The work is giving them experience within a long-term research project under Dr Charlotte Christensen and the field team. As the first beneficiaries of Mpala’s Kenya Students Fund, they receive three-month placements that offer practical training, mentorship and time to explore where their interests might lead.

Both arrived with a commitment to conservation. Their first weeks at Mpala have brought new interests and a clearer understanding of what research requires.

A new way of seeing birds

For Halima, the placement is a first step towards a career in wildlife research. She studied environmental conservation and natural resource management at the University of Nairobi, a course she chose knowing that she wanted to work in conservation.

At Mpala, that ambition is taking shape through participation in the Vulturine Guineafowl Project. Assisting the team gives her opportunities to learn how field activities and careful record-keeping contribute to an ongoing study.

One of her strongest memories from the first month, however, came from October Big Day.

Before the event, Halima would notice birds without necessarily knowing their names or much about their lives. Spending the day with experienced birders changed the way she looked at them. She could ask questions, learn about different species and discover how details such as nests offer clues to the birds around her.

The experience sparked an interest she hopes to continue after leaving Mpala. Birdwatching has become a way to keep learning independently, beyond the activities of the internship.

Halima came to Mpala knowing she wanted to pursue wildlife research. Her first month has given her another interest to carry into that journey—and a reason to look more closely at familiar surroundings.

Connecting education with experience

Diana has a background in wildlife conservation and management from the University of Eldoret. Her experience with conservation organisations has focused largely on education. At Mpala, she values the opportunity to connect that work with practical research.

The placement is helping her bridge classroom learning and fieldwork. Taking part in a working project brings her closer to the decisions, adjustments and shared responsibilities involved in collecting research data.

Patience has been one of her most important lessons.

Fieldwork does not always unfold as expected, she explained. Learning to respond when plans change is part of the experience, as is recognising the risks of working in the field and paying attention to the guidance of the team.

Teamwork has also stood out. Research activities depend on people coordinating their efforts, communicating clearly and understanding how their tasks contribute to the work around them. Diana is developing that understanding through participation.

She hopes to continue her education, including pursuing a master’s degree. Her time at Mpala is giving her practical experience to draw on as she considers further study and future opportunities.

Learning the work behind the data

For both interns, the Vulturine Guineafowl Project offers a view of research as a sequence of connected activities. Capturing birds, tagging them and fitting trackers are visible parts of the process. Recording and organising the accompanying information require care of their own.

Their assistance with data entry places them within that process. Information gathered in the field must remain accurate and useful when researchers return to it later. Learning how to handle those records is part of understanding the consistency on which long-term research depends.

Working with an established field team also gives Diana and Halima opportunities to ask questions and learn from experience accumulated over many seasons. Their placements allow them to see how methods are put into practice and how a team responds to the conditions of a particular day.

These experiences are helping them build on what they already know while identifying skills they want to develop further.

Looking ahead

The Kenya Students Fund supports Kenyan students through research participation, technical training and mentorship at Mpala. For Diana and Halima, that support has opened a period in which they can contribute to a project while exploring their own direction in conservation.

Their first month has already left each with something distinct. Halima has discovered an enthusiasm for birdwatching and an ambition to pursue wildlife research. Diana is gaining field experience that complements her background in conservation education and informs her plans for further study.

Both still have more of the placement ahead of them. For now, they are learning through the daily work of the project: assisting, observing, asking questions and becoming more familiar with the demands of field research. Those experiences will help shape what they choose to do next.

Led by principal investigator Prof. Tarje Nissen-Meyer of the University of Exeter, the workshop combined classroom sessions, practical demonstrations and fieldwork. It introduced participants to sensors that record ground vibrations and to questions about how those measurements might be useful.

The possible applications discussed included wildlife monitoring, soil health research and understanding crop-raiding elephants. These are areas for investigation and testing. Recording a vibration is one step; determining what produced it and whether it can support a dependable conservation application requires further work.

A practical highlight was assembling the Asili Sensa sensor system locally. Dr. Jiayao Meng, working with the Earth Rover programme and the University of Exeter, joined James Koech and Mary Dusabe of the Centre for Ecosystem Restoration–Kenya in building the sensors.

Assembly made the technology part of the learning experience. Participants could engage with the equipment itself, alongside demonstrations of its use in the landscape. Developing that familiarity is useful for future testing, maintenance and adaptation to local conditions.

Mpala provided a setting where technical discussions could meet real research needs. A shared landscape used by wildlife, researchers and neighbouring communities raises questions about where sensors might be deployed, what information would be valuable and how observations could be checked against other evidence.

