Cathy Dwyer

Professor Cathy M. Dwyer currently takes leading positions at both Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) and the Jeanne Marchig International Centre for Animal Welfare Education (JMICAWE), both located in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. She is head of the Animal Behaviour & Welfare team of SRUC within the Animal & Veterinary Sciences Department and is director of the Jeanne Marchig International Centre for Animal Welfare Education. She has close to 100 peer-reviewed publications on behaviour and welfare in various species, of which predominantly sheep. Her work has been cited almost 3,000 times, resulting in a H-index of 31. Her long standing research interest is into mother-offspring interactions. Her research in this area has spanned basic science understanding of the neurobiological factors mediating differences in behaviour, to applied studies which seek to improve offspring survival on farm through improved management and genetic selection for key traits. Currently she researches the impact on sheep welfare of different management practices in farming systems, and how this relates to other public goods, such as measures of biodiversity and sustainability. Besides research she teaches the biology of animal suffering on the MSc in Applied Animal Behaivour and Animal Welfare at the University of Edinburgh and also on the online MSc in International Animal Welfare, Ethics and Law at University of Edinburgh. She supervises undergraduate projects, MSc dissertation projects, and PhD students for both SRUC and University of Edinburgh.