Baroness Willis of Summertown

 The life peerage awarded to Professor Katherine Jane Willis, CBE, has been gazetted in the name, style and title of Baroness Willis of Summertown, of Summertown in the City of Oxford. Letters Patent, 8 July, 2022.

Katherine Jane Willis was born 16 January 1964, and is a biologist, who studies the relationship between long-term ecosystem dynamics and environmental change. She is Professor of Biodiversity in the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, and an adjunct Professor in Biology at the University of Bergen. 

In 2018 she was elected as Principal of St Edmund Hall, and took up this position from 1 October. She held the Tasso Leventis Chair of Biodiversity at Oxford and was founding Director, now Associate Director, of the Biodiversity Institute Oxford. Baroness Willis of Summertown was Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 2013 to 2018. Her nomination by the House of Lords Appointments Commission as a Crossbench life peer was announced on 17 May 2022.

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