recording committee, Chair of Silver-studded Blue Champion, and the 10k Champion at Upper Thames Branch of Butterfly Conservation. He is also involved with Berkshire Local Nature Partnership, Local Wildlife Site Selection Committee, Berkshire Moth Group and is the volunteers leader at Padworth Common Conservation.