Georgia Drew
Early-Career Fellow 2023–2024

Georgia Drew (born in 1993 and raised in the United Kingdom) is an evolutionary ecologist. Her research focuses on the evolution of symbioses between microbes and animal hosts. She is interested in how host sociality, for instance, in the form of group structure or behavior, and community complexity shape the evolutionary trajectories of symbioses.

Georgia received her PhD from the University of Liverpool in 2019, studying the transmission of a bacterial symbiont in honeybees. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, she experimentally evolved networks of hosts and microbes, asking fundamental questions about how symbiotic communities coevolve under varying ecological scenarios. During this time, she taught undergraduate courses and received a junior fellowship at Somerville College.

Georgia is frequently involved in public outreach, including Oxford Sparks videos and a BBC radio event. Georgia is interested in expanding the dialogue between the arts and natural sciences. She received funding from the British Ecological Society and Oxford University to curate an exhibition entitled Unseen Workers: The Essential Role of Microbes. Using ceramics, videography, and poetry, the exhibition highlighted the use of microbes in ecosystem restoration and therapeutics.