Ingela Jansson
Ingela was born and raised on a small farm in central Sweden. In her 20s, after taking a lower level nursing degree, she spent her time either traveling or working in hospitals saving up for the next trip. A journey to Africa in 1991 inspired me to return as a biologist, and find work in a wild and wonderful savannah. Ingela eventually took a degree in Biology at Umea University, finishing with a MSc thesis on brown bear ecology in collaboration with the Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project. Then joined a friend on a cycle trip through East Africa, much for the possibility of stumbling upon a job. Got lucky and landed a job as research assistant on the Serengeti Lion Project – a biologist’s dream!
After 3 years, monitoring lions in Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater she was ready for more hands-on conservation work. In late 2010 she based herself full-time in Ngorongoro and started up what later became KopeLion. In 2015 she enrolled as PhD student at SLU, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, on a project titled “Balancing pastoralist livelihoods with wildlife management”. Over the next couple of years, she will divide her time between field work in Ngorongoro, and data analyzing and writing in a more academic setting in the Swedish north.