Dr Rebecca Mancy
- Senior Lecturer (Culture, Literacies, Inclusion & Pedagogy)
- Affiliate Researcher (School of Biodiversity, One Health & Veterinary Medicine)
- Affiliate Researcher (School of Health & Wellbeing)
telephone:
0141 330 3560
email:
Rebecca.Mancy@glasgow.ac.uk
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ
Biography
In my current role as Leckie Research Fellow, I am working on a range of projects spanning ecosystem health and infectious disease epidemiology. I have a particular interest in using mathematical and computational models to understand dynamic problems. For example, my recent work covers the dynamics of biodiversity and the dynamics of infectious disease dynamics over both the short term and the very long term. I also work with social scientists on projects to understand the origins of inequalities in income, wealth and health, working both with traditional societies (e.g. pastoralists) and historical archive data. In most of my work I use secondary datasets, but also have experience of primary data collection, for example, from historical archives and large-scale surveys. To synthesise my research in the context of my Fellowship, I am also working on a literature review to answer the question “Can urbanisation generate benefits for both human and ecosystem health?”
Prior to my current role, I worked as a computational ecologist on canine rabies modelling, working with Katie Hampson, following on from a (second) PhD in Computing Science, focused on using simulation modelling approaches to understand the properties of stochastic versions of classical metapopulation models used in ecology. My first degree was in mathematics from the University of Warwick, and I have worked as a professional software developer in Geneva, Switzerland. I also have a part-time role as Senior Lecturer in Education, with interests in science education, the area of my first PhD.
I have received funding from bodies such as EPSRC and ESRC and have extensive Masters and PhD supervision experience across my different areas of expertise.
Research interests
My research focuses on questions in Ecosystem Health/ Planetary Health and One Health/ Health Inequalities, with a particular interest in the dynamics of ecological processes and infectious diseases. I use computational and mathematical modelling of ecological and epidemiological processes in time. I describe some of my recent and ongoing work below.
- Urbanisation and its effects on human and ecosystem health. I am currently working with Davide Dominoni, Jason Matthiopoulos and Sofie Spatharis and PhD student Yacob Haddou (see PhD students below) on questions relating to urbanisation and its impacts on avian biodiversity, with a particular emphasis on the role of lags in the response of biodiversity to land use changes. I am also working on a review of the impacts of urbanisation on human and ecosystem health, working with Dan Haydon and Rich Mitchell.
- Infectious diseases and health inequalities over the long term. I have published recently on the dynamics of recurrent outbreaks following historical influenza pandemics since 1838 and the role of prior local smallpox epidemics on vaccination refusal. I am currently working on understanding differences in the timing of the epidemiological transition between small areas of cities. This work uses historical archive data and computational, mathematical and statistical modelling, and is in collaboration with Konstantinos Angelopoulos, Spyridon Lazarakis (Lancaster University) and Max Schroeder (University of Birmingham).
- The origins of inequalities in health, wealth, and income. In collaboration with colleagues in social sciences, I have been working on projects that aim to understand the root causes of inequalities. We have been working with the NGO Friends of Lake Turkana and Turkana pastoralist communities in Northern Kenya to analyse data we have collected to understand the importance of livestock and human health risk for inequalities. This work is in collaboration with Konstantinos Angelopoulos, Spyridon Lazarakis (Lancaster University) and Dorice Agol (LSE). With Konstantinos and two co-supervised PhD students (Gill Stewart and Siqi Qiao - see PhD students below), we are also working with archive data from Glasgow and Nancy (France), in collaboration with colleagues at Glasgow City Archives and the Archives municipales de Nancy to understand the drivers of mortality differentials and the impacts of mortality for inequality in the period prior to the welfare state.
- Heterogeneities in pathogen transmission and infectious disease dynamics. My recent work with Katie Hampson and published in Science demonstrated how canine rabies persists at low prevalence, partially due to heterogeneities in transmission. I am currently working with Ed Hill, Matt Keeling and PhD student Phoebe Asplin at the University of Warwick on understanding the epidemiological implications of ‘symptom propagation’, according to which symptom sets tend to propagate alongside pathogen transmission.
