Rate My Professor Geraldine Wright

Professor Geraldine Wright is the Hope Professor of Zoology (Entomology) in the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford. She holds a BSc in Botany from the University of Wyoming and a PhD in Zoology from the University of Oxford, which she completed as a Rhodes Scholar at Hertford College. She also earned an MSc in Statistics from Ohio State University. Her early career included postdoctoral research on olfaction in honeybees at the Rothenbuhler Honeybee Laboratory at Ohio State University. She subsequently joined Newcastle University, where she progressed from lecturer to Reader and then Professor in Neuroethology before moving to the University of Oxford in 2018 as Professor of Comparative Physiology/Organismal Biology and Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College. In 2021 she was appointed to the Hope Professorship of Zoology (Entomology).

Professor Wright’s research examines how insects detect, learn about, and regulate their intake of nutrients, with a primary focus on the nutrition and physiology of honeybees and bumblebees. Her laboratory investigates these processes across multiple levels, including the organizational principles of chemical senses such as taste and smell, how the bee brain learns to associate chemical cues with food, how individual insects regulate intake of essential nutrients, and how ingested plant compounds influence sensation, learning, and feeding. Specific studies have explored the effects of ethanol intoxication on honeybee behaviour, responses to unfamiliar smells following aversive experiences, the combined impacts of insecticides on bee learning and memory, preferences for neonicotinoid-containing food, and the role of caffeine in enhancing memory for nectar-related scents. She also identified two neurons in each tastebud that help regulate bees’ responses to particular tastes. Her work contributes to understanding insect neuroethology and the ecology of plant-insect interactions.

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