Further sensor development, field testing and coordinated data collection are the next steps. Those stages will help establish what the system can reliably detect and where it may offer useful information.

For Asili Sensa, the workshop was both an introduction to a method and an opportunity to build the skills around it. Its promise lies in the work that follows: carefully testing the sensors, learning from the signals they record and developing applications that respond to conditions on the ground.

The Master in Public Affairs students, from Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, were taking part in Clean Energy Transition in Africa, taught by Professor Denise Mauzerall. At Mpala, the course’s policy questions became conversations about the systems people operate, the choices they make and the experience they bring to managing energy.

Mpala’s John Onyango and Piyiet Leshan hosted the students and led the local programme. Drawing on their knowledge of the centre and surrounding communities, they connected visits to energy infrastructure with discussions about its design, use and maintenance.

The programme took in Mpala’s solar plant, Nanja dams and Turbine, and water infrastructure. These systems support the people, facilities and daily activities behind research at the centre. They also provided examples that students could use to examine what makes an energy system dependable over time, from its initial design through routine maintenance and repairs.

Visits to Lekiji and Ilmotiok broadened the discussion. Solar water pumping, household solar systems, biogas and traditional fuels showed the range of energy sources used across the landscape. Community experience brought practical insight into how these options fit different purposes, including supplying water, lighting homes and preparing food.

Operating infrastructure in a wildlife landscape added another dimension. Damage to solar panels at a community borehole prompted discussion about how installations can account for animal movements and behaviour. The example connected engineering with the ecological setting in which a system must function.

Cooking fuels opened conversations about health, convenience and everyday routines. Students considered how cleaner cooking technologies might fit household preferences, alongside questions of cost, access and continued use. These exchanges placed people’s knowledge and priorities at the centre of discussions about energy transitions.

Across the visit, the students followed connections between energy, water, research and community life. Each stop offered a different perspective on sustainability and an opportunity to consider how policy can respond to the conditions in which technologies are used.

John and Piyiet’s guidance helped bring those perspectives together. For the visiting students, Mpala became a place to learn from working systems and the people who know them best, grounding their study of Africa’s clean energy transition in the experience of a shared Laikipia landscape.

I loved that every day was different and yet offered comforting routine. Rolling out of bed pre-sunrise, stumbling to a termite mound or log where the mongooses were sleeping, spending the day following them on foot recording their interactions and behaviours, taking care not to step on any twigs that might break them out of their feverish concentration as they dug for crunchy insects. Day in and day out, until the sun set, when the walk back to research house punctuated by the sound of crunching gravel and the smell of sweat and sunscreen signalled the end of a day well spent. For my MSc, I played cruel tricks (also known as carefully planned experiments) on the mongooses, moving faecal samples from one territory to another to test whether they would show differentiated responses to intrusions by familiar, neighbouring groups relative to stranger groups. Spoiler: they did not.

When I came back for a third stint as project manager, I had gained enough experience that the once terrifying thought of doing a PhD was becoming appealing, but where and on what? I had started reading about GPS-tags that could follow the movements of animals wherever they went, revealing fundamental rules about collective decision-making. I thought to myself “this might be the closest we’ll ever get to reading animal minds”. In hindsight, I was starry-eyed, as I appreciate now more than ever the value of observing animal behaviour directly in the field. Nevertheless, after months of getting tangled in thorny shrubs while searching for the smallest carnivore in Africa, part of me could not help but be enticed by the possibility of remotely tracking animals.

It was during an evening at the project house that I came across a job advert to work in Kenya, on a bird called… the vulturine guineafowl? At that time, we used a dongle to connect to the internet, which meant that the picture of this mysterious bird loaded slowly, like a game of ‘exquisite corpse’. Revealing first a bald head with a bright-red eye, then a long bare neck, a load of bright blue as well as stripy feathers, and finally a sturdy little body, planted firmly on the ground. If any bird could convert me from mongooses, it would be these terrestrial dinosaur-lookalikes, which, lo and behold, were going to be studied using solar-powered GPS-tags. I applied and in 2016, I was on my way to Kenya for the first time to help Damien Farine, founder of the Vulturine Guineafowl (VGF) Project and PhD student Danai Papageorgiou, set up this new project, at a place we all know well: Mpala.

