The time has finally come, my PhD thesis is finished and printed! The electronic copy is available here.

I owe a huge thanks to Dr. Lia van der Hoek, my PhD promoter. Lia won EU funding for the HONOURs Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action training network, providing PhD positions for 15 early stage researchers across Europe. She entrusted one of those to me, and we’ve had a great time over the years since.

The aspect I appreciate most about the resulting thesis is that our studies into ssDNA viruses and their hosts came about by pursuing interesting chance discoveries - neither of us originally expected the research to go that way!

A few highlights:

• [Nature Communications, 2020] Three new families of circular DNA viruses infecting human parasites, named after three rings from The Lord of the Rings: Naryaviridae, Nenyaviridae, and Vilyaviridae

• [Virus Evolution, 2022] A virus family found in the human mouth, Redondoviridae, was traced to oral protozoan hosts rather than people

• [PNAS, 2023] Draupnirviridae, a proposed new family of circular DNA viruses, was shown to have donated genes to pathogenic avipoxviruses infecting birds and reptiles. This clue helped us solve that the donor viruses also infected vertebrate hosts

• [PLoS Pathogens, 2020] A review covering research preparedness for major virus outbreaks, with only HONOURs PhD candidates as authors