Fellows and Academics

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. 

Before coming to Oxford, I worked in the Information Management Group, School of Computer Science, University of Manchester.

I got my PhD from the University of Karlsruhe under supervision of Prof. Rudi Studer. While in Karlsruhe, Germany, I was employed at the Research Center for Information Technologies (FZI). I have worked with companies including EDF and Samsung.

I am interested in developing algorithms and techniques necessary for realizing advanced applications in the Semantic Web. In the past, my research is focused around the ontology language OWL. More recently, I became interested in applying ontology techniques to data management problems in databases and big data. Specifically, I am investigating ways in using variants of datalog — a language at the intersection of logic programming and databases — to represent and access data, and I am studying the related theoretical and practical problems, such as efficient evaluation of datalog programs and efficient maintenance of datalog materialisations. My research involves the development of tools that demonstrates the techniques I am working on.

You can view a complete list of my publications with downloadable papers here.

Awards

• Distinguished Paper at the 2017 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence for the paper “Foundations of Declarative Data Analysis Using Limit Datalog Programs”
• Best Applications Paper at the 2016 International Semantic Web Conference for the paper “Semantic Technologies for Data Analysis in Health Care”
• The 2013 Roger Needham award by the British Computer Society (BCS) for “a distinguished research contribution in computer science”
• Selected as one of “2008 AI’s 10 to Watch” by the IEEE Intelligent Systems magazine
• The 2007 Cor Baayen award by the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) for “a most promising young researcher in computer science and applied mathematics”
• Best Paper at the 2005 International Semantic Web Conference for the paper “On the Properties of Metamodeling in OWL”

Hi! My name is Halima Mughal (my friends call me Himi) and I’m currently one of Somerville MCR’s social secretaries! I am originally from Seattle, Washington and I am an MPhil student in comparative government at the DPIR. My research is on capital punishment and the death penalty. Outside of my research, I love watching movies, journaling, and listening to music (especially Taylor Swift). As a social secretary, my primary job is to help organize social events for our graduate students including formal/bar exchanges and wine and cheese nights 🙂 I’m looking forward to organizing lots of different events, feel free to contact me if you have any questions or ideas!

My research interests are in financial inclusion and sustainable agricultural development. I seek to understand the constraints that hinder the adoption and effective usage of savings and loans amongst smