Adam’s latest book, The Book of Humans: The Story of How We Became Us is due for release this September and re-examines what sets us apart in the animal kingdom. Adam’s previous book, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived is the story of the whole of human history, retold with DNA as a text, everyone and everything from Neanderthals to serial killers, from redheads to race, dead kings to plague, evolution to epigenetics. Richard Dawkins described it as ‘well-written, stimulating and entertaining. What’s more important, he consistently gets it right.’ Adam’s first book, Creation (Penguin 2014), was about the origin of life on Earth, and the future of life in the era of genetic engineering, synthetic biology and spider-goats. Creation was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2014.
Adam is the presenter of the flagship science programme on BBC Radio 4, Inside Science, as well as The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry, and a host of other Radio 4 documentaries on subjects ranging from the inheritance of intelligence, MMR and autism, epigenetics, human evolution, astronomy and art, science and cinema, scientific fraud, and the evolution of sex. He’s also a regular guest on the Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox and Robin Ince.
On television he’s written and presented many documentaries, including The Beauty of Anatomy – a five-part series for BBC4 (2014) on the story of anatomical art. Horizon: Playing God (BBC2, Jan 2012) on genetic engineering and synthetic biology (winner of Golden Dragon Awards, Shanghai, 2012); The Gene Code (BBC4, Apr 2011), and The Cell (BBC4, Sept 2009) – a three-part series charting the story of biology- (winner Best Documentary at the ABSW awards (2010) & listed in the Daily Telegraph’s list of 10 Classic science programmes.)
Adam’s background is in genetics and evolution. He did a PhD at the Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond St Hospital, studying the role of genes involved in the development of the eye. He worked at the science journal Nature, during which time he launched and presented the award-winning Nature Podcast, and produced and directed many short films, including a music video tribute to the retiring Space Shuttle. As a result, he has an Erdos-Bacon-Sabbath number of 15. Adam has also worked on many films as scientific adviser.
He lectures extensively at UCL, where he has an Honorary Fellowship, and in public all around the world, including prestigious events such as the Douglas Adam’s Memorial Lecture, the British Humanist Association’s Darwin Day Lecture, The BFI, the Hay Festival, and the Cheltenham Literary and Science Festivals. He co-authored a study on the effects of video games on adolescents and violence in 2016.
Most recently, Saba completed her second UK tour following her latest 10 part series with the BBC – This Wild Life that was broadcast on BBC Two. Filmed over a period of six months, this fascinating observational-documentary followed Saba and her family as they move to the remote north of Kenya to run a high-end eco-lodge called Elephant Watch Camp, and continue with their conservation work at Save the Elephants in Samburu National Reserve. As the engaging presenter of an earlier three part BBC series about Samburu, The Secret Life of Elephants, broadcast to more than 4.2 million viewers, Saba became well known as the face of her father’s charity, Save the Elephants.
Born and raised in Kenya by her zoologist father and author mother, her total immersion in African culture and wildlife, together with a first class degree in Social Anthropology, made her a compelling and knowledgeable presenter on the BBC’s hugely successful Big Cat Diaries and Wild series. She has also produced, directed and presented a wide variety of programmes for the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet, winning multiple awards for Heart of a Lioness and Saba and the Rhino’s Secret. Her documentary series Unknown Africa shone a light on the African continent with features on Angola, the Comoros Islands and the Central African Republic.
Saba was also a popular presenter on the BBC Holiday programme, taking viewers to adventurous, exotic locations like Brunei, Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea and Antarctica.
Having served as a trustee of Save the Elephants for a decade, and tirelessly committed to the conservation of African wildlife and the rights of its traditional people, Saba’s passion and insight make her a captivating and animated public speaker. She has spoken worldwide on topics ranging from animal consciousness and biodiversity to HIV and peace negotiations in Kenya, and is a regular guest speaker at the Royal Geographical Society where she is a Fellow.
Gordon will be embarking on his nationwide UK theatre tour this autumn and has most recently been on our screens with the BBC series Animals with Cameras and Reindeer Family and Me at the end of 2017.
Before this, Gordon presented the highly acclaimed Tribes, Predators and Me, Elephant Family And Me and Life in the Snow on BBC One and Life in Polar Bear Town and Tribes, Predators and Me on BBC Two.
Gordon also tried something very new in another series called Into the Wild where he takes celebrities such as Alastair Campbell, Dermot O’Leary and Sara Cox amongst others up and close with Britain’s beautiful wildlife.
Gordon’s other recent productions include Super Cute Animals for BBC One, Gorilla Family and Me, The Snow Wolf Family & Me, the highly acclaimed BBC Two series The Polar Bear Family & Me and The Bear Family & Me, for which he received a Royal Television Society award for his presenting work. He has also recently featured as a guest presenter on BBC Two’s Winterwatch, the countryside series with which he has had a long association, both in front of and behind the camera.