The first months were full of discoveries and challenges. Online information about vulturine guineafowl was sparse; but it became clear quite quickly that this was a bird with a rich (and sometimes ear-drum-piercing) vocal repertoire as well as a fascinating social system. Many evenings were spent discussing behavioural observations and planning out the data collection protocols we still use today. Looking at the study population of 1000+ colour-banded guineafowl now, we forget that there was a time that no guineafowl had a band and the main question on our minds was: how do we catch these birds? Arriving back for dinner usually meant being greeted by the other researchers with the dreaded question: “Did you catch any birds today?”. We started off with bungee cord powered woosh-nets, catching a few birds at a time (if we were lucky). We worked our way up to large walk-in traps that could catch entire social groups, triggered by the press of a button. Nowadays, you can watch Kennedy and the team build these walk-in traps over the course of a few days, assembling its components piece by piece, baiting the trap with millet to lull these (rightfully) weary birds into a false sense of security. But I’m getting ahead of myself. It was mid-2017 and I had just received the good news from Nat Geo that my explorer proposal was funded but the bad news from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft that my PhD proposal was not. It seemed that my time at Mpala was going to come to an end.

I decided it was time to cast a wide net once more, and this is when I came across a most exciting PhD opportunity, working on chacma baboons in Cape Town. A quick google search will paint a picture of the baboon-human conflict and the hotly debated management issues that arise from living on this densely populated peninsula alongside an intelligent, curious and food-motivated primate. In 2018, I got to see it for myself. During an intense field season, where we deployed tracking collars on a troop of baboons and collected more faecal and urine samples than I care to remember, I developed a deep appreciation for the baboons and the people tasked to mitigate the conflict. Observing baboons in their natural habitat munching on fynbos and engaging in their meticulous grooming rituals starkly contrasted with the brief glimpses most residents got when a baboon came breaking into their after-all-not-so-baboon-proof-bin. At the same time, the rangers who used paintball-guns to coerce the baboons out of urban spaces seemed always caught between a rock and a hard place, criticized for interfering too little (“why don’t you just cull the baboons?”) or too much (“you’re hurting them”). Ultimately, their work was essential in reducing baboon-human overlap as became painfully clear when the funding for the management program was temporally suspended, and the number of human-induced baboon deaths rose sharply. Far away from the conflict, at Swansea University in the UK, I had begun decoding the tracking data from the baboon collars. This time, I was not focussing on the “where did they go?” GPS-data but rather the “what were they doing?” accelerometer data. As any behavioural ecologist will tell you, a systematically tracked activity budget can reveal a lot about what challenges an animal is facing. How do you allocate limited time and energy to all the essential activities: moving, feeding, resting and (in the case of baboons) lots of grooming, when natural and unnatural pressures around you are changing? This remains a central question in my work.

COVID lockdowns and limited funding precluded a follow-up field season to Cape Town. When I closed my laptop after my remote PhD-defence in 2022, I had no firm plans yet on what would come next. I had put feelers out, and one of them was bound to bring me back to Mpala. Because, as luck would have it, there was some funding available to hire me as a postdoc on the VGF Project. The task was right up my alley: building the machine-learning pipelines to turn the accelerometer data from the tags into guineafowl activity budgets. Turns out, these nifty GPS-tags could be reprogrammed remotely to collect accelerometer data, too. Coming back to Mpala was a trip. A lot had changed; I had changed. The VGF project had grown into something beyond what I could have imagined when I left in 2017. Many people contributed to this success and appropriately crediting them will require another article (which is in the pipeline).

In my totally biased opinion, the VGF team is one of the smoothest operating teams in Kenya. Trapping and tagging the birds, downloading the precious tag data nightly, painstakingly stalking birds for faecal samples and censusing the ever-growing number of colour-banded birds is no small feat. These data are the bedrock for understanding how guineafowl change their movements, their activity budgets and their social associations as climate change continues to shift the norm. This had always been the question at the back of my mind, since the first time we watched the guineafowl expand their home-ranges dramatically during an already bad drought in 2017, only to be eclipsed by an even more devastating drought in 2023-2025. To me, it seems like a powerful case study in how behavioural changes will be the early-warning signals we will want to monitor to understand how climate change will impact wildlife populations. In 2025, I was awarded a four-year grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation, to pursue these questions and ensure the continuation of the VGF project.

In trying to summarise my research journey succinctly (and failing to do so), I made some important omissions, which I will try to address in this paragraph. It might seem from the outside looking in that I hopped from lily pad to lily pad, as they blossomed open with the next magical adventure. The truth is that more doors closed than opened. More applications were rejected (or unanswered) than accepted. At the same time, I have been incredibly lucky, from the moment I was born in Luxembourg, a small and rich country, where we take things like free public transport and socialised health care for granted. I had parents that supported me financially and morally to pursue Zoology – not a famously lucrative career path. I was able to take on unpaid research opportunities for the CV lines they would afford me. There is no point in feeling guilty about that, it won’t change anything about the imbalances created by post-colonial capitalism. What I can do in my role as a PI on the VGF project is play my part in redressing some of that imbalance. Important as the science may be, an equally important (and enjoyable) part of the job is creating a training ground and a launch pad for early-career Kenyan researchers. Ultimately, the two goals are intertwined: we do the best work when we collaborate and there are still so many things to learn about this bizarre bird.

