Since 2007, Professor Philip Hulme holds the inaugural Chair in Plant Biosecurity at Lincoln University, a unique position established by Lincoln University and the New Zealand Ministry of Primary Industries, which aims to bridge the gap between academic research and policy implementation in this strategically important field.  In this capacity, he leads the World-Leading Biosecurity Theme at the Bio-Protection Research Centre, New Zealand. Prior to taking up his current position he was the Head of Ecosystem Dynamics at the NERC Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in the UK where he coordinated major European programmes on biological invasions including DAISIE (Delivering Alien Invasive Species Inventories for Europe) and within ALARM (Assessing Large Scale Risk to Biodiversity using Tested Methods). His primary research focus is in quantifying, predicting and managing the risks arising from biological invasions.

As a leading invasion biologist, has long argued for better communication between scientists and practitioners, and helped identify key disparities between the needs of managers and research priorities while developing tools to better inform invasive species management, risk assessment and policy response.  More recently, as an editor of the Journal of Applied Ecology, he launched Practitioners’ Perspectives a new feature to give voice to stakeholders in mainstream ecology journals.

Selected Publications

Hulme PE (2012) Weed risk assessment: a way forward or a waste of time?  Journal of Applied Ecology, 49, 10-19

Hulme PE (2011) Contrasting impacts of climate driven flowering phenology on changes in alien and native plant species distributions.  New Phytologist, 189, 272–281.

Hulme PE (2011) Addressing the threat to biodiversity from botanic gardens.  Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 26, 168-174.

Hulme PE & Weser C (2011) Mixed messages from multiple information sources on invasive species: a case of too much of a good thing? Diversity & Distributions, 17, 1152-1160.

Hulme PE (2011) Biosecurity: the changing face of invasion biology In: Fifty Years of Invasion Ecology – The Legacy of Charles Elton  pp. 301-314 David M. Richardson (Ed.) Blackwells.

Vilà M., Basnou C., Pyšek P., Josefsson M., Genovesi, P., Gollasch S., Nentwig W., Olenin S., , Roques A., Roy D., Hulme P.E. & DAISIE partners (2010) How well do we understand the impacts of alien species on ecosystem services? A pan-European cross-taxa assessment.  Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 8, 135-144.

Hulme PE (2009) Trade, transport and trouble: managing invasive species pathways in an era of globalisation. Journal of Applied Ecology 46, 10-18.

Hulme PE, Pyšek P, Nentwig W & Vilà M. (2009) Will threat of biological invasions unite the European Union? Science 324, 40-41.