The Principal of Somerville College is delighted to invite members of Somerville College and the wider University to a live recording of Arthur Snell’s geopolitics podcast Behind the Lines.
This special episode of the podcast will feature members of the Somerville College sanctuary community whose lives and work have been shaped by conflict and its aftermath. The conversation will spotlight themes of resistance, relief, and reconstruction as we hear from Ukrainian political journalist Nikita Vorobiov, Sudanese physician and global health advocate Dr Hadeel Abdelseid and Syrian academic, author and architect Dr Ammar Azzouz.
Chaired by former British diplomat Arthur Snell, the event offers a chance to hear from three truly inspiring figures and consider how universities can rise to the challenge of education in an unstable world. Please note: the recording will last one hour, followed by a drinks reception till 7pm.
↩️ Sign-up to secure your place: Behind the Lines Live: The Sanctuary Scholars
📍 Flora Anderson Hall, Somerville College
📆 5:30pm, Tuesday March 3rd 2026
Biographies
Arthur Snell
Arthur Snell is a British author, political commentator, and former diplomat who served as the United Kingdom’s High Commissioner to Trinidad and Tobago from 2011 to 2014. He held diplomatic postings in Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Yemen, Iraq and Afghanistan prior to his role as the UK’s High Commission to Trinidad and Tobago. Arthur led the Foreign Office contribution to the UK’s “Prevent” anti-terrorism programme and, outside government service, joined the risk consultancy Orbis Business Intelligence. In July 2022, Arthur published his first book How Britain Broke the World. He is a regular contributor to political podcast The Bunker and host of the popular geopolitics podcast Behind the Lines.
Mykyta Vorobiov
Nikita (Mykyta) Vorobiov is an Oxford-based political writer of Ukrainian-Russian origin, reading for an MSc in Russian and East European Studies as an EAA Qatar Sanctuary Scholar. Nikita has previously studied at the Universities of Zagreb, Tartu and Bar College, Berlin, where he gained a BA in Ethics and Politics and specialised in Russian visual propaganda. Since 2021, Nikita has been working as a political writer, publishing more than fifty op-eds for leading US think tanks, contributing monthly articles to the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and serving from 2023 to 2025 as Senior Editor at JURIST, where he helped launch the Balkan Dispatch and subsequently received the 2025 Wolmuth Award for extraordinary dedication. Nikita’s research focuses on political psychology, nationalism, and military propaganda, where his Russian-Ukrainian background has enabled him to contribute in-depth analysis of highly nuanced topics and to collaborate the European Journalism Observatory (EJO), Amnesty International’s Mnemonics Project and the Tamizdat Project, among others.
Dr. Hadeel Abdelseid
Dr Hadeel Abdelseid is a Sudanese physician, educator, and global health advocate reading for an MSc in International Health and Tropical Medicine as a XXX Sanctuary Scholar. Still a medical student when the war in Sudan resumed in 2023, Dr Abdelseid has dedicated herself tirelessly to advancing community-based care, health equity, and capacity building in crisis settings ever since. She currently serves as the Director of the Sudan ECHO Center of Excellence at the SuDRO Organization, where she leads national and international initiatives to strengthen health systems through virtual learning, collaborative networks, and knowledge exchange. Dr Abdelseid’s leadership has ensured the continuity of health education during Sudan’s ongoing conflict, empowering thousands of frontline providers across the country through multiple ECHO projects. Through her studies at Somerville, Dr. Abdelseid hopes to further her mentorship and advocacy for resilient, inclusive health systems, improving access to quality care and fostering sustainable development in fragile contexts.
Dr Ammar Azzouz
Dr Ammar Azzouz is a Research Fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, and a British Academy Research Fellow of Somerville College. Dr Azzouz has earned widespread recognition as a researcher, academic, architect and writer. He is the Principal Investigator of ‘Slow Violence and the City’, a research project that examines the impact of violence on the built environment and recently convened the course “Topographies of Memory” in Homs, in a joint collaboration between Oxford and several Syrian universities. His research on inclusive and diverse cities, queering public space, cultural heritage, architecture and war, reconstruction and forced migration has been featured in the New York Times, The Conversation, The New Statesman, New Lines Magazine, Middle East Eye, and the academic journals Antipode, CITY, Change Over Time, Urban Studies and International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Ammar’s first book, Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria, which explores how the future reconstruction of cities should mirror the wants and needs of local communities, was published by Bloomsbury to widespread acclaim in 2023.
Somerville College
Building on its founding principle to include the excluded and a history of welcoming displaced academics that dates back to the 1930s, Somerville College gained recognition as a University College of Sanctuary in 2021. Since then, the College has welcomed 29 Sanctuary Scholars from regions including Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia, Liberia and Palestine.