Finally – when Victor Kasii asked me to write this profile piece – he told me to “Make it personal”. Therefore, I would be remiss not to mention the biggest impact working on Mpala has had on my life. It is where I met Patrick Milligan at the outdoor dining table, my now-husband of 5 years. It is probably not surprising to meet kindred spirits in places like Mpala. Indeed, many of the people I have met throughout my research journey are now life-long friends. Nevertheless, given the prominent role coincidence has played in my trajectory, I can’t help but feel superstitious about the ways the universe unfolds… a brave thing for a serious scientist to admit.

If you’re still reading this, thank you. Maybe one of these days, we will sit across from each other at a communal Mpala dinner, and I will hear your story too!

At six in the morning, binoculars were already out at Mpala Research Centre. Staff, researchers, interns and visiting birders had gathered for the October Big Day, an international birdwatching event held on Saturday, 10 October 2026.

Their ambition was to record at least 150 species before darkness. With Mpala’s riverine corridors, black cotton savannah and dams to explore, there was plenty of ground to cover.

The birders divided into two teams whose names reflected their respective destinations. Team Hamerkop would follow the riverine corridors, taking its name from the distinctive wetland bird known for building enormous nests. Team Secretarybird would explore the open plains and dams, named after the long-legged raptor that hunts on foot across the savannah.

The day began with bird walks around the Research Centre and by 9 O’clock, the teams were heading into the field.

Among the participants were Wilson Nderitu and Kennedy Sikenykeny, two of Mpala’s most experienced bird researchers. Both have spent years following birds across this landscape, accumulating knowledge that extends well beyond identifying species by sight or sound.

Wilson’s work is closely associated with the superb starling, one of the most familiar birds of Kenya’s savannah. Since 2001, researchers led by Professor Dustin Rubenstein have followed these birds at Mpala, investigating their remarkably complex social lives.

Superb starlings live in cooperative groups in which some individuals breed while others help raise offspring. Why birds make these different reproductive choices, how family relationships influence cooperation and what happens when rainfall becomes unpredictable are among the questions researchers have explored.

Wilson has contributed to this work for more than two decades, developing an intimate knowledge of individual birds and their territories. Such familiarity is essential to research that follows the same animals across successive breeding seasons, revealing patterns that would be impossible to recognise during occasional surveys.

Kennedy’s expertise lies with another of Mpala’s remarkable birds, the vulturine guineafowl.

With their striking blue plumage and elaborate neck feathers, these birds are difficult to overlook. Their social behaviour, however, has proved even more remarkable than their appearance.

Since 2016, the Vulturine Guineafowl Project has investigated how these birds organise themselves into groups, maintain relationships and respond to changing environmental conditions.

Dr Charlotte Christensen, who joined the October Big Day birders, is a co-Principal Investigator of the project alongside Professor Damien Farine. Their research has helped reveal that vulturine guineafowl live in complex, multilevel societies, with stable groups associating to form larger gatherings.

By individually marking thousands of birds and fitting hundreds with GPS tracking devices, researchers have been able to follow their movements and interactions in extraordinary detail.

Kennedy, the project’s manager and a postgraduate researcher, is among those whose fieldwork makes these discoveries possible.

For Wilson, Kennedy and Charlotte, birds are not simply entries on a checklist. Their work involves recognising individuals, understanding relationships and observing how behaviour changes across seasons and years.

That depth of experience was part of what made October Big Day at Mpala particularly interesting. Researchers who spend much of their time studying individual species were joining a wider community of enthusiasts to see how many different birds they could identify in a single day.

And there is considerable variety to find.

Mpala’s landscape supports birds associated with open savannah, wooded areas, riverine vegetation and water bodies. Some are permanent residents; others arrive seasonally, connecting Laikipia to distant regions through migration.

The day’s initial checklist included 11 Eurasian migrants and one Afrotropical migrant. For birds arriving from Eurasia, the journey to East Africa can involve thousands of kilometres across continents.

These seasonal movements are part of a much larger ecological story, one that researchers have been documenting in East Africa for generations.

Among the most influential figures in that history was Dr Dale Zimmerman, the celebrated ornithologist and co-author of Birds of Kenya and Northern Tanzania.

Zimmerman spent decades studying and documenting the region’s birds, producing work that continues to inform bird identification and ornithological research.

