Nicola Temple: CV

Education

2003 University of Victoria, Canada MSc Biology, hydrodynamic function of adipose fin
1998 University of Victoria, Canada BSc Biology

Employment

2011 – current
Writer, Editor and Researcher, Freelance

I have been a freelance writer, editor and researcher for over 15 years, doing this full time between 2011 and 2017. 

Achievements

  • Authored ten popular science books, two of which have received international acclaim.
  • In association with my book on food fraud, I developed an interactive game to play with primary school children to teach them about some of the science behind detecting food fraud. This game was picked up by the Food for Thought Project, a partnership with Scottish Government and Education Scotland through an encounter at the Edinburgh Science Festival. The game was subsequently scaled up and rolled out to 401 schools in Scotland to support Food for Thought’s agenda to develop food and health as a context for learning.
  • Secured £110,000 in contracts with different suppliers, including higher education institutions, research councils, private businesses, magazines and other media outlets, and book publishers.
  • Worked extensively with Russell Group universities during the 2014 and 2021 Research Excellence Framework to develop impact case studies, including discovery of impact evidence.
  • Ran the Bristol Botanic Garden Blog between 2014 and 2016 and was the editor for the Cabot Institute Magazine in 2012 and 2015.
  • Worked with the Natural Environment Research Council and the International Ocean Discovery Programme to develop stories of research impact for general audiences.

Head of Innovation and Impact, University of the West of England, Bristol (UWE, Bristol)

March 2025 – current

  • Lead the team responsible for ensuring university knowledge is translated into meaningful societal impact, sustainability solutions and commercial opportunities.
  • As part of the Senior Leadership Team in the newly formed Research and External Engagement service, I am responsible for ensuring the service is delivering on objectives and key results, and that team metrics are aligned.
  • Build resources and frameworks that enable and strengthen researchers’ capacity and capability to deliver consistently high-quality research and knowledge exchange outputs, impact and engagement. 
  • Grow the university’s innovation products and commercialisation activities, including contract research, consultancy, facilities use, licensing opportunities and spin-outs.

Head of Impact and Engagement, UWE, Bristol

Feb 2024 – March 2025

  • Responsible for the team that delivers support to grow and develop impactful research and knowledge exchange, ensuring university knowledge gets into the hands of those who need it. 
  • Identified and responded to strategic funding opportunities to support, scale and deliver a wide range of impact and engagement activities across the university.
  • Developed and supported engagement activities across the university, building and fostering key relationships and supporting researchers in pre-award engagement (co-design) as well as post-award engagement. 
  • Worked as part of the Senior Leadership Team that delivered a new, much larger service as part of a university-wide restructure of professional service, exploring new operating models, considering core capabilities and structures that would maintain a high level of service during financial difficulties for the institution.
  • Identified, developed, launched and administered an internal fund to support impact and engagement work across the university (to date the university’s most successful internal scheme).
  • Successfully developed and launched an internal programme – The Entrepreneurial Academic – to build an entrepreneurial mindset among our academic community.

Senior Research and Knowledge Exchange Manager, UWE Bristol

2021-2024 

  • Co-managed a team of 14 Bid Developers and Development Managers who were responsible for identifying research funding opportunities and strengthening research proposal development. The team developed and maintained strong strategic relationships with internal and external stakeholders in order to support delivery of the university’s research strategy. 
  • Analysed bidding data to develop strategies to support the ambitious target of doubling the university’s research income. The team delivered a series of internal schemes to pump-prime research activity and develop talent, including a programme of support for Early Career Researchers, a Mid-Career Accelerator Programme and an Interdisciplinary Challenge Fund. 
  • Successfully helped researchers secure £17.4M in research income, including a £6M+ network grant focused on food systems and £6M to support infrastructure development 
  • Developed, launched and administered the University’s largest internal funding scheme – Expanding Research Excellence (£750k)- to support challenge-led research
  • Led a team-wide initiative to streamline processes and improve self-serve resources
  • Worked with the Senior Leadership Team in the department to implement new ways of working across the service to accommodate a loss in resource (due to a recruitment freeze).

