Dave Richardson was Director of the South African Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology between 2012 and 2022 and is currently Professor of Ecology at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. His research focuses mainly on plant invasions, especially trees and shrubs, on the role of mutualisms in invasions, concepts in invasion science, and on opportunities provided by citizen/community science for gaining new insights on aspects of biological invasions (see: https://www.inaturalist.org/people/745172).

He is author/co-author of about 540 peer-reviewed journal papers and chapters in edited books. He has edited/co-edited seven books, including Fifty years of invasion ecology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) and Wattles: Australian Acacia species around the world (CABI, 2023) and is co-author of Invasion Dynamics (Oxford University Press; 2017) and Invading Ecological Networks (Cambridge University Press; 2022). He was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Diversity and Distributions between 1998 and 2015.