His connection to Mpala is preserved in the Mpala Live archive through A Chat with the ‘Birdman’, Dr Dale Zimmerman, an interview exploring his experiences and observations in East Africa.

Zimmerman’s interest in changes in bird populations and distribution illustrates why records accumulated over many years matter. Observations made decades apart can help researchers investigate how species respond to changes in habitat and environmental conditions.

That long view has also been important in Mpala’s research on birds of prey.

In the early 2000s, raptor surveys at Mpala documented worrying declines in vultures. Research associated with Dr Darcy Ogada, now Africa Programme Director at The Peregrine Fund, contributed to understanding the threats facing these scavengers and the ecological consequences of their disappearance.

Vultures help remove carcasses from the landscape, providing an important ecological service. Their decline raises concerns about poisoning, human activities and the wider health of ecosystems.

From cooperative breeding in starlings to the social organisation of guineafowl and the conservation of vultures, Mpala’s bird research has helped address questions extending far beyond the species being studied.

Through Mpala Live, researchers and bird enthusiasts have shared their experiences with audiences around the world. Programmes such as Bird Is the Word, a live conversation with bird experts, and the interview with Dale Zimmerman form part of an archive that makes ornithological knowledge accessible to a wider public.

The Mpala Live Field Guide extends that effort, introducing readers to birds such as the eastern chanting-goshawk, bateleur, African finfoot, lilac-breasted roller and the two species that lent their names to the day’s competing teams.

Its profiles explore not only identification but also feeding, reproduction, behaviour and conservation, offering birdwatchers and students a way to understand the species they encounter.

For the participants from Ol Gaboli and Nanyuki, October Big Day offered another opportunity to learn directly from the landscape and from the people who study its birds.

The exercise also connected Mpala’s birding community to a global effort. In a snapshot of the international results, Kenya ranked ninth worldwide, with 824 species recorded across the country.

Back at Mpala, the competition was close.

Team Secretarybird recorded 111 species, narrowly beating Team Hamerkop’s 109. The combined count initially stood at 138 species before additional records brought the total to 148 distinct species, just two short of the day’s target.

As evening approached, the birders gathered for a sundowner, bringing a full day of searching, identifying and recording to a close.

The two teams had explored different parts of Mpala, compared observations and contributed to a national birding effort. Along the way, experienced researchers, interns and visiting enthusiasts had shared something that has sustained ornithology for generations: the pleasure of discovering what is out there.

At Mpala, that curiosity has produced decades of research, contributed to important conservation questions and helped introduce audiences around the world to the birds of Laikipia.

On October Big Day, it brought people together for another reason.

There were 150 species to find, and daylight was running out.

For a group of students in Laikipia, however, International Vulture Awareness Day offered an opportunity to look at these remarkable birds differently, not simply as scavengers, but as an important part of healthy ecosystems.

On 4 September 2026, Mpala Research Centre joined conservation organisations, birders, teachers and students at Likii Comprehensive School for a day of practical learning marking International Vulture Awareness Day.

The event brought together more than 130 participants, including 110 students from Likii Comprehensive School, St. Moses Comprehensive School, DEB Nkandone Comprehensive School and Brookwell Harmony School.

The day was organised in partnership with Laikipia Wildlife Forum, The Peregrine Fund, Northern Kenya Conservation Clubs, Kenya Wildlife Service, Mpala Research Centre and Youth on Wings – Nanyuki Birders.

But this was not a day for sitting through lectures.

The morning began outdoors.

Working in groups and equipped with binoculars, students explored the school grounds alongside birders and conservation practitioners. They learned how to identify birds using features such as appearance, behaviour, flight and habitat.

Among the species spotted were Superb Starlings, African Paradise-Flycatchers, Silvery-cheeked Hornbills, White-browed Sparrow-Weavers, Hadada Ibises and Common Bulbuls.

The exercise carried a simple lesson: you do not always have to travel to a protected area to begin observing nature. Even a school compound can become a place for discovering biodiversity.

Back inside, the students took a more active role.

Ahead of the event, participating schools had researched questions about vulture identification, habitats, nesting, ecological roles, threats and conservation. They then presented and debated what they had discovered.

The discussions explored the role vultures play in rapidly removing carcasses from landscapes and helping maintain healthy ecosystems.

Students also confronted some of the threats facing vultures, particularly poisoning, habitat loss and persecution.

Retaliatory poisoning following livestock predation is especially dangerous because poison intended for one animal can affect many scavengers that subsequently feed on the carcass.

The students were challenged to think about solutions too, from strengthening livestock bomas and protecting habitats to reducing unsafe use of poisons and helping their communities better understand vultures.

