Emeritus, Honorary and Foundation Fellows

Professor Alison Wolf CBE is the Sir Roy Griffiths Professor of Public Sector Management at Kings College London, and a cross-bench peer (Baroness Wolf of Dulwich) in the House of Lords.

She specialises in the relationship between education and the labour market. She has a particular interest in training and skills policy, universities, and the medical workforce. The latter is particularly appropriate to the Chair she holds, established in memory of an influential government adviser on medical management. Alison’s publications include The XX Factor: How Working Women Are Creating A New Society (Profile Books 2013) and Remaking Tertiary Education (Resolution Foundation 2016).

Alison is highly involved in policy debate, both in this country and more widely and is currently seconded part-time to the government as an expert adviser on skills policy. In February 2018, she was appointed to the English Government’s Review of Post-18 Education and Funding, as a member of the independent expert panel. The report of the panel (‘the ‘Augar Review’) was published in 2019: the government has published an interim response, accepting some of the key recommendations.  In 2019 Alison delivered the annual King’s lectures, on ‘Universities. the economy and the state’.  She has been a specialist adviser to the House of Commons select committee on education and skills; writes widely for the national press and is a presenter for Analysis on BBC Radio 4; and in March 2011 completed the The Wolf Review, written by Professor Wolf, a Review of Vocational Education for the Secretary of State for Education.  In 2015/16 she was a member of the independent panel on technical education, chaired by Lord David Sainsbury, whose report formed the basis of the Government’s 2016 Skills Plan.

While most of Alison’s current work focuses on the interface between education institutions and labour markets, she also has long-standing interests in assessment, and in mathematics education. She was the founding Chair of Governors of the King’s College London Mathematics School, established by King’s College London. Alison was awarded the 2008 Sam Aaronovitch memorial prize for her article in Local Economy on the Leitch Review of Skills. She has been an adviser to, among others, the OECD, the Royal College of Surgeons, the Ministries of Education of New Zealand, France and South Africa, the European Commission, the International Accounting Education Standards Board, and the Bar Council. She was educated at the universities of Oxford (MA, MPhil) and Neuchatel.

Alison spent her early career in the United States working as a policy analyst for the federal government, and spent many years at the Institute of Education, University of London, where she is a visiting professor. Alison was awarded the CBE for services to education in the Queen’s 2012 birthday honours.

Hi, I’m Ameal (they/them), a third year studying English, and I’m the JCR Disabilities officer at Somerville. I’m here to discuss disability-related concerns and act as an additional channel through which to communicate those concerns to the college.

I run the JCR Prescription Reimbursement Fund, which allows JCR members to be reimbursed up to a certain amount for their NHS prescriptions. I also enjoy running joint events with other JCR Identity Officers to make sure as many people as possible are able to access them.

Feel free to email me at jcr.disability@some.ox.ac.uk if you have any queries or concerns!

Matthew Wood is Professor of Neuroscience and Associate Head of the Medical Sciences Division (http://www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/support-services/matthew-wood) in the University of Oxford. His laboratory is based in the Department of Paediatrics.

Matthew graduated in Medicine from the University of Cape Town in 1987, working in clinical Neuroscience before gaining a doctorate in Physiological Sciences from the University of Oxford in 1993. His research team works on developing gene therapies for degenerative disorders of the brain and muscles – so-called neuromuscular diseases. This is exemplified by landmark work using small DNA patches called oligonucleotides to correct the genetic abnormalities underlying the fatal childhood muscle disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy

Further information is available at Professor Wood’s page with the Oxford Neuroscience and Department of Paediatrics.

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology and a Fulford Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College.

Vaccination is a critical tool to leverage our body’s natural immune responses to fight bacterial infections. Oral vaccines typically induce protective antibody responses which recognize sugars commonly found on the surface of gut bacteria. My research at the Dunn School involves studying the interaction between vaccine-induced antibodies and these sugar structures to understand how the immune system can recognize harmful pathogenic microbes and distinguish them from the ‘good’ gut-resident microbes which promote human health. Understanding this interaction is vital to inform the design of effective vaccines.

