My name is Jacqueline Ballantyne, and I’m a second-year Ph.D. student in the Biology Department at the University of Miami.
I was raised in Southern Ontario, Canada, where I grew up passing every spare moment knee-deep and wide-eyed in the creek behind our family cabin.
I went on to earn undergraduate and master’s degrees in biology and primate behavior from The University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada, graduated 2016) and The University of Roehampton (London, England, graduated 2019) respectively. I have participated in several collaborations with Indigenous and traditional riverine communities in Brazil and Ecuador across four field stations and seven field seasons.
I am currently dividing my time climbing trees in the Ecuadorian Amazon and running around Miami while writing, teaching, and trying to be of service to my community. Oh and doting endlessly on my dog, Joro.
Amor Fati.
Love your fate.
Top left. Me holding a frog on an island somewhere in Go Home Bay, Lake Huron, Ontario, Canada. Top right. Me and Kryt, respected chief of the Kayapó Village of Aukre, and my defacto grandfather while working in the community. Taken during my first trip to the Amazon as an undergraduate student in 2015. Bottom. Me, in July 2022 in the canopy of a Trichillia tree (Fam. Meliaceae) with one of my camera traps in the background on a branch that waved in the slightest breeze and left me sorting through hundreds of false trigger photos.