I am a PhD student at The University of Manchester in the UK. My research is a collaborative effort between the Faculty of Life Sciences (supervised by Richard Preziosi) and the Institute of Development Policy and Management (co-supervised by Anthony Bebbington). I focus on conservation issues and particularly on the role that communities can have in conservation initiatives. Over the last few years I have been working in the Sumaco Biosphere Reserve in the Ecuadorian Amazon. I have concentrated on socio-economic factors and land-use in indigenous Kichwa communities. Specifically, how these factors translate into environmental impacts and whether these impacts feedback to the communities themselves in the form of local management regimes. I have also been working on trying to get communities involved in biodiversity monitoring and devising appropiate biodiversity indicators.