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
My background is interdisciplinary. I have a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Warwick, followed by a first PhD in Education and a second PhD in Computing Science (focused on ecological modelling), both from the University of Glasgow. While living in Geneva, Switzerland, I worked in commercial software engineering and development.
Research interests
In my more science role (see main webpage here), most of my research applies ecological theory to understanding the dynamics of both human and non-human populations. I work across the spectrum from theoretical projects with an ecological motivation to those with more obvious policy applications.
Educational research
In Education, I have mainly worked on science and mathematics education, public understanding of science and language acquisition. I have experience of working with both quantitative and qualitative data, and have used methods that span these, including phenomenography, grounded theory, content analysis and statistical data analysis.
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, Max ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5425-5645, Lazarakis, Spyridon, Mancy, Rebecca
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4667-9229 and Angelopoulos, Konstantinos
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0702-3673
(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, Athanasia, Tsirtsis, George, Roelke, Daniel L., Mancy, Rebecca ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4667-9229 and Spatharis, Sofie
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1030-9821
(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, Yacob, Mancy, Rebecca ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4667-9229, Matthiopoulos, Jason
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3639-8172, Spatharis, Sofie
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1030-9821 and Dominoni, Davide M.
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2063-9955
(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, Konstantinos ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0702-3673, Stewart, Gillian and Mancy, Rebecca
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4667-9229
(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/Epidemiology/Population Health, and in Education. Please contact me if you are interested in working with me.
I am currently supervising 4 PhD students, having previously supervised 14 PhD students to completion, as well as numerous MSc projects.
Current PhD Students with a web profile
Former PhD students in life sciences/ecosystem and population health
- Ciaran McMonagle - Diversity in causes of mortality in the measurement of population health in Scotland.
- Jaime Earnest - Methods matter: computational modelling in public health policy and planning (co-supervised with Dan Haydon and Kate Reid, Kelvin-Smith studentship)
- Bilal Usmani - Investigation disease persistence in host vector systems: dengue as a case study (co-supervised with Dan Haydon, funded by home institution/government)
Former PhD students based in social sciences
- Haifa Albazie – The factors affecting the use of E-Learning at a Saudi University.
- Tianyi Zhang – Investigating the effects of productive failure and scaffolded learning on the acquisition of communicative competence for Chinese learners of speaking English as a second language.
- Renato Margiotta - Global citizenship education in the biology classroom: an exploratory study in Scotland (co-supervised with Cathy Fagan, funded by home institution)
- Kristen Layne - Environmental communication and behaviour change in the Bible Belt of the United States (co-supervised with Stuart Hanscomb, funded by the College of Social Sciences)
- Alexia Koletsou - Climate change mitigation at the individual level: examining climate change beliefs and energy saving behaviours with the aim to encourage the reduction of end-user energy consumption. (funded by College of Social Sciences studentship)
- Pratchayapong (Kak) Yasri - Views of the relationship between science and religion and their implications for student learning of evolutionary biology. (funding from Royal Thai Government studentship, now a Lecturer in Science and Technology Education, Institute for Innovative Learning, Mahidol University)
- Julie Smith - An investigation in the use of collaborative metacognition during mathematical problem solving. A case study with a primary five class in Scotland. (co-supervised with Vic Lally, funding from College of Social Sciences)
- Vanessa Rasoamampianina - How is encyclopaedia authority established? (co-supervised with Professor Alison Phipps)
Teaching
I am Course Leader of the 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 have also taught science and mathematics education/communication, ecological modelling, statistics and programming.
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