Rather than simply receiving conservation messages, the learners became the communicators themselves, asking questions, challenging ideas and sharing what they had researched.

Learning continued through an interactive seed-dispersal game that used movement and role-play to explore how animals help plants and ecosystems regenerate.

Students also turned to poetry, artwork, mime, dance and song to communicate what they had learned about vultures.

The day left something more permanent behind too.

Twelve ceremonial trees were planted by students, teachers and conservation partners, while Likii Comprehensive School received 100 indigenous tree seedlings to continue greening its grounds through the Adopt a Tree initiative.

The combination of field observation, debate, games, art and practical action reflected a broader idea at the heart of the event: conservation education works particularly well when young people participate rather than simply listen.

Vultures are among the world’s most threatened groups of birds, facing pressures ranging from poisoning to habitat loss.

Changing their future therefore requires more than studying the birds themselves. It also requires working with the people who share their landscapes.

Schools provide an important place to begin.

A student who understands why vultures matter can take that conversation beyond the classroom, into their family and eventually into the wider community.

For the organisations gathered at Likii Comprehensive School, International Vulture Awareness Day was therefore about more than celebrating one group of birds.

It was about curiosity, knowledge and giving young people the opportunity to see a familiar landscape, and some of its most misunderstood inhabitants, with new eyes.

In September 2026, Mpala staff and researchers came together for a practical workshop focused on strengthening field reporting using EarthRanger. The session brought together people working across Mpala’s field sites and campus, creating an opportunity to connect field experience with consistent approaches to data collection and recording.

The workshop was led by Dr. Shaleen Angwenyi, a wildlife veterinarian, Smithsonian Institution postdoctoral researcher, and Program Lead for Wildlife Health Watch.

Participants worked through several aspects of wildlife health and field reporting, including best practices for post-mortem photography, logging field events, assessing animal health using the Body Condition Score (BCS) system, and safely handling carcasses in the field. The session also covered the physical markers used to determine the sex of a carcass and provided a practical introduction to the wider EarthRanger ecosystem.

Rather than being a classroom-style training, the workshop drew heavily on the experience already present at Mpala. Staff who spend much of their time in the field shared observations and practical lessons with colleagues who are more often based on campus. These exchanges helped connect the information collected in the field with how it is recorded, interpreted, and ultimately used.

EarthRanger provides a common platform through which these observations can be logged and organized, helping build a clearer picture of wildlife health events and other activities occurring across the landscape.

The session was opened and closed by Dr Cosmas Nzomo, Mpala’s Acting Chief Research Officer, who emphasised the value of building practical skills and strengthening the quality of information collected across Mpala.

For participants, the workshop was ultimately about ensuring that when something happens in the field, the right details are captured, recorded, and made available to the people who need them.

Some of the most important moments in my journey at Mpala have happened far away from a desk or classroom.

They have happened during evening volleyball games, over Friday tea, on game drives and at gatherings in the dining hall. Sometimes they have happened in the field, walking long distances alongside rangers. And sometimes in the middle of the night, when someone needed help with a vehicle.

Socialising is almost unavoidable at Mpala, and that’s a good thing.

Many of the opportunities I’ve seen people learn and grow from, myself included, started with a conversation. That’s one of the things I have come to appreciate most about this place.

My own journey here started while I was an undergraduate studying Natural Resource Management at Karatina University.

I was born and raised in Rugongo Farm, a village in Nyahururu. While at university, I volunteered with Dr. Dedan Ngatia’s Laikipia Rabies Vaccination Campaign. After completing my bachelor’s degree in July 2022, I came to Mpala for an attachment under Dr. Duncan Kimuyu.

For five months, I moved between different research projects. It gave me the chance to experience quite a bit of what was happening at Mpala and to work with different researchers and teams.

And then, somehow, I pretty much never left.

In January 2023, I joined Dr. Beth Mortimer’s Seismic Savannah Elephant project as a field technician.

One of the things I remember most from that project is the rangers.

Every ranger who went out with us did much more than keep us safe when elephants chased us. They joined in the work. We walked tens of kilometres and dug hundreds of holes to place seismic sensors, and they were right there helping us.

That willingness to help is something I have found again and again at Mpala.

After the elephant project, I worked with Lucrecia Aguilar on her PhD research on cats, cows and coexistence, mostly working with lions alongside Laikipia Lions Landscapes.

By then, I was beginning to figure out the kind of questions I wanted to pursue myself.

A couple of months later, I started my Master’s in Wildlife Management at Karatina University through the Mpala Graduate Scholarship Programme.

For my research, I studied temporary cattle bomas and how they can be used as a tool for rangeland restoration.

