Dr. McNamara is an interdisciplinary conservation scientist with over ten years of experience in conservation in Africa and Asia. He is an expert in the human dimensions of conservation and works with communities to integrate their needs into conservation planning and decision-making. 

Dr. McNamara has led the development of conservation social science research programs in diverse settings. His research includes working with farmers in Gabon to integrate wildlife-friendly farming practices that reduce human-elephant conflict, collaborating with livestock herders in India to prevent accidental poisoning of critically endangered vultures, and studying the impacts of land use changes with hunters in Ghana to better understand how these shifts influence wild meat harvesting.

Dr. McNamara holds a Ph.D. from Imperial College, London, where he studied the economic and social dynamics of the wild meat trade in Ghana. He supervises Ph.D. students at the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the University of Ghana. Dr. McNamara works for Biodiversity Consultancy Ltd in Cambridge, United Kingdom, where he provides social science and community-based conservation expertise on their global portfolio of conservation projects.