Christine Maggs

Research and career

Maggs worked as a postdoc at the Atlantic Research Laboratory, Nova Scotia, Canada and Queen's University Belfast (the latter on an Advanced Natural Environment Research Council Fellowship), before taking up a post as a lecturer at Queen's University Belfast in 1995. Her main research interests are molecular systematics of seaweeds with particular interests in alien marine algae and plants, biological conservation, and sustainable seaweed exploitation. The majority of her publications focus on red algae (Rhodophyta), although she has also published on brown algae and green algae, notably showing that Linnaeus was correct in his assertion that the genera Ulva and Enteromorpha were not distinct. She has described two new orders (Ahnfeltiales and Atractophorales) of alga, and three new families (Ahnfeltiaceae, Atractophoraceae, and Haemeschariaceae). She has published over a hundred peer-reviewed scientific papers.

She has written three books on seaweeds: Seasearch Guide to Seaweeds of Britain and Ireland, Green seaweeds of Britain and Ireland, and Seaweeds of the British Isles.

Editorial work

Professor Maggs has been the Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Phycology for 20 years (1994-2004; joint Editor-in-Chief from 2010) and is a Managing Editor of the new BPS journal Applied Phycology, with Prof. Juliet Brodie and Editor-in-Chief Prof. John Beardall. She was associate editor of Journal of Biogeography from 2007-2014, Associate Editor of Journal of Phycology (2009–10), and from 1991-1993 she was Associate Editor of Phycologia, the bi-monthly journal of the International Phycological Society.

Diversity work

Professor Maggs led the Queen's University Belfast School of Biological Sciences application for an Athena SWAN Gold Award. This successful application made Queen's University Belfast the recipient of only the third departmental Athena SWAN Gold award. In 2017, Professor Maggs was awarded the British Ecological Society Equality and Diversity Champion award.