Publications
Selected publications
Mancy, R. et al. (2022) Rabies shows how scale of transmission can enable acute infections to persist at low prevalence. Science, 376(6592), pp. 512-516. (doi: 10.1126/science.abn0713) (PMID:35482879) (PMCID:PMC7613728)
Schroeder, M. , Lazarakis, S., Mancy, R. and Angelopoulos, K. (2023) An extended period of elevated influenza mortality risk follows the main waves of influenza pandemics. Social Science and Medicine, 328, 115975. (doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2023.115975) (PMID:37301110) (PMCID:PMC7614920)
Sakavara, A., Tsirtsis, G., Roelke, D. L., Mancy, R. and Spatharis, S. (2018) Lumpy species coexistence arises robustly in fluctuating resource environments. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(4), pp. 738-743. (doi: 10.1073/pnas.1705944115) (PMID:29263095) (PMCID:PMC5789903)
Haddou, Y., Mancy, R. , Matthiopoulos, J. , Spatharis, S. and Dominoni, D. M. (2022) Widespread extinction debts and colonization credits in United States breeding bird communities. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 6(3), pp. 324-331. (doi: 10.1038/s41559-021-01653-3) (PMID:35145265) (PMCID:PMC8913367)
Angelopoulos, K. , Stewart, G. and Mancy, R. (2023) Local infectious disease experience influences vaccine refusal rates: a natural experiment. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 290(1992), 20221986. (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2022.1986) (PMID:36722077) (PMCID:PMC9890117)
All publications
Grants
Assessing policy to address the medium-run impact of COVID-19 on income and health inequality with models informed by the history of disease outbreaks
ESRC as part of UK Research and Innovation’s rapid response to COVID-19
2020-2021
Understanding inequality using administrative data from municipal archives: The case of Glasgow
College Strategic Research Fund - College of Social Sciences
2019-2020
The insurance role of education in pastoralist communities
Global Challenges Research Fund - Scottish Funding Council
2019-2020
Poor among the pastoralists: The importance of bad luck for inequality
Global Challenges Research Fund - Scottish Funding Council
2018-2019
The Leckie Fellowship: Can urbanisation generate benefits for human and ecosystem health?
2017-2022
Modelling persistence in spatially-explicit ecological and epidemiological systems
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
2010-2014
EmergeNET (Network grant)
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council
2008-2012
Supervision
I supervise students in ecology, infectious disease epidemiology/modelling, and population health. Please see my research interests above, and contact me if you are interested in working with me.
I am currently supervising 3 PhD students, having previously supervised 10 PhD students to completion, as well as numerous MSc projects.
Current PhD Students with a web profile
- Haddou, Yacob
Ecological lags to landscape changes - Qiao, Siqi
Health, Income Inequality and Risk in the Past and Present
Teaching
My current role as Leckie Research Fellow does not involve a lot of teaching but I have experience of teaching ecological modelling, statistics and programming, as well as science and mathematics education/communication. In addition to PhD students, I also supervise MSc and MPH student projects.
Professional activities & recognition
Prizes, awards & distinctions
- 2013: Best Research Supervisor, Student Teaching Awards (Student Representative Council, University of Glasgow)
Research fellowships
- 2017 - 2022: Leckie Foundation
Research datasets
Additional information
In addition to my Fellowship, I have a part-time appointment as Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, where I am Course Leader of Fundamentals of Formal Education. I also teach on Seminar in Contemporary Issues in Education, a course that I previously led. Both are compulsory courses of the MSc/MEd in Educational Studies. I also extensive experience of PhD supervision in this this role.
I have recently been involved in community engagement and impact work in Turkana, Kenya. For example, we have developed an educational/community engagement booklet based on the findings from our research, which has been contributing to community debates and supporting a culture of reading in this resource-poor setting.