Adrienne Chitayat
PhD candidate, University of Amsterdam
- Member directory
- United States of America
My research focus is the cultural and utilitarian ways rural communities value wildlife with a focus on endangered apes in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I used mixed methods including doing interviews with community members and reconnaissance walks in adjacent village forests. My goal is to work for a conservation organization that partners with communities to find conservation solutions and implement initiatives that benefit both people and animals relevant to the local context.
My background is mainly in species conservation, education and capacity exchange. I researched mother-young interactions in gorillas and chimpanzees, in captivity and the wild. After that, I worked for three years in Indonesia, where I developed and implemented youth ambassador and community engagement programmes on local and regional scales. I co-founded WildHub, a community of nature conservation professionals, in 2020 and work as their Community Lead. I am furthermore on the Advisory Board of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) at the University of Kent where I obtained my PhD on capacity development for conservation in 2022.