Candy is Professor of Animal Behaviour and Cognition and Dean of Research Culture and Strategy at Newcastle University. She arrived in Newcastle in 1998, first as a Sir James Knott Fellow, and then a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow, before being appointed as a lecturer in 2005. Her expertise lies in animal behaviour and cognition, with particular interests in how cognitive processes influence the evolution of animal communication and coloration, and how we can use cognition and behaviour to study animal emotion and improve animal welfare. She set up and co-directed the Centre for Behaviour and Evolution in 2007, which has successfully built new and interdisciplinary collaborations between researchers interested in behaviour from across the university.
On top of enjoying her research at the interface between psychology and evolutionary biology, She is passionate about supporting people's careers and seeing them develop and succeed, and is a strong advocate for equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in the research environment. She currently works 2 days a week as Dean of Research Culture and Strategy for the university. Prior to this, she have been Chair of NU Women (our staff network for women across the institution), and Director of EDI for her Faculty, where she led a team that achieved the first faculty-wide Athena SWAN Silver Award. She is also Co-Chair of the University's 'For Families' project to make the University more family friendly, and co-lead a Wellcome Trust funded project to build an EDI Toolkit for research leaders. She also actively supports the career development of colleagues and students, through mentoring and career conversations, both inside and outside of Newcastle. Until recently, she was also Director of the Newcastle University Academic Track (NUAcT) Fellowship Scheme, which is an investment of £30M to appoint around 100 new fellows over five years (2019-2023), and support their professional development. She continues to have oversight of the scheme in her new role, as well as responsibility for developing the supportive and inclusive research culture, and embedding new ways of thinking into how we do research.