After 20 years filming wild and wonderful creatures in remote areas of the planet, Gordon Buchanan has a reputation for relishing dangerous and tough assignments. He has taken part in challenging expeditions and adventures around the globe including South America, Asia, Africa, Papua New Guinea, Russia and Alaska, always with a view to raising awareness of the fragility of the world’s endangered species and habitats.
Notable among his recent TV credits are Wild Burma, The Dark: Nature’s Nighttime World, Land of the Lost Wolves, Lost Land of the Tiger, Lost Land of the Volcano and Lost Land of the Jaguar. Gordon also contributed to numerous award-winning BBC, Discovery and National Geographic wildlife programmes and documentaries, resulting in an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Stirling in recognition of his outstanding services to conservation and wildlife filmmaking. He has also won the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland award in the environment category.
As a public speaker, Scottish born Gordon Buchanan is a spellbinding storyteller who can captivate an audience with his fund of wild and wonderful tales about the natural world, while at the same time educating and informing on topical issues.
One of television’s busiest presenters, BAFTA award-winning wildlife expert Steve Backshall has been passionate about the wild world ever since he could crawl. Steve has most recently appeared on our screens in Deadly Dinosaurs and Monster Mountain for CBBC, as well as guest presenting Springwatch on BBC Two.
Steve’s previous credits include the hugely successful Wild Alaska Live (BBC One, PBS) and Hedgehog A&E (Channel 5). Steve received critical acclaim for his canoeing expedition of one of the world’s wildest rivers, the Baliem in New Guinea, for Down The Mighty River with Steve Backshall (BBC Two). Previous to this, Steve was on our screens in the two-part series Extreme Mountain Challenge (BBC Two) and Fierce (ITV). In 2016 Steve co-presented the hugely successful series Big Blue Live (BBC One, PBS) live from Monterey, California . He also completed an expedition to Venezuela on behalf of the BBC as well a set of performances on Strictly Come Dancing (BBC One). Steve also fronts the CBBC Deadly series’, travelling the world to film Deadly Pole to Pole, Deadly 60, Live and Deadly, Deadly 360, Deadly on a Mission and most recently, Backshall’s Deadly Adventures. In 2011 Steve was recognised with a BAFTA award for The Best Children’s Television Presenter for his work on Deadly 60, as well as the series itself being honoured with a BAFTA for The Best Factual Series.
Steve’s extreme adventures also include being part of the Lost Land of the Tiger, Lost Land of the Volcano and the Lost Land of the Jaguar (BBC One). He made the first decent into an unexplored sinkhole for the Emmy Nominated epic Expedition Borneo (BBC One) and trekked to the heart of America’s most inhospitable terrain for Expedition Alaska (Discovery). Closer to home, Steve has presented Britain’s Lost World, Extreme Caving, Inside Out, The One Show, The Nature of Britain and The Really Wild Show.
Steve is also a prolific author, having published 13 books. His most recent novel, Shark Seas, is the fourth in his children’s adventure series The Falcon Chronicles which so far comprises of Tiger Wars, Ghosts of the Forest and Wilds of the Wolf. He has also produced non-fiction; Looking for Adventure chronicles Steve’s expeditions in New Guinea and Mountain is an account of his most breath-taking climbing adventures.
Steve is a proud ambassador for The Scouts and the Get Outside champion for Ordinance Survey. Steve has also released an exciting new range of outdoor gear for kids with Mountain Warehouse.
Following the success of Steve’s Wild World Live UK Tour, Steve completed his Deadly 60 Live Tour of Australia. Steve is hugely popular with young television audiences who are both terrified and delighted to watch his encounters with extraordinary and inspiring predators. This success lead to Deadly Days Out, a BBC series of events bringing live animals to locations across the UK as well as several sell out tours; the biggest single day had an estimated 14,000 people and over the last few years Steve has talked live to over 300,000 people. Steve is an old-fashioned action hero whose leisure pursuits include mountaineering, kayaking, scuba diving, martial arts and endurance running, which together with his unsurpassed wildlife knowledge, make him a compelling and motivational speaker for a multitude of audiences.
Having presented Operation Wild for BBC One in 2014, vet Steve has rarely been absent from British TV screens since his talents were spotted at Bristol Veterinary School and he was chosen to appear in BBC One’s highly popular documentary series Vets School and Vets in Practice.
Most recently, Steve guest presented Big Week at the Zoo on Channel 5. His other recent ventures include Trust Me I’m A Vet, Panda Babies, Animal Kingdom, Safari Vet School and Nature’s Newborns for ITV, Britain’s Big Wildlife Revival for BBC One and The Wonder of Dogs for BBC Two. He has also frequently appeared on the Alan Titchmarsh Show as the in-house vet.
