Sarah Watkinson is Emeritus Fellow and former Tutor and Director of Studies in Biological Sciences at St Hilda’s College, and Emeritus Research Fellow in Fungal Biology at the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford. Her publications are mainly on the soil fungi which form extensive, self-organising mycelial networks controlling nutrient dynamics in woodlands. With colleagues in Oxford and the US she has reported on molecular mechanisms of wood dissolution and amino acid flow revealed by genomic and imaging methods, and developed patents on dry rot control.
After taking the Oxford University Diploma in Creative Writing in 2012, she studied poetry with Jenny Lewis. Her two most recent books are The Fungi, 3rd Edition, with N. P. Money and L. Boddy, published in 2016 by Elsevier, and Dung Beetles Navigate by Starlight, Cinnamon Press Poetry Pamphlet prize winner, published in 2017.