We have reached capacity for the Hall therefore bookings have now closed. If you would like to be put on a waiting list please email: alumnievents@some.ox.ac.uk
We are looking forward to hosting our annual Supporters’ Lunch to thank donors to Somerville on Saturday 3rd February 2024.
The programme for the day is as follows:
11:00am
A selection of our Junior Research Fellows will showcase their research in Flora Anderson Hall
12:15pm
Drinks in the Brittain Williams Room
1:00pm
Lunch in Hall
There will also be live music and a chance to meet current students.
Meet Our Speakers
Emma Soneson
Senior Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry; Fulford Junior Research Fellow
Emma will be sharing insights from her work studying Public Health approaches to children’s mental health and wellbeing, particularly in relation to the intersection between education and mental health. Emma will also be discussing her work with the BrainWaves Study, an innovative new programme that includes the development of a new cohort study of adolescent mental health and wellbeing, the creation of a new trials platform to evaluate school-based mental health interventions, and the development of evidence-based educational materials for schools.
Amanda Rojek
Senior Clinical Research Fellow, Pandemic Sciences Institute; Fulford Junior Research Fellow
Amanda Rojek is an emergency medicine doctor with expertise in advancing clinical research during emerging infectious disease outbreaks. Amanda’s work focuses on emerging and high-consequence infectious disease outbreaks. Her role is to design and rapidly implement meaningful clinical research when a new outbreak emerges. These include studies to better understand the natural history of a disease, through to treatment trials of experimental treatments. She is a researcher for the PLATINUM Trial, which seeks to develop a successful treatment for Monkeypox.
Rocco Zizzamia
Post-Doctoral Researcher, Centre for the Study of African Economies, Oxford Martin school; Fulford Junior Research Fellow
Rocco’s research focuses on social protection and labour markets. In his current work, he is using experimental methods to study the potential to leverage innovations in the design and delivery of social protection systems to increase household resilience to poverty and to extreme climate events such as floods and droughts. In the past, he has researched labour markets, inequality, poverty alleviation, poverty dynamics, and social stratification, using a variety of methods, including longitudinal surveys, field experiments, qualitative studies, and behavioural lab experiments.
Andrea Kusec
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Translational Neuropsychology Group, Departments of Clinical Neurosciences and Experimental Psychology; Fulford Junior Research Fellow
Andrea works on developing accessible mental health interventions for adults with different types of brain injuries, such as a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or brain tumours. They use a mixture of advanced quantitative (mixed-effects models, structural equation models, risk prediction modelling) and qualitative (thematic analysis, interpretive description) methods to identify risk factors for poor mental health unique to brain injury populations; and develop and experimentally test novel mental health interventions that are accessible to brain injury survivors in light of cognitive impairments. The ultimate aim of their research is to improve treatment options for mental health in neuropsychological populations.
Bjorn Vahsen
Postdoctoral Researcher, Oxford Motor Neuron Disease Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences; Fulford Junior Research Fellow
Bjorn studies the role of microglia in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis using induced pluripotent stem cell models. His project is performed in collaboration with Dr Sally Cowley at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology and funded by the Motor Neurone Disease Association.