Laura studied for a MSc at AgroParisTech, the Paris Institute of Technology for Life, Food and Environmental Sciences, focusing on environmental management and business performance. On the strength of this experience, she then turned her attention to ecology and evolution and completed a second MSc at the University of Lyon in France. Her MSc research focused on the relationships between hormone levels and parasite load in Asian elephants. Laura completed her PhD with the University of Lyon and Nelson Madela University in South Africa, in conservation biology. Her PhD research investigated the effects of ecological and management factors on wild African elephant biology and behaviours living within different conservation systems. This work aimed to elaborate a multidimensional welfare indicator for these South African elephant populations. Laura received the 3rd Prize of the Jane Goodall Institute France Young Researcher Award (2023) for her work during her PhD.

Laura’s role as a postdoctoral researcher in the Biodiversity and Sustainability Research Group is to coordinate the Uganda research programme that aims to experimentally quantify the non-consumptive effects of human predation and the potential implications for spatial food web dynamics in a multi-predator-prey system in Murchison Falls National Park. Her work also focusses on the development of field-friendly methods to assess biological indicators of Ugandan wildlife.