That was an important shift for me. I had spent a lot of time contributing to other people’s research. Now I was developing my own questions, collecting my own data and learning what it takes to carry a research project through.

Today, I’m a PhD student at Iowa State University under Dr. Jake Goheen.

And my fieldwork has brought me right back to Mpala.

I’m starting a project looking at predator-prey interactions involving dik-dik, impala, African wild dogs and leopards. I want to understand some of the understudied costs and benefits of antipredator behaviour, particularly as climate change accelerates and reshapes semi-arid savannas.

In many ways, I’m still doing what I started doing when I first arrived here: asking questions, going into the field and learning.

I’ve also spent quite a lot of time going around in circles at Mpala. Literally.

While preparing for a marathon, I trained on Mpala’s Ring Road. One loop is only 1.4 kilometres, or about 0.87 miles. When you’re preparing to run 42.2 kilometres, that means seeing the same stretch of road many, many times.

It takes focus.

Maybe that’s exactly what a researcher needs.

Research also asks you to keep going. You repeat things. You collect data. Something doesn’t work, so you try again. Sometimes progress comes one small piece at a time.

Most people go to places like Mpala on vacation. We get to work here, surrounded by all this biodiversity.

But what I love most is the people.

I’ve never been anywhere people are so willing to help, at whatever capacity they can. I saw it with the rangers digging holes for our seismic sensors. I’ve seen it in the people who stop to help when something goes wrong in the field. And I’ve seen it in those ordinary conversations that end up opening unexpected doors.

Looking back, I arrived here as an undergraduate looking for experience. I became a field technician, worked on elephants and lions, joined the Mpala Graduate Scholarship Programme for my master’s, and now I’m back doing my PhD fieldwork.

A lot has changed.

But the volleyball is still there. So is Friday tea.

And, unfortunately for anyone training for a marathon, Ring Road is still only 1.4 kilometres long.

A research project at Mpala might begin with a question about elephants, soils, disease, rainfall, animal behaviour or a thousand other things. But before the first sample is collected or the first piece of equipment goes into the field, there is another journey to make.

My advice? Start early.

Very early.

Research in Kenya requires different permits depending on what you plan to do, and obtaining the necessary clearances can take months. At Mpala, we advise researchers to begin the process at least six months before they expect to start their work. 

This is the point at which I would like to meet you.

I sometimes describe the compliance office as the doctor’s office. Come to us while the project is still being developed, and we can identify the small things that might become big things later. It is much easier to deal with a question in a proposal than discover it after flights are booked, equipment is packed, and your field season is supposed to begin.

So, what happens after you have an idea?

Tell us what you want to do

The first step is understanding your research.

What will you study? What methods will you use? Will you be handling animals? Collecting samples? Will you need laboratory space or specialised field equipment? Will you need access to existing datasets?

Those details matter because research projects do not all follow the same path.

One thing researchers should also remember when budgeting is that permits apply to individual researchers. A principal investigator’s permit does not automatically cover the students working under them. 

Getting this clear helps us work out what needs to happen before you arrive.

If animals are involved, tell us early

If your work involves trapping, handling or sampling animals, the appropriate ethical clearance needs to form part of your permit paperwork. We therefore ask researchers to flag animal work in their proposals early so that Mpala’s veterinary team can also prepare for any on-site support that may be required. 

This is one of those areas where the order matters.

Don’t design the entire field programme and then remember the approvals at the end. Tell us what you intend to do while the project is still taking shape.

Getting permission to conduct the research is important, but it isn’t the end of your preparation.

Suppose you are collecting samples. Where will they go when your fieldwork ends?

Waste needs similar forethought.

These may sound like things to worry about at the end of a project.

They aren’t.

They are questions to answer at the beginning.

Then there is the practical side

Once we know your research can proceed, we also need to know whether Mpala can support the way you intend to do it.

Mpala has four shared research facilities: the Molecular Genomics Lab, Wet Lab, Dry Lab/Computational facility and Field Equipment Centre. Together, they support work ranging from PCR and sequencing to sample preparation, GIS and modelling, camera trapping, and the use of GPS collars, acoustic recorders, and soil and seismic equipment. 

But shared is the important word.

Before assuming a laboratory or piece of equipment will be available, check with the Research Team to confirm that your methods can be accommodated, and reserve what you need well in advance. 

The same principle applies to data.

Mpala has existing weather and GIS datasets, project data and other research resources. If you need them, request them in advance. Access to some project data may depend on the principal investigator and the publication status of the work, and datasets should be cited by DOI where applicable. 

Again, the recurring theme is simple: ask early.

And then, finally, you get to do the research

By the time you arrive at Mpala, many of these conversations should already have happened.

