Dr John Hall - The Fruit-Bats that Touched Eternity – Reflections on Building Narrative and Authenticity in Science Teaching

John Hall is an educator with a particular interest in teaching ecology and conservation. He has been a teaching-focused academic in what is now the School of the Environment for nineteen years, having first begun his teaching journey as a field tutor at UQ several years before that. He teaches extensively into the school’s Master of Conservation Biology degree, and leads several terrestrial ecology field trips to destinations such as Lamington and Carnarvon Gorge National Parks. His undergraduate degrees are in ecology and geography. His PhD research (also conducted at the University of Queensland) was on the ecology of cycads, and their interactions with animals –the host-specific beetles that pollinate their cones, and the vertebrate animals that disperse their seeds. This appreciation of plant-animal interactions taught him that “every organism has a story to tell” and that “everything is connected to everything else” - two themes which he tries to infuse into all his teaching.