Dr Joanna Bagniewska

Departmental Lecturer in Environmental Science 

Co-Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Ecological Survey Techniques  

Departmental Lecturer in the Graduate School 

Dr Joanna Bagniewska received her BSc in Biology from Jacobs University Bremen in Germany, then moved to the UK to pursue her MSc in Biology at the University of Oxford, and went on to do a DPhil in Zoology at Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit.  

Joanna is a Departmental Lecturer in Environmental Science and the Co-Director of the Postgraduate Certificate in Ecological Survey Techniques; she is also a Departmental Lecturer in the Graduate School. Her interests centre on zoology, teaching and science communication, and her career encompasses all three.

Joanna’s expertise lies in behavioural ecology and biodiversity conservation. She has a soft spot for mammals, having worked on the American mink during her doctorate (as well as jackals, foxes, wombats and mole-rats before that) – though she does take an interest in other taxonomic groups. 

Having taught, amongst others, at Oxford University, Nottingham Trent University, the University of Reading and Brunel University of London, Joanna built a diverse pedagogical portfolio that includes field courses, teaching large (150+) classes, small group tutorials and team-based learning. She obtained a Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice from the University of Reading, and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.  

Alongside her academic work, Joanna is an accomplished science communicator, having won British Council’s FameLab Poland and the Wellcome-funded “I’m a Scientist, get me out of here!”, given a TEDx talk, and performed at science stand-up comedy events. Until 2024, she held the post of Communications and Public Engagement Officer at Oxford University’s Department of Paediatrics – a particularly exciting experience during the development of the AstraZeneca/Oxford Covid-19 vaccine. She regularly writes popular science articles for various media in Poland (including Focus, Gazeta Wyborcza and Tygodnik Powszechny) and English (BBC Wildlife, The Times Literary Supplement), and has collaborated with the Discovery Channel on the “How Do They Do It?” series. 

Her popular science book, The Modern Bestiary, was published in 2022 by Wildfire (UK) and Smithsonian Books (US). She is the co-author of The Communicating Scientist: A Practical Handbook (Springer Nature, 2025), and a contributor to the children’s book Life: The Wild Wonders of Biodiversity (Thames&Hudson, 2025).