I completed my PhD in Microbiology & Immunology in Dr. B. Brett Finlay’s laboratory at The University of British Columbia in Vancouver Canada where I used barcoding techniques to study microbial ecology and population dynamics of microbes living within the gastrointestinal tract; in particular, how pathogenic Escherichia coli sense and respond to regional gut environments to cause disease. I later worked with Dr. Agatha Jassem at BC Centre for Disease Control in Canada to explore cross-reactive immune responses to endemic coronaviruses and SARS-CoV-2.

In November 2023 I joined the group of Dr. Emma Slack at the University of Oxford as a Postdoctoral Researcher to investigate vaccine-induced antibody responses. My active research collaborations investigate the role of microbes in enteric disease, childhood malnutrition, and asthma development. In addition to research, I am a skilled science communicator, writer, and mentor, and have extensive experience with public engagement in science from working with the organization Let’s Talk Science in Canada where I organized outreach programs to better communicate science to the public. My current list of publications is available here.

Farhana Yamin grew up in London and came to Somerville in 1983 to study PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics). After graduation, Yamin qualified as a solicitor and worked as an environmental lawyer, becoming a climate change and development policy expert. In 2001, she helped to deliver the Marrakech Accords, the international rules needed to complete the Kyoto Protocol and she has been advising leaders and countries on climate change and development policy for 30 years.

Yamin has taught in UK universities since 1995, including as a Visiting Professor at University College London. She stepped back from the world of academia and UN negotiations in 2018 to focus on non-violent civil disobedience and social justice movements challenging capitalism. As a Political Coordinator of Extinction Rebellion for a year, Yamin played a key role in the XR April 2019 protests, gluing herself to the Shell HQ offices in London, alongside thousands of other activists. She is a champion of community-based action and co-founded Camden Think & Do, where she is experimenting with radical inclusion & concepts of spatial justice by supporting communities create pop-up action hubs in high streets and public spaces. She also sits as an expert on various Commissions including Camden Renewal Commission and IPPR’s Commission on Environmental Justice.

Farhana serves as trustee or adviser to a number of organisations working on the intersection of social, racial and ecological justice, including Greenpeace UK, WWF-UK and Julie’s Bicycle, an organisation working to support artists and the cultural sector in tackling climate and sustainability. Yamin is currently a Senior Associate at the UK think thank company Systemiq and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) and was made an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College in 2022.

Did you know? Farhana first broke the law in the name of climate justice in 2019, when she glued herself to the ground outside the Shell headquarters in London. Her protest formed a central part of the 2021 film Rebellion, which relates the inside story of XR from grassroots activism to international impact. 

Professor Julia Yeomans (1973, Physics) is a British theoretical physicist active in the fields of soft condensed matter and biological physics.

After her completing her undergraduate degree at Somerville, Professor Yeomans conducted doctoral research on critical phenomena in spin models at Wolfson College. She spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University with Michael E. Fisher, before returning to the UK as lecturer in Physics at the University of Southampton. In 1983, she moved to the University of Oxford where she became a professor in 2002.

Yeomans is a professor at the Rudolf Peierls centre for theoretical physics. Her research investigates theoretical modelling of processes in complex fluids including liquid crystals, drops on hydrophobic surfaces, microchannels, as well as bacteria. In 2012, Professor Yeomans was awarded a European Research Council advanced research grant for her research proposal Microflow in complex environments.

Professor Yeomans was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2013, and in 2021 she received the Sam Edwards Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics, for her contributions to soft and active matter, statistical physics and biophysics. 

She was made an Honorary Fellow of Somerville in College in April 2022. 

Jackie is Somerville’s Regular Giving and Alumni Relations Executive. She joined Somerville in 2023 from Cardiff University, where she worked in development and alumni relations following a year as President of the Student’s Union. 

As Regular Giving and Alumni Relations Executive, Jackie organises the Somerville College telethon and other exciting fundraising campaigns within the alumni community. She is also responsible for the Cedar Circle, Somerville’s new initiative to recognise those who make a regular gift to the College.

In her Alumni Relations role, Jackie leads our young alumni events, helping recent graduates and leavers stay connected to their College community.

Lucy is Somerville’s Academic Registrar.

She runs the day to day operations of the Academic Office, including the coordination of undergraduate admissions.

Faridah Zaman is Associate Professor of the History of Britain and the World at the University of Oxford, and Fellow and Tutor of Modern History at Somerville College.