Senior Research and Business Development Manager, UWE, Bristol

2019-2021

  • Initiated and lead on significant research bidding, helping researchers secure £1.5M in research income.
  • Established and curated numerous UWE-wide networks to collaboration and dissemination of research funding opportunities, including COVID-19 and reducing inequalities networks.
  • Helped to develop new style of Research Bulletin to provide more insight into funding opportunities and make information more relevant to UWE academics.
  • Delivered bid writing training and supported numerous internal schemes across the university including the Vice-Chancellor’s Challenge Fund, as well as schemes for Early Career Researchers and Mid-Career academics, and to foster interdisciplinary working. 

Bid Developer and Writer – Health and Applied Sciences, UWE, Bristol

2018-2019

  • Responsible for the identification, initiation and development of research and knowledge exchange (R&KE) grant applications, specifically targeting science and health funding across all areas of the University. 
  • Provided university-wide specialist expertise of funders including Research Councils, National Institute of Health Research, Innovate UK and charitable health funders. 
  • Promoted good practice in relation to the development and implementation of proposals to ensure funded projects met the requirements of the University, its partners and funding bodies. 
  • Helped secure approximately £250k in external research income
  • Helped establish two UWE-wide networks: Digital Health and Healthy Ageing.

Writer and Editor, Scriptoria

2017-2018

  • Worked with project managers to develop outputs in line with client briefs, managed projects to timelines and budgets and worked with clients to develop product specifications.
  • Identified and secured new business opportunity for Scriptoria related to the Research Excellence Framework.
  • Worked with and successfully developed policy briefings, technical reports, brochures, online content and other products for organisations including UNICEF, The World Water Council, Climate Resilient Infrastructure Development Facility and World Bank.
  • Ghost wrote high-profile article for actor Matt Damon.

Coral Sea Campaigner, Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS)

2008-2010

  • Coordinated AMCS’ campaign to establish the world’s largest marine park in Australia’s Coral Sea (the largest environmental campaign in Australia’s history at the time). 
  • Met with and informed state and federal government officials of campaign objectives, support and progress and developed briefings for Members of Parliament. 
  • Responsible for developing and implementing the public campaign in southeast Queensland including working with media (television, radio, and print) and grassroots campaigning. 
  • Maintained positive relationships with multiple stakeholders, including the dive tourism industry and fishing sectors, to build support for the campaign and minimise opposition.
  • Developed policy briefings and gave in-person briefings to Government Ministers, Heads of Department and MPs
  • Joined an expedition 600km off the east coast of Australia, to Lihou Reef, where we documented evidence of climate change and made the public aware of human impact in this remote area of the Coral Sea. This included being interviewed via satellite by the World Wildlife Fund during the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, as well as developing the text for a series of videos (e.g.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhC8zdkiEXo), which I narrated.

Wild Salmon Program Coordinator, Raincoast Conservation Foundation

2004-2007

  • Coordinated the wild salmon research programme, which had five separate research branches with an annual budget of CA$242,000 and approximately 10 staff.
  • Managed logistics of fieldwork. 
  • Managed relationships with key donors, liaised with First Nations, non-government organisations and government. 
  • Held a conservation seat on various multi-stakeholder committees.
  • Responsible for coordinating the communication of research results with media, government and the public, and producing peer-reviewed and technical documents to support evidence-based decision making.
  • Submitted suggested wording changes during the development of Canada’s Wild Salmon Policy, 80% of which were adopted into the final policy
  • Secured nearly $200,000 CAD funding for the programme
  • Recorded over 200 new salmon streams in the Great Bear Rainforest, affording them increased levels of habitat protection under riparian legislation.

2004 Research assistant, University of Victoria

  • Supported investigations in sex-ratio determination in copepods and antipredator behaviours and evolution in protozoans.

2000-2003 Specialist Instructor, University of Victoria

  • Delivered lab-based undergraduate teaching in ichthyology (3rd year), ecology (2nd year) and evolution and diversity (1st year), including all preparation and marking.
  • Guest lectures as required by lecturers.
  • Helped to develop a training programme and manual for graduate student instructors in Biological Sciences.
  • Awarded the Andy Farquharson Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching in 2003 for contributions to teaching.

Grants, Awards, Fellowships and Distinctions

2016 Canadian Science Writers and Communicators of Canada 2016 Book Award Finalist for ‘Sorting the Beef from the Bull: The Science of Food Fraud Forensics’

2014 MIT Knight Science Journalism Food Boot Camp Fellowship 

2003 Andy Farquharson Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Teaching, University of Victoria

2002 Best Oral Presentation in Field and Stream, Biology Graduate Symposium, University of Victoria

2001 Best Poster in Field and Stream, Biology Graduate Symposium, University of Victoria

1991 Governor General Bronze Medal

Peer-reviewed Publications

Price MHH, Darimont CT, Temple NF & MacDuffee SM. 2008. Ghost runs: management and status assessment of Pacific salmon (Oncorhynchus spp.) returning to British Columbia’s central and north coasts. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 65: 2712-2718.

