Fellows and Academics

Aaron Maniam is an alumnus of Somerville (PPE 1998) and current Senior Associate, a position equivalent to Senior Research Fellow but for individuals whose contributions lie outside traditional academia.

In 2023, Aaron became Fellow of Practice and Director, Digital Education Transformation at the Blavatnik School of Government. Aaron’s work at the Blavatnik School focuses on issues connecting technology, public policy and public administration. He teaches on the School’s Master of Public Policy and executive education programmes, and convenes its digital “thematic cluster”, bringing together scholarship and practice on digital issues. He co-chairs the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Technology Policy and is a member of the OECD’s Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Futures.

He was previously a senior civil servant in the Singapore government, including being the founding Head of its Centre for Strategic Futures. Most recently, he served as Deputy Secretary (Industry & International) at the Singapore Ministry of Communications & Information, overseeing the ministry’s work in the digital economy, digital literacy and inclusion, and digital diplomacy – with a concurrent cross-government role coordinating Singapore’s strategy in global branding, soft power and public diplomacy.

At Somerville, Aaron will supervise graduate students interested in public policy and development issues. He will support the College’s career guidance programmes, particularly for students keen on government careers. As a trained facilitator of inter-religious dialogue, he will also contribute to the College’s multi-faith chapel programme.

As Director for the Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust, Jessica oversees the financial aspects of the Trust and ensures that the objects of the charity are met. She works closely with the Director of the Thatcher Scholarship Programme, the Principal, Development Director, Trustees and Patrons in the execution of her role.

As we enter a new phase of fundraising to meet the College’s five-year strategy, Jessica has taken on the role of Campaign Director, working closely with the Development Director and Principal on the fundraising strategy, developing campaign messages, setting goals and developing the projects and tools that will allow the team to achieve the ambitious targets.

Anne Manuel was the College Librarian and Archivist at Somerville for 13 years. 

Her current research interests include gender inequality in Higher Education, the use of Internet technologies in research and information literacy amongst undergraduate students. She is able to assist with queries concerning all aspects of information searching but has a speciality in legal and government information.

She has edited a short history of the College: Breaking New Ground : A history of Somerville College as seen through its buildings

Dame Rosalind Marsden was the EU Special Representative for Sudan from September 2010 until October 2013.

Before joining the EU, she had a long career in the British diplomatic service, including postings as Consul-General in Basra, British Ambassador to Sudan and British Ambassador to Afghanistan. She has also served as Head of the United Nations Department and Director (Asia-Pacific) in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London. Earlier in her career she served twice in the British Embassy in Tokyo and spent two years on secondment to the private sector, working in the corporate finance department of an investment bank.

She received her BA in Modern History from Somerville College, Oxford and her D.Phil from St Antony’s College, Oxford. – See more at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/expert/dame-rosalind-marsden#sthash.ElSiYjHJ.dpuf

Hi there! I’m Callum and I am currently reading for the MSc in Mathematical Sciences. Originally from Greater Manchester, I am a big Oldham Athletic supporter. You can probably tell that I enjoy football, but I also spend a lot of time reading and going to the gym. I believe sport is a great way to keep fit whilst building social connections and having fun! My aim as MCR Sports Rep is to make this as easy as possible for everyone to get involved.

Please do feel free to contact me for anything regarding sports/physical activities.

Harriet Maunsell is non-executive director at the Pension Insurance Corporation.

Formerly, she was Chairman of the Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority and non-executive director of the Serious Fraud Office. In 1994 she was awarded the OBE for services to pensions.

Professor McNay’s interests are in continental social and political thought and feminist theory.

She has a particular interest in the work of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu and the Frankfurt School Critical Theorists.

Professor McNay is currently Vice-Principal of Somerville College. 

Anita Mehta is an Academic Visitor and Consultant at the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics.

Professor Mehta is a theoretical physicist of complex systems: in addition to her current research on the modelling of speech perception, she is working on heterogeneities in granular media, mechanisms of long-term memory (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVH1djSzspg&feature=youtu.be ), agent-based modelling of risk and optimisation schemes for NP-complete problems.

