Jonathan Newman has been the Vice President of Research at Wilfrid Laurier University since 2019. In this role, he is responsible for strategic leadership in research, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He also oversees all university research centres and institutes and leads Laurier’s 15-year research partnership with the Government of the Northwest Territories.
Jonathan has held previous academic positions at Southern Illinois University in the US, the University of Oxford in the UK, and the University of Guelph. At Guelph, Jonathan served as department chair, school director, and dean. As a researcher, Jonathan is a grassland ecologist who studies the impact of climate change and invasive species on the structure and function of temperate grasslands. He is the author of two books, Climate Change Biology (2011, CABI Press) and Defending Biodiversity: Environmental Science and Ethics (2017, Cambridge University Press). He is also the co-editor of Grasslands and Climate Change (2019, Cambridge University Press). Jonathan has served as an editor for the Journal of Ecology, the Journal of Animal Ecology, Frontiers in Conservation Sciences, and Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology. Jonathan is a fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and of the Royal Society of Biology, both in the UK.
Jonathan received a BA and PhD from the University at Albany, State University of New York.