Shelley James

Dr Shelley James is a botanist dedicated to enhancing, expanding, and increasing access to herbarium collections and biodiversity data. With more than 15 years of experience in the digitization and curation of botanical collections at herbaria located across the globe, she has a passion for biodiversity data management, data repatriation and mobilization for scientific research, and collections care. She is always eager to discover ways to contribute to, understand, and improve conservation efforts in Western Australia, Australia and around the world.

Shelley collaborates nationally and internationally with collections, research, cyberinfrastructure, and education communities. She is currently the Oceania representative to Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG), and serves on committees for the Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections and Botanical Society of America.

Shelley has a Doctor of Philosophy in Botany from The University of Western Australia, and is the Collections Manager of the Western Australian Herbarium in Perth. Shelley's career has seen her work at the Bishop Museum (Honolulu, Hawaii, USA), the University of Florida (Gainesville, Florida, USA) and the National Herbarium of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia), and undertake fieldwork in Hawaii, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Indian Ocean Territories, and across Australia.