Fellows and Academics

Dr Anne Makena (2012, DPhil Chemical Biology) is Co-Director of the Africa Oxford Initiative (AfOx), a vibrant platform for all things Africa at Oxford. 

The goal of Dr Makena and her AfOx colleagues is to make Africa a strategic priority for the University of Oxford by facilitatating equitable, sustainable and impactful collaborations between Oxford and African institutions.

Working with partners across 30 African countries, AfOx facilitates academic and research partnerships by supporting activities including a travel grant scheme, visiting fellowships for African academics, high quality research engagement meetings and financial, academic and mentorship support for African students and research staff in Oxford. AfOx has an ambitious, but justified, aim to increase the number of African graduates at Oxford from 3 to 10%.

Dr Makena is responsible for developing and implementing AfOx’s overall strategy, as well as leading on fundraising and stakeholder engagement, and supporting the delivery of core AfOx programmes. Under Dr Makena’s guidance, AfOx is making strides to support the creation of a culture-shifting cohort of emerging African leaders whose experiences and passion can be practically addresses to some of the most pressing challenges in Africa, recognising moreover that Africa is the most rapidly changing continent whose future demographic and economic growth will have a major influence globally.

Dr Makena holds a DPhil in Chemical Biology from the University of Oxford and an Executive MBA from the Said Business School. She was made an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College in June 2025.

My DPhil in Plant Sciences, under the guidance of Professor (Dr.) Renier van der Hoorn, aims to understand the evolution of mechanism of extracellular perception of pathogens in the Solanaceae plant family, including important crops such as, tomato and potato.

Subsequent to perception, plants actively resist infection by most pathogens via deployment of multiple defense pathways. Since plant pathogens pose a huge challenge to crop production, enhanced understanding of how plant disease resistance is achieved will open novel avenues for plant protection methods. This eventually holds the potential of simultaneously addressing the many crises related to agriculture, including, global food security.

I am truly grateful to have received an IGS award, and I hope that OICSD, through inter-disciplinary collaborations, will provide necessary support to translate my research findings into effective solutions to crop losses.

Prior to Oxford, I attended the University of Delhi for my B.Sc. degree in life sciences and M.Sc. in Botany. During my post-graduation, I spent a summer at the Institute of Life Sciences, Odisha, as an Indian Academy of Sciences’ Research Fellow. Over the last few years, I have worked with various Non-governmental organizations in India, working on education and agriculture-related concerns.

Alastair Mallick joined Somerville College as our new Head Gardener in 2022. With 15 years of horticultural experience behind him, across everything from organic farming to his most recent post as Head Gardener at Queen’s College (2017-22), Alastair is keen to build on Somerville’s legacy of sustainability, biodiversity and beauty.

Building on a life-long love for plants and the natural world, Alastair progressed into gardening through a passion for growing his own food. After volunteering on many organic farming projects around the world and spending many hours tending to his allotment, he realised that he loved the process of working with plants. A professional pathway soon followed: Alastair ran his own successful gardening business before, in 2017, taking the jump into the the world of the university as Head Gardener at Queen’s in 2017. Here, he found that he loved the Oxford college environment, and was therefore thrilled when our former Head Gardener Sophie Walwin suggested he consider taking on the excellent work she began during her time at Somerville.

Alastair has big plans for the Somerville gardens. Refeshing the borders, bringing in lots of beautiful and unusual plants to lift Sophie’s great existing planting, adding new structure to the rest of the garden through shrubs and trees – the list goes on. Alastair is also deeply involved in the conversations to create a new pond as a source of additional biodiversity (and potential research for our plant scientists!). Some other plans being considered are a new perennial meadow for the empty bed in front of the Maitland building and an alpine rock garden in front of Park. However, Alastair also has a continued focus on developing garden spaces that are resilient to the pressures of climate change and that work for local fauna as well as for us. This will be achieved through measures such as the pond, but also bird boxes, bee hotels and drought-resistant, locally-sourced planting.

Vicky was born in London to Hungarian-born parents. She was educated at South Hampstead High School, one of the Girls’ Day School Trust group of schools. She read History at Somerville, matriculating in 1974.

At Somerville she was active in the JCR, serving as Treasurer. Both the GDST and Somerville celebrated their centenaries shortly after she completed her time with them, reminding her of the importance of the campaign for equal access to education.

She subsequently qualified as a solicitor and practised first commercial and consumer law, and subsequently charity, trust and probate law.

Vicky’s passion is for education at all levels, both for what it can contribute to society and civic life, and for its enrichment of each individual life. 

As part of that commitment, she served from 1995 to 2007 on the Council of the Girls’ Day School Trust, which is the largest group of independent schools in the UK, comprising 25 schools educating nearly 20,000 students aged 4 to 18 throughout England and Wales. Vicky also trained and worked as an adult literacy teacher in West London.

From 1985 to 1988 Vicky lived in Geneva, where she represented an NGO at the UN and its member organisations.

Vicky and her husband Colin returned permanently to Geneva in 2008. From 2008 to 2014 she was on the Board of the International School of Geneva. She has a daughter and a Somervillian son. She is happy to have shared with all her family her love of literature and the dramatic arts.

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/).