Gwen joined CEED in 2015 after being appointed as a Post Doctoral Research Fellow through the University of Queensland. She studies how to improve the effectiveness of conservation spending, and has a particular interest in questions related to the costs and benefits of managing protected areas.

Gwen earned a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology in 2014, through the University of Tennessee, supervised by Dr Paul R Armsworth. Her dissertation focused on decision making in conservation, particularly how planners can account for the costs of managing protected areas.