Tim Blackburn is Professor of Invasion Biology at University College London. Previously, he was the Director of the Institute of Zoology, the research arm of the Zoological Society of London, where he still has a research affiliation. He has been awarded Honorary Professorships at the Universities of Adelaide, Birmingham and Oxford, been named an Honorary Research Associate at the Centre of Excellence in Invasion Biology, Stellenbosch, and been an invited plenary speaker at numerous international conferences. His work in the 1990s with Kevin Gaston helped to define the newly emerging field of macroecology - the study of large-scale patterns in the distribution and abundance of species - and he has since gone on to make substantial contributions to the science of biological invasions. His own writing has appeared in The Biologist and The Conversation, and his findings have been covered by (amongst others) PBS, the BBC's Inside Science and Countryfile, The Guardian, Telegraph, and Evening Standard, Metro, The National (UAE), India Times, Republic (India), Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), Publimetro (Mexico), Irish Times, and ABC (Australia).