Alison Specht

Alison Specht (BScHons, PhD UQ) is an environmental scientist with broad expertise in research, teaching, and community engagement. For many years she was an academic at the University of Queensland and Southern Cross University. From 2009 to 2014 she was the director of the Australian Centre for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (www.aceas.org.au), a facility of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (www.tern.org.au), based at the University of Queensland. Between September 2015 and January 2019 she was Director of the CEntre for the Synthesis and Analysis of Biodiversity in France, CESAB. She was a member of the DataONE (www.dataone.org) Usability and Assessment Working Group from its inception in 2010 to 2021, and has interests and expertise in data management and the preservation of archival data. She initiated the formation of the International Synthesis Consortium (www.synthesis-consortium.org), whose mission is to increase the effectiveness and recognition of the value of synthesis centres. Since 2020 she has held an advisory position with TERN, as an Ecosystem Research Analyst. She was a co-lead of the PARSEC project (www.parsecproject.org) a Belmont Forum funded project entitled 'Building new tools for data sharing and re-use through a transnational investigation of the socioeconomic impacts of protected areas'.