Professor Zaman has two main areas of research. The first concerns Muslim political activists, religious scholars, journalists and poets in early twentieth-century British India. Here, Prof Zaman explores the ways in which Muslim thought developed within the context of worldwide war, political revolution and imperial decline. Her work on this subject has appeared in Modern Intellectual History, South Asia, and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. It will form the subject of her first monograph, The Young Muhammadans.

Prof Zaman’s second area of research concerns the relationship between the British left, imperialism and Islam in the twentieth century. Her first publication on this subject explored the place of sovereignty in socialist thought and appeared in Twentieth Century British History in 2022. To date, Prof Zaman’s work has also engaged with heritage and imperial visual culture, memory and nostalgia, travel and internationalism, and Muslim historiography in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and she has written for a wider audience via the Journal of the History of Ideas blog, the Fabian Review, and History Today.

Prof Zaman is broadly interested in supervising research projects that develop our understanding of Britain and its relationship to the wider world since 1750, particularly concerning the history of ideas.

Research Interests

• Political and intellectual history in global and imperial contexts
• The role of religion in the history of ideas
• The development of concepts around history and temporality
• Pan-Islamism and socialist internationalism

Academic Biography:

2015-2018 Dorothy and Gaylord Donnelley Postdoctoral Research Scholar, University of Chicago

2010-2014 PhD in History, University of Cambridge

2009-2010 MPhil in Historical Studies, University of Cambridge

2006-2009 BA in History, University of Cambridge

I am a postdoctoral research assistant at the theoretical physics department of the University of Oxford. I work in the field of theoretical particle physics, the aim of which is understanding the final fundamental law of nature. In particular, my research is focussed on precision phenomenology for the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.

I am an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (AFHEA). At Somerville College, I teach French Language, Translation, Orals and Essay.

I have been teaching French ‘language cafés’ and French ‘research-based language tutorials’ at the University of Birmingham since 2020. I have also been an English academic language tutor at AWAS (Academic Writing Advisory Service) for the Department of Modern Languages at the University of Birmingham since 2021. 

Research

My research interests revolve around colonial and postcolonial encounters between France and North Africa and the literary productions that emanate from these encounters. My PhD in French and Francophone Studies reads Algerian identity from the prism of the Sahara. It posits the Sahara Desert as an accurate analytical prism through which we can understand complex paradigms related to cultural identities in Algeria, and North Africa in general. I am interested in researching how colonial encounters in spaces like the Sahara shape and make visible, but also invisible different memories, histories and identities. More broadly, I am interested in 20^th and 21^st-century French and Algerian literatures, and I am currently researching the imprint of imperial legacies on postcolonial societies and how the latter resist but also perpetuate the colonial tropes in literary writing.

Hi, I am Tianyi Zhang, DPhil candidate in Experimental Psychology. My research is centred around cross-modal cognition (vision, taste, smell, etc.) and consumer behavioural sciences. (Departmental webpage: https://www.psy.ox.ac.uk/people/tianyi-zhang)

Having experienced the wonderful sense of community fostered by MCR social events at Somerville, I’m excited to work on events where every member of our community feels welcomed, valued, and get connected. 

Hi guys, my name is Yushan Zhu, I am your international officer!! 

Just a little bit about myself, I am from China, started living in Cyprus since I was 12, I speak fluent Mandarin and unfortunately only the most basic bits of Greek. Some hobbies of mine include outdoor activities like hiking and water sports during the summer break (honestly to regain that vitamin D the entire UK is lacking for three quarters of the year…) 

As your international officer, I am here to provide as much support and help as possible for you to settle in with comfort. It can be overwhelming when you just arrived in a different country, with everything surrounding you being completely different. I am no stranger to those feelings and experiences, so please do not hesitate to talk to me if you find yourself struggling! 

I will also be hosting a variety of activities throughout the terms, for you to meet one another from different years and other colleges; as well as for me to check up on you to see if everything is going well and if there is anything I could help with. Do look out for those activities! 

Looking forward to meeting you all 🙂 

Rocco is a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for the Study of African Economies in the Department of Economics and at the Oxford Martin School.

He completed his DPhil at the Oxford Department of International Development. His research focuses on social protection and labour markets. In his current work, he is using experimental and quasi-experimental methods to study the potential to leverage innovations in the design and delivery of social protection systems to increase household resilience to poverty in the context of 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.