Still working as a small animal vet in the family run practice in Cheshire, Steve moves easily between the world of domestic pets and the wider world of wild animals across the globe. He presented major wildlife series for the BBC such as Steve Leonard’s Ultimate Killers, Steve Leonard’s Extreme Animals and Incredible Animal Journeys as well as appearing with Kate Humble in The Hottest Place on Earth. He also co-presented the famously successful series of BBC One’s Orangutan Diary.
Steve revels in sharing his close encounters with spectacular and exotic species and is much in demand as an entertaining and motivational speaker not only for organisations like the National Geographical Society but also for schools and smaller conservation groups. He is also a fervent supporter and active fundraiser for a number of charities close to his heart, including the PDSA, the UK’s largest veterinary charity, Wildlife Vets International, Painted Dog Conservation which helps the survival of African wild dogs and Dog A.I.D. which works with the pets of disabled people.
Dr Tara Shine is an expert in the field of climate change. She approaches the subject as an environmental scientist and from the perspective of the impacts of climate change on people. Her focus is on solutions that are fair and that work for all people whether they are rich or poor.
Tara advises world leaders, governments, multilateral agencies and civil society organisations on climate change, environmental policy and development assistance. She knows the inside world of the international climate change negotiations as well as the role that business and politics play in the complex geopolitics of climate change and biodiversity conservation.
Not content to work for change from behind a desk or in international conferences, Tara enjoys getting out into the wild to explore these issues first hand. At home in any environment Tara enjoys meeting people and getting their real world analysis of the challenges they face.
Tara presented the technology episode of Brave New World with Stephen Hawking in 2011. This science documentary television mini-series examines how science is striving for humankind’s next leap forward. The technology episode was filmed in Masdar City in Abu Dhabi and featured cutting edge renewable energy technology and electric cars.
Tara was also a presenter on one of the BBC’s most ambitious projects Expedition Borneo, where she was part of the expedition team that explored previously uncharted territory in search of new wildlife species. Tara focused on the people wildlife interactions and the underlying causes of biodiversity loss including deforestation and illegal logging.
Tara’s story of discovery in West Africa was the subject of an acclaimed BBC2 Natural World Documentary, Lost Crocodiles of the Pharaohs. It captures Tara’s personal journey and her discovery of Nile Crocodiles in Mauritania, where the experts said they could not exist.
After 4 years fully engaged in international policy making in the fields of sustainable development and climate change, Tara is keen to bring these insights to a broader audience. Tara’s wealth of knowledge and real world experiences from the local to the truly global, make her a sought after specialist TV presenter and engaging public speaker.
Ferne Corrigan is a wildlife and children’s television presenter and has been a regular face on the CBeebies channel for the last five years for the BAFTA nominated series My Pet and Me . With a love of wildlife, she is keen to promote a passion for the natural world to broad audiences.
Ferne studied zoology at her hometown of Dublin and went straight on to undertake a masters in wildlife documentary production. Her studies and work have brought her to incredible places, from the Galapagos to Malawi and in between presenter work, Ferne is working her way up to producer level with the hope of making films about her passions: wildlife and conservation.
Ferne has a fresh and engaging presenting style which combined with her natural history knowledge, makes her one of the new generation of presenters to watch out for.
Most recently, Ben featured in the Natural World documentary Red Ape: Saving the Orangutans on BBC Two.
Ben has also recently presented Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots on BBC Four and The Day the Dinosaurs Died on BBC Two, as well as presenting his second UK theatre tour, So You Think You Know About Dinosaurs…?! in Spring 2018.
Ben has a BSc in Animal Behaviour from Anglia Ruskin University, an MSc in Wild Animal Biology from the Royal Veterinary College and a PhD, which looked at monkey evolution on tropical islands, entitled ‘Primates of the Caribbean’ with the University College London and the Zoological Society of London. In addition to his role as Teaching Fellow at Anglia Ruskin University, he has presented a number of television programmes, including Attenborough and the Giant Dinosaur with Sir David Attenborough on BBC One, in addition to his own award-winning six-part BBC Four series Secrets of Bones. He has also presented The Human Hive on Radio4, in addition to the series Bone Stories.
Throughout the last decade, Ben has lived and worked all over the world, mainly within great ape conservation – spending several years in central Africa developing and managing a leading chimpanzee conservation field site for the renowned chimpanzee scientist Dr Jane Goodall, where amongst other things was responsible for habituating wild chimps. He has also worked extensively across South East Asia for an orangutan conservation charity, researched animal artifacts from Imperial Chinese tombs, marine life in Madagascar and studied introduced monkeys throughout the Caribbean archipelago. He has also repeatedly traveled to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, where he has helped lead wildlife watching tours. Ben is an accomplished public speaker and has spoken at a range of conferences, public debates and science festivals, including the Cheltenham Science Festival and for TEDx. He also writes science-based articles for The Guardian.
