Trustees and key post holders

Andra has a background in ecology and conservation, having completed her MSc at Edinburgh Napier University, where her research focused on exploring spider community assemblages in raised bogs and timber plantation systems. She worked as a research technician for Restoring Resilient Ecosystems at University of Stirling where she furthered her arachnological skills and helped understand ecosystem function along a woodland complexity gradient. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD, examining the biodiversity benefits that sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) can provide in addressing the pollinator crisis across the Central Belt of Scotland.

Anna has always been interested in the natural world, but her passion for arachnology developed after she started studying Animal Management in 2018. Since then, she has completed her Biodiversity and Conservation BSc (Hons) with her dissertation focusing on spider communities in different habitats in the Peruvian rainforest and her MRes, which focused on the conservation genetics of the Fen Raft Spider (Dolomedes plantarius). She will continue studying the Fen Raft Spider during her PhD and hopes to continue integrating ecology and molecular techniques to aid the conservation of other endangered arachnid species in the future. 

After completing a degree in Earth Sciences at Oxford, Bill opted to follow a different career path, holding a number of roles of increasing seniority in sales, marketing and international business management, the last 27 years of which were with a well-known US multinational company. He is passionate about the natural world and is a keen birder, a licensed bird ringer and a wildlife sound recordist. He is a former Membership Officer for the BAS and became President in 2023. Bill is also spider County Recorder / SRS Area Organiser for Buckinghamshire and, together with Helen Smith, administrator of BAS’s Twitter account. His other interests include guitar, old agricultural machinery and Morris dancing!

As a recent immigrant to the UK, much of Colin’s  experience has been in Southern Africa. After a short career in the South African Army, his interest in the natural world found him working in one of the oldest snake parks in South Africa, then moving to a snake and crocodile farm. At this point he felt environmental education was more his forte, and worked as an environmental education officer, ending up running a small nature reserve for a few years, his interests being primarily with invertebrates and reptiles. He then discovered technology and has worked in many industries as a software developer over the last 20 years, and hopes to be able to use this accumulated educational and technological experience to further the aims of the Society.

Danniella Sherwood is a research taxonomist specialising in the systematics of spiders. Most of her research focuses on the infraorder Mygalomorphae but she also has research interests in the taxonomy and systematics of spiders from the Mid Atlantic islands, historical nomenclature of spiders more broadly, and in museum specimen curation, digitisation, preservation and restoration. Danniella is Voluntary Assistant Curator of Arachnida at the Natural History Museum, London, a Research Associate of the Arachnology Research Association, United Kingdom Coordinator for the World Spider Catalog, a Member of the IUCN SSC Mid Atlantic Island Invertebrate Specialist Group and Foreign Associate of the Fundación Ariguanabo. She became a Trustee and Ordinary Council Member of the British Arachnological Society in June 2021 and Editor of the Newsletter of the British Arachnological Society in January 2022.

Francis spent his working life in Somerset where he was employed by the Environment Agency and its predecessors working in fisheries, conservation and recreation. He is an amateur arachnologist who has been a BAS member since 1969 when he was a teenager. He has served on Council since 1984 when he was elected as an ordinary member. From 1987 until 1997 he was the Meetings Secretary (formerly Asst. Sec.). He served as an ordinary member from 1997-2000 and from 2004-2007.  Since 2008 he has been the Society's Sales Manager. Since the launch of the Spider Recording Scheme in 1987 he has been the Area Organiser for Somerset. In Her Majesty the Queen's 90th birthday honours he was awarded the BEM for public and voluntary services to the natural environment in Somerset.

A retired academic from the University of York, Geoff has researched the maintenance of genetic variation and speciation/hybridisation in spiders for over 50 years. He served as an ordinary member of Council between 2000 and 2003 and returned as Vice President in 2009. After a spell as President (2010-2013) he took on his present role as Hon. Secretary in 2014. He is one of the authors of Britain's Spiders, an editor of the Arachnologists' Handbook and, since 2020, an Honorary member of the Society.

Gerald Legg is a retired museum keeper, lecturer, author and consultant who has studied the British pseudoscorpion fauna for around 50 years as well as West African ricinulei, describing species new to science. In the 1970s he served as a member of Council representing the pseudoscorpions. He is the author of the Linnean Society Monograph on Pseudoscorpions illustrated by Richard Jones, and the joint author of the Field Studies Council's Illustrated key to the British False Scorpions. Since 2016 he has been an Honorary member of the Society.

Helen was a plant ecologist before converting to arachnology on inheriting the conservation programme for the Fen Raft Spider from Dr Eric Duffey in 1992. Joining BAS Council in 2008 she has served as vice-President and President. She is an editor of the Arachnologists' Handbook, and an author of Britain’s Spiders. Reflecting her life-long interest in conservation, she is a co-author of the 2019 report A New Deal for Nature, a member of the ICUN’s Spider and Scorpion Specialist Group and currently BAS Conservation Officer.

Despite being an engineer and physicist during his working life, Jeremy has always had an interest in the outdoors and the natural world. His interest in spiders grew from a frustration at not being able to identify even the commonest spiders in his garden. He has addressed this issue by attending a spider identification course and a number of BAS Field Weekends, where he has greatly valued the friendship and advice of more knowledgeable members. Jeremy recently volunteered to be the BAS Area Organiser for Dorset, and joined Council as Membership Officer in 2023. He is a keen photographer and microscopist and is unusual in having a Scanning Electron Microscope in a laboratory in his garden! He uses this to create images of a wide variety of subjects, including, of course, spiders. His other interests include playing the cello, both as a member of a string quartet and with a pianist friend.