Petra defended her PhD-thesis in urban ecology of Eurasian Kestrels (project of the University of Vienna, Austria and the University of Turku, Finland). She joined the Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town in 2014 as a post-doctoral fellow and aims to understand the establishment and viability of urban raptor populations and how top predators respond to novel urban stressors in their physiology and behaviour.