Temple NF & Reimchen TE. 2008. Adipose fin condition and flow regime in catfish. Canadian Journal of Zoology 86:1079-1082.

Reimchen TE & Temple NF. 2004. Hydrodynamic and phylogenetic aspects of the adipose fin in fishes. Canadian Journal of Zoology 82: 910-916.

Temple NF, Isaac LA, Adams BA, Haughland DL, Engelstoft C & Garcia PFJ. 2003. Development of a Peer Based, Department-Specific Teaching Assistant Manual and Orientation. The Journal of Graduate Teaching Assistant Development 9 (2): 75-80.

Reports and technical documents

Temple NF. 2007. Small Stream Surveys, Final Report 2003-2006. Raincoast Conservation Society. Victoria, BC.

Temple NF – editor. 2005. Salmon in the Great Bear Rainforest. Raincoast Conservation Society. Victoria, BC.

Nelson RJ,Temple NF. 2004. Death by a thousand cuts: the importance of small streams on the North and Central Coasts of British Columbia. Raincoast Conservation Society. Victoria, BC.

Isaac LA,Temple NF(eds.). 2001. BioTA: A manual written by biology TAs…for biology TAs. University of Victoria, Victoria, BC.

Books

Coming in 2026. The Miniverse Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 144p.

Drake, O., J. Challoner, T. Harris, A. Ivan, T. Jackson, and N. Temple. 2023. How Biology Works Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 224p.

Carton, S., T. Harris, R. Hume, T. Jackson, S. Jose, A. Lacchia, G. Mills, D. Palmer, N. Temple. 2023. Timelines of Nature, Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 289p.

Ball, L., P. Chrisp, J. Emsley, C. Gifford, J. Locke, D. Palmer, G. Smith, G. Sparrow, N. Temple. 2022. Timelines of Science, Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 320p.  

Harvey, D., N. Temple and J. Woodward. 2020. Knowledge Encyclopedia Ocean! Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 208p.

Collin, C., T. Collin, L. Drew, W. Horobin, T. Jackson, K. John, S. Parker, E. Yhnell, G. Smith, N. Temple and S. Watt. 2020. How the Brain Works. Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 224p.

Whitlock, C. and N. Temple. 2019. Meet Your Hormones. Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London.

Temple, N. and C. Whitlock. 2018. Meet Your Bacteria. Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London,

Temple, N. 2018. Best Before: The Evolution and Future of Processed Food. Bloomsbury Sigma, London, 272p.

Temple, N. et al. 2017. Knowledge Encyclopedia Human Body! Bloomsbury Sigma, London, 208p.

Evershed, R. and N. Temple. 2016. Sorting the Beef from the Bull: The Science of Food Fraud Forensics. Bloomsbury Sigma, London, 320p.

Smith, V. and N. Temple. 2016. How the Body Works. Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 256p.

Magazine, newspaper and online media (highlights only)

Temple, N. (29 Nov 2019) ‘5 things you probably didn’t know about processed food’. Science Focus, https://www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/five-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-processed-food/ 

Temple, N. and M. Major (2019) ‘Jean Hanson: Building the next generation of genebank managers’. CGIAR [website], https://www.genebanks.org/news-activities/news/jean-hanson/

Temple, N. (4 May 2018) ‘Give Processed Food a Break’. The Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/give-processed-food-a-break-1525450418

Temple, N. (28 Feb 2018) ‘Don’t hate all processed foods – they make modern life possible’. New Scientist, https://www.newscientist.com/article/2162577-dont-hate-all-processed-foods-they-make-modern-life-possible/

Temple, N. (2016) ‘Fake Food’. The Big Issue, February 22-28, 2016, No 1193.

