Prof Birtles began his career with Public Health England, where he obtained his PhD on Bartonella diversity and evolution in 1994 and continued to study bartonella as a Marie Curie Research Fellow in the Unite des Rickettsies, L’Université d’Aix-Marseille then a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow at The University of Bristol. At Bristol, Prof Birtles co-founded the Acarus Laboratory for molecular diagnostics of arthropod-borne infections of veterinary importance, expanding his interests to tick-borne pathogens including Borrelia burgdorferi and Anaplasma phagocytophilum. In 2001, Prof Birtles joined the academic staff of the University of Liverpool Veterinary School, where his research focused on Bartonella-arthropod interactions, A. phagocytophilum ecology and, as part of a multidisciplinary team, fundamental infectious disease ecology and wild immunology. In 2011, Prof Birtles moved to The University of Salford where, as part of the USALTI research group, he continues to work on infection ecology in the UK (Lyme disease and other zoonoses) and, increasingly, the impact of tick-borne infections on livestock rearing in sub-Saharan Africa. Prof Birtles has now published about 150 papers on his research.