A Rhodes Scholar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NojaK4hTDQ), she did her MA and DPhil in theoretical physics at Oxford, and subsequently worked in Cambridge, Birmingham and India. She was a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard in 2006-7, an EPSRC Fellow at the Clarendon Laboratory in Oxford in 1998-9, and  a Leverhulme Visiting Professor in Oxford in 2018-2019.

A Fellow of the American Physical Society, her other interests include writing (fiction and non-fiction), languages (she speaks English, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi and French with native fluency, can get by in Italian and has a basic knowledge of Spanish) and Western classical music (she is a pianist and music  critic, see, e.g. https://serenademagazine.com/author/anita-mehta/).

Mrinalini is passionate about art history, visual culture, and urban architecture. During her time at Oxford, she proposes to study the role of Mughal gardens as landscapes and settings in miniature paintings. More specifically, she is interested in examining Mughal gardens as places of production and storing wealth and not merely aesthetic environments. 

Mrinalini graduated from Denison University with honours (Magna Cum Laude) and as a Phi Beta Kappa member in 2020. As a Classicist, she has spent hours tracing the cultural consciousness of ancient communities by studying their art, architecture and philosophy; exploring the processes of identification and reification that produce the imagined landscape of cities (such as Athens and Rome) as locations of culture, history, and memory of communities. The interdisciplinary nature of her liberal arts education allowed her to undertake summer-long research as a Woodyard Scholar in the city of Ayodhya in India, which sparked her interest in urban architecture in South Asia. 

Mrinalini is also a recipient of the Davis Projects for Peace Prize and runs her non-profit organisation, Panthalassa that works in women healthcare, education, and sustainable energy alternatives. 

Michele Moody-Adams is currently Joseph Straus Professor of Political Philosophy and Legal Theory at Columbia University, where she served as Dean of Columbia College and Vice President for Undergraduate Education from 2009-2011.

Before Columbia, she taught at Cornell University, where she was Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Director of the Program on Ethics and Public Life. She has also taught at Wellesley College, the University of Rochester, and Indiana University, where she served as an Associate Dean. 

She has published on equality and social justice, moral psychology and the virtues, and the philosophical implications of gender and race. She is also the author of a widely cited book on moral relativism, Fieldwork in Familiar Places: Morality, Culture and Philosophy. Her current work includes articles on academic freedom, equal educational opportunity, and democratic disagreement. Her next book, coming out in late 2021, is entitled Making Space for Justice: Social Movements, Collective Imagination and Political Hope.  She is also working on a project entitled Renewing Democracy and a book on the thought of Martin Luther King, Jr. Moody-Adams has a B.A. from Wellesley College, a second B.A. from Oxford University, and earned the M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University. She has been a British Marshall Scholar and an NEH Fellow.

Ishani is a candidate for the D.Phil. in Law at Somerville College. Her doctoral research aims to evaluate the present paradigm on disability-selective abortions in India and develop an ‘indigenous’ normative and legal framework for governing such abortion in India. In contrast to sex-selective abortions, which are prohibited in India, disability-selective abortions are positively sanctioned under the Indian legislative and judicial framework. She seeks to underline how the present paradigm reduces women to ‘gatekeepers of perfection’ and disregards the State’s duty of non-discrimination and reasonable accommodation towards disabled people. Given the unique context of evolution of reproductive rights and disability rights in India, she will attempt to highlight the limitations of Western intellectual tradition and develop an ‘Indian’ framework to address this debate in India. In doing so, she will endeavour to fill a theoretical gap in Indian feminist and disability-rights scholarship and make appropriate recommendations for legal reforms.

Ishani is keenly interested in analysing rights-based frameworks through feminist and critical legal scholarship and undertaking comparative and inter-disciplinary study of human rights and corresponding State obligations. Prior to the DPhil, Ishani read on the Bachelor of Civil Law programme at the University of Oxford as a Cornelia Sorabji Scholar. She opted for public law courses, like Medical Law and Ethics and Comparative Equality Law. She also graduated with the B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) degree from Jindal Global Law School, India.

As the Welfare Officer, she hopes to make the MCR a more comfortable, welcoming and inclusive space for all members of the MCR, through different events, initiatives, and schemes. If there is anything that the MCR can support you with, please feel free to reach out to her.