Will Smith

• Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Nottingham

I am an evolutionary biologist studying feral and wild organisms. My current focus is on 'city pigeons' and their wild 'rock dove' cousins. I am based at the University of Nottingham.

Together with Dr Michał Jezierski (University of Birmingham), I have been running an in-depth study of these birds since 2019. We manage a mark-recapture project across ~30 colonies in caves, barns, and ruins. The domestic pigeon is a major model organism and has been studied for decades to provide insights into animal behaviour, evolution, and urban adaptation. In comparison, Rock Doves have historically attracted little interest, despite the potential for exciting comparative research. Studying these populations can help us to better understand avian behaviour, wild-feral hybridisation, and domestication. We are very interested in academic collaborations which could help us to learn more about these animals.

Feral organisms are wild-living populations descending from escaped domestic strains. They play an important role at the wild-domestic interface, and have disproportionate social, economic, and ecological importance. I am interested in their evolution, and in understanding how they have become so successful in a human-dominated world (where many related species are at risk of extinction). My research combines evolutionary genomics and natural history.

I am also interested in Britain's non-native avifauna (e.g. Golden Pheasants), evolution on islands (e.g endemic Wren subspecies in Scotland), and in avian behaviour (e.g. Cuckoo brood parasitism, pigeon movement ecology).

• 2025–present Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Nottingham
• 2023–2025 Postdoctoral research associate, University of Helsinki

• 2023 University of Oxford, DPhil
• 2019 University of Oxford, BA

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