ABOUT US
For 90 years, the Harrison Institute has promoted biodiversity conservation and environmental protection through research, capacity building, and working with local communities.
Today, it focuses on early career scientists and students in the UK/Europe, Asia, and Africa who are committed to challenging the extinction crisis and ecosystem degradation, and who are looking for answers within the context of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Currently, the Institute is looking to strengthen further its vision of working with, and enabling future leaders in the biodiversity sciences in the tropics and subtropics. Together with partners in the UK and abroad, the Institute wishes to develop and enhance centres of excellence in biodiversity research, citizen-science, and biodiversity conservation in Asia and Africa.
The Harrison Institute is a UK registered charity (No. 268830) and CITES listed (GB010).
WHAT WE DO
The Harrison Institute seeks to enable and empower the next generation of young biodiversity scientists and conservationists. It has three principal objectives:
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Building research capacity through training, co-supervising, mentoring, and supporting students and early career biodiversity scientists in the UK/Europe, Asia, and Africa
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Conducting collaborative, collections-based research to discover and describe tropical biodiversity, especially mammals and birds, including species new to science
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Developing education programmes and conservation initiatives to inspire community involvement in environmental protection.
WHERE WE WORK
The Harrison Institute has a history of research and capacity building in Asia, Arabia, and Africa and more recently, through the projects of our honorary research fellows, in Melanesia.
STAFF and TRUSTEES
The Institute actively collaborates with universities, museums and NGOs on biodiversity programmes in the Old World tropics. Its UK staff promote, facilitate and participate in these programmes. In addition, it has in-country, local staff in the Old World tropics who work on a range of projects, which are supported by external grants. It also promotes the research and conservation programmes of its honorary research fellows.
The Institute is supervised by a Board of Trustees drawn from a wide range of backgrounds.
FUNDING
The Harrison Institute has helped raise over $2.3 million from external funding sources for international biodiversity research and conservation projects. This is in addition to the substantial financial contribution it has made from its own charitable trust fund for the past 50 years.
Institute staff have led, or significantly contributed to, projects supported by:
* Anglo-Omani Society
* CEPF (Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund)
* Darwin Initiative (UK Government)
* EU Erasmus+ programme
* GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility)
* National Geographic (USA)
* National Science Foundation (USA)
* Rufford Foundation (UK)
* Waterloo Foundation (UK).