Your permits and relevant ethical clearances should be in place. We should be aware of any animal work that requires veterinary support. Your laboratory requirements should be understood. Equipment should be reserved. Data requests should have been made. And if you will generate samples or hazardous waste, we should already know what will happen to them.

That preparation may not be the part of the research that makes it into the photographs.

But it is what allows the photographs to happen.

And our relationship doesn’t necessarily end when you leave.

When researchers publish work arising from Mpala, we ask them to identify Mpala Research Centre as an affiliation, include Mpala in relevant research keywords and share their reports and research outputs with the Centre. 

Research compliance can sometimes sound like a collection of forms, permits and rules.

I prefer to think about it differently.

My job is to understand what you are trying to accomplish and help identify what needs to be in place for you to do it responsibly and successfully.

So if you’re thinking about bringing your next research project to Mpala, don’t wait until everything is ready before speaking to us.

Come while it’s still an idea.

That’s usually the best place to start.

The Mpala Archaeology Project brings together Mpala Research Centre, the National Museums of Kenya (NMK), the University of Nairobi and Princeton University in a long-term effort to document, research and better understand the archaeological heritage of Mpala and the wider Laikipia Plateau. 

“We are doing this for our country. The important thing is that there is a clear understanding of what we are doing, who is involved and why we are doing it,” said Prof. Mary Gikungu, Director General of the National Museums of Kenya, welcoming the collaboration and emphasising the importance of documenting and safeguarding Kenya’s archaeological heritage.

The first phase of the project begins not with excavation, but with museum shelves, archives and records.

Archaeological work has taken place across Laikipia over many decades. The result is a rich but dispersed record that includes stone tools, ceramics, animal remains, beads and other materials, alongside field notebooks, site registers, photographs, maps, excavation records and published and unpublished research. 

Working with collections held by the National Museums of Kenya, the project team will identify material associated with Mpala and the wider Laikipia landscape, reconcile existing records and establish a standardised catalogue.

The principle guiding this first stage is straightforward: understand and document what already exists before generating new archaeological data.

This work will provide the baseline for future archaeological investigation at Mpala. Phase 1 will identify collections, consolidate dispersed documentation, standardise catalogue information, digitise artefacts and records, and connect individual objects to the sites and landscapes from which they came. 

One of the project’s most significant ambitions is to transform this historical record into an integrated digital resource.

Instead of an artefact existing simply as an object in a collection, the system is intended to connect it to its archaeological context: the collection it belongs to, the site where it was found, the wider landscape, photographs and records associated with it, subsequent analysis and the research publications that interpret it.

The project will use internationally recognised approaches, including FAIR principles, which emphasise making data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, and CARE principles, which address Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility and Ethics. It will also explore CIDOC CRM and CRMarchaeo for connecting archaeological and museum information within a common digital system. 

By the end of February 2027, the project aims to have a functional digital archaeological system and portal that will provide a foundation for the next stage of research. 

While Mpala provides the project’s starting point, archaeology does not follow property boundaries.

People, wildlife, water and other resources have moved across the Laikipia landscape for generations. Understanding an archaeological site, therefore, requires looking beyond individual artefacts and locations to the environmental and cultural landscape around them.

For this reason, the project places Mpala within the broader archaeological context of the Laikipia Plateau, connecting sites at Mpala with neighbouring archaeological localities and comparative collections from across the region. 

Phase 1 focuses on collections, records, digitisation, and the building of the archaeological baseline. Phase 2 will take researchers back into the landscape through archaeological surveys, GIS mapping, targeted excavation, dating, laboratory analysis and environmental reconstruction.

The longer-term third phase envisions research infrastructure at Mpala supporting collections, laboratories, training, heritage interpretation and community engagement. 

Community engagement will be particularly important as the work develops. Archaeological heritage is not simply a record of the past. It is connected to people living in these landscapes today, to their histories, and to their knowledge. Discussions with NMK emphasised the importance of ensuring that communities are part of the understanding and sharing of this history.

The project is also an investment in the next generation of researchers.

Two postgraduate students are already participating in Phase 1, with their dissertations forming part of the project’s planned research outputs. By March 2027, the team also expects to have produced foundational research papers, a standardised archaeological database, a new catalogue system, a digital archive, an analytical report and a research proposal to guide Phase 2. 

During a recent project meeting at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi, partners reaffirmed the importance of conducting this work within Kenya’s established systems for archaeological research and heritage stewardship. NMK’s custodial role will remain central as the partners develop the project’s governance, research and digital components.

For Mpala, the collaboration also opens another window into a landscape already studied from many angles.