Managing natural resources to sustain human livelihood needs while minimizing the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services is, arguably, the greatest challenge facing our generation. Top-down approaches to preserve natural resources, e.g. protected areas, have had limited success in integrating local social needs with natural resource management. Local communities use and manage more than 10% of the world’s forests, which are key biomes for biodiversity. Governments and conservation initiatives are increasingly recognizing the role of local communities in natural resource conservation but there is little evidence of how local community needs interact with ecological processes. This fellowship will focus on community-managed forests and investigate, for the first time, how long-term environmental outcomes influence - and are influenced by - community management practices. To address this issue, the candidate fellow Dr. Johan Oldekop, will focus on a series of community-managed forests in Nepal and lead an interdisciplinary collaboration between Dr. Mark Whittingham at Newcastle University (UK), and Prof. Arun Agrawal and the International Forestry Resources and Institutions Programme (IFRI) at the University of Michigan (USA). Research outcomes will be highly relevant for forest management policies globally (including community management initiatives in European forests). By leading a high-impact interdisciplinary and policy relevant research programme, Dr. Oldekop will master a unique set of complementary skills and position himself at the lead of interdisciplinary socio-ecological research. Becoming one of Europe’s first uniquely trained interdisciplinary conservation scientists will allow Dr. Oldekop to establish new international collaborations and significantly expand European research excellence and competitiveness.