We are delighted to confirm that Somerville doctoral student Utsa Bose has won a Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Culture alongside his colleagues in TORCH’s Medical Humanities Hub.
Historian Utsa Bose, proud recipient of a Research Culture award, 2025
The Vice-Chancellor’s Research Culture Award celebrates those who have contributed to a positive, inclusive and equitable research culture at the University of Oxford. The Oxford Centre for the Humanities (TORCH)’s Medical Humanities Research Hub (MedHum) was one of two teams to win a Research Culture award in 2025, alongside the Wellcome Centre’s Ambassador Programmes. The MedHum team were recognised for their achievement in highlighting the contribution of the humanities to a proper understanding of health, disease, and medicine, countering the narrative that innovation in healthcare is solely the domain of physicians and laboratories.
Somerville’s doctoral candidate Utsa Bose is reading for a DPhil in the sociocultural and medical history of the bubonic plague in Calcutta between 1890 and 1920. He has also been an active contributor to MedHum’s work since 2024, collaborating with scholars at different stages of their professional careers, from DPhils and ECRs to senior professors, on academic projects within the university as well as more community-based work, such as work with the Oxfordshire Council, as part of the Oxfordshire Health Humanities Project.
Speaking of his award, Utsa commented, “I am really grateful to Medical Humanities (MedHum), and especially to our Academic Lead, Professor Erica Charters, for giving me an opportunity to join the team. I am also deeply grateful to our Vice Chancellor, Professor Irene Tracey, for the Research Culture Award. Medical Humanities is a truly interdisciplinary hub under TORCH, running across departments and connecting work in the fields of health and medicine with research in the humanities. This award is a recognition of the diversity that the research hub thus embraces, across perspectives, opinions, and in the scales of interaction
“As a doctoral student studying medical and health history, participating in the events organised by MedHum has been richly rewarding, as it has facilitated encounters with newer domains, and expanded my own boundaries. It has also helped me think through and connect a range of different issues, and, by bringing me in contact with a wonderful team of experts from different fields, helped foster interdisciplinary networks of collaboration, linking the past, the present and the future.”
Somerville’s Principal Jan Royall commented, “I am so proud of Utsa’s achievement in winning a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Culture Award. It is triumphant proof of both his research acumen and the richly rewarding link between the humanities and medical research.”
We are also proud to note that Somerville’s Junior Research Fellow Dr Emma Soneson was highly commended in the same category alongside her Department of Psychiatry colleague Dr Galit Geulayov. Emma and Galit were recognised for their outstanding commitment to mentoring future researchers via the inaugural NIHR Undergraduate Internship Programme. Together, Emma and Galit gave personalised feedback to 429 applicants, providing mentorship that “surpassed any expectation completely” in order to nurture the next generation of researchers.
Winners of the Research Culture Award 2025 – TORCH Medical Humanities Research Hub (©John Cairns Photography)