Tanja Straka PhD » Team

Tanja is an urban ecologist and a global expert on bats. Fascinated by the human dimensions of wildlife, she explores human-wildlife relationships and anthropogenic impacts in urban areas.

Tanja studied as a biologist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, and while there developed a fascination with bats. This led to her PhD (2015) at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where she studied urban wetlands in relation to bats and people. It was here she developed a passion for human dimensions research. She now approaches bat conservation with both the natural and social sciences in view, an indispensable point of view in human-dominated landscapes.

After her return to Germany she worked as a scientific officer for Nature and Wildlife research at the German Animal Welfare Federation. This followed again postdoc positions in urban ecology such as at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW), TU Berlin and FU Berlin, grappling with the tensions between differing perspectives on conservation and animal welfare. Now a professor of Natural Areas and Wildlife Management at Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences, she teaches about human-wildlife coexistence and the human dimensions of conservation.