Ben grew up on coastal Norfolk and still likes nothing better than to get out on the beaches there to see which species (both dead and alive) he can find. He now lives in Bristol where despite not having any pets, he lives with Lola, an articulated howler monkey skeleton.
Ben is heavily involved in a wide range of charities and organisations. His affiliations include being a Trustee of the Jane Goodall Institute UK; an Ambassador for the Marine conservation Society; a Council member for the Primate Society of Great Britain (PSGB); Ambassador for the Norfolk Wildlife Trust; Ambassador for Bristol Museum; Patron for National Sciences Collections Association (NatSCA); and a Fellow of the Linnean Society.
One of Britain’s most loved television presenters, BAFTA award-winning Michaela Strachan has been a regular face on our screens for over two decades.
Michaela is one of the regular presenting team on Springwatch and has recently been back on BBC Two for Autumnwatch and Winterwatch. Michaela has worked extensively as a presenter on the BBC, spending fifteen years presenting the hugely popular The Really Wild Show and ten years on Countryfile, as well as Orangutan Diaries, Elephant Diaries, Shark Encounters and Orangutan Rescue.
Michaela’s Wild Challenge (Channel 5) was a double BAFTA award-winning production; earning Michaela the BAFTA for Best Children’s Presenter and the programme the BAFTA for Best Children’s Factual. Other programmes for Channel 5 include Michaela’s Zoo Babies, Michaela’s Animal Road Trip, Animal Rescue Squad and Animal Families.
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For National Geographic, Michaela has fronted Safari Live, live from the Kruger National Park, Adopt a Wild Animal, Postcards from the Wild and Big 5 Little 5 which she presented alongside long-standing TV friend Chris Packham. For the Natural History Unit South Africa Michaela volunteered in a sea bird rescue centre for The Great Penguin Rescue. Michaela has also presented two series of Great British Ghosts (Yesterday TV), One Man and his Dog (BBC), The Fossil Roadshow (BBC), Full Bloom (BBC) and Club Vegetarian (Granda TV).
Michaela’s presenting career began on such programmes as TV-am, The Wide Awake Club with Timmy Mallett, Boogie Box, The Hitman and Her and The Really Wild Show.
Michaela is much in demand for personal appearances, award ceremonies and presentations. Her natural effervescence and engaging humour endear her to audiences, corporate and educational audiences alike. With her extensive experience of wildlife conservation all around the world and her gift for communication, Michaela is a popular choice to host wildlife festivals and to host natural history, environmental and ecologist events and present award ceremonies.
Michaela has also been touring zoos, wildlife parks and festivals with her children’s show Michaela Strachan’s Really Wild Adventures, a fun, factual, educational and interactive show which has been adapted from her book of the same name.
Michaela will be appearing in the arena spectacular Walking with Dinosaurs across UK theatres in Summer 2018.
This year, Danielle George has been on our screens presenting Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots on BBC Four, Search for a New Earth on BBC Two with Professor Stephen Hawking and Nation of Inventors on BBC One North West. In 2016, Danielle presented Televisions Opening Night: How the Box was Born on BBC Four and in 2014 The Royal Institution Christmas lectures ‘How to hack your Home’.
Danielle studied Astrophysics and worked at Jodrell Bank Observatory. She was awarded a Professorship at the age of 38 and appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2016 Queen’s honours list for services to engineering through public engagement. In 2016 she received the Royal Academy of Engineering Rooke Medal for services to engineering and in 2017 received the Harold Hartley Medal for outstanding contribution to the field of Measurement and Control.
Danielle’s research is dedicated to solving one the 14 world engineering grand challenges of the 21st century; engineering the tools for scientific discovery. Her expertise in radio frequency engineering and microwave communications is applicable to broad range of scientific and industrial sectors. To date her research has focused on delivering class-leading ultra-low noise receivers for Space and Aerospace applications. She has worked with agriculturists on the development of instrumentation to measure water usage and with a number of multi-national companies such as Rolls Royce where she worked on industrial gas turbine engines.
Her passion for raising public awareness of the positive impact engineering and science has on all aspects of our everyday lives, as well as highlighting to young people the immense depth and breadth of opportunities a career in science and engineering can offer, has led to Danielle’s numerous current high-profile Ambassadorial roles. Following on from the success of Danielle’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures she is the co-founder of the “Manchester Robot Orchestra” with huge success in many countries around the world and generated over 1m hits on social media. Her STEM ‘emoji’ recognizes her dedication to science and engineering stating her most notable fun achievement as ‘turning a sky scraper into a giant game of Tetris’. She has delivered TED and TEDx talks and her hometown of Newcastle recognised her as a ‘Great North Contemporary Great’ in the 2015 Great North Culture Exhibition.
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