Temple, N. and R. Evershed (21 Feb 2016) ‘Post-horsemeat, can food fraud forensics protect the sanctity of our plate?’. The Observer, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/21/food-fraud-science-safety-horsemeat-burgers-dna-forensics

Temple, N. and R. Evershed (2016) ‘It’s not just horse of course: the science of meat fraud’. New Food Magazine 

Temple, N. (2015) ‘Fish Fraud: Bait and switch at the grocery store’, The Walrus, https://thewalrus.ca/fish-fraud/

Temple, N. (Editor) (2015) Cabot Institute Magazine

Temple, N. (Editor) (2012) Cabot Institute: Living with global uncertainty

Temple, N. (21 Sep 2011) ‘Same-sex squids mate in the dark’, Cosmos Magazine

Temple, N. (3 Apr 2010) ‘Trashing our treasures’, The Gold Coast Bulletin [Daily newspaper]

Temple, N. (26 Feb 2010) ‘Lasting ocean legacy’, The Gold Coast Bulletin [Daily newspaper]

Engagement and Knowledge Exchange Activities

Conferences and invited talks

Temple, N. (September 2019) Food processing. Invited talk, Intellectual Property Office, Wales

Temple, N. (July 2018) Best Before: The Evolution and Future of Process Food. Invited presenter with audience engagement, Way with Words Festival

Temple, N. (April 2018) Best Before: The Evolution and Future of Processed Food. Edinburgh Science Festival, Edinburgh

Temple, N. and R. Evershed (October 2016) Sorting the Beef from the Bull. Public lecture, Imperial College London, London

Temple, N. (October 2016) Are we eating what we think we’re eating? Empowering the consumer. Invited talk, Food Labelling and Nanotechnology Conference, International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, Braga, Portugal

Temple, N. (May 2016) Sorting the Beef from the Bull: The Science of Food Fraud Forensics. Invited talk, Sooke Rotary Club, Canada

Temple, N. (May 2016) Sorting the Beef from the Bull: The Science of Food Fraud Forensics. Public Lecture, University of Victoria, Canada

Temple, N. and R. Evershed (April 2016) Sorting the Beef from the Bull: The Science of Food Fraud Forensics. Invited talk, The British Sandwich Association, Bristol

Temple, N. (April 2016) Food Fraud. Invited keynote address, South Africa labelling conference, Johannesburg, South Africa

Temple, N. and R. Evershed (March 2016) Sorting the Beef from the Bull: The Science of Food Fraud Forensics. Edinburgh Science Festival, Edinburgh

Media (highlights only)

Radio

  • CBC Radio (May 2018) – short (~1 minute) facts about processed food played nationally
  • KJZZ ‘Processed Food Isn’t All Bad’ (22 May 2018)
  • Zoomer Radio ‘Fight Back with Libby Znaimer’ (17 May 2018)
  • NewsTalk Radio ‘Moncrieff’ (24 Feb 2016) 
  • BBC Radio Wales (22 Feb 2016) 
  • BBC Radio 4 ‘You and Yours’ (22 Feb 2016) 
  • BBC Radio Bristol Saturday Breakfast with Ali Vowles (20 Feb 2016) 

TV

  • Curiosity Stream documentary ‘Eat Me’ (September 2021 release date)
  • BBC Breakfast (22 Feb 2016) 

Print/Online

Service and Professional Activities

2026-current Trustee: Westbury Park Tennis Club Community Interest Organisation

2026-current Integrated Care Academy Steering Group

2023-current Professional Services Rep, Academic Board

2023-2024 Research Excellence Group, Colleges

2019-2022 Lead, RBI’s Climate Action Group

2019-2023 Member, HAS Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee

2019-current Steering Committee Member, Centre for Appearance Research

2019-2021 Member, BNSSG Clinical Research Network, Research & Evidence Advisory 

Committee

2018-2023 Member, ACoRD Specialists Group

2012-2023 Member, Canadian Science Writers and Communicators of Canada 

2011-2023 Member, Association of British Science Writers

2014-2019 Director, Henry’s After School Club 

  1. Member, National Union of Journalists
  2. The Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science

2001-2003 Member, Ecology-Evolution Discussion Group

2003 Organizing Committee, Biology Graduate Symposium, University of Victoria

2002 Chair, Organising Committee, Days of Orientation for Graduate Students 

  1. Co-founder and volunteer, BioTA peer-based teaching assistant training 
  2. Science volunteer, Let’s Talk Science Partnership Program 

Professional Development

Fundamentals of Tech Transfer (2024)

Transition to Leadership (2023)

Project Management (2023)

People Managers Programme (2021)

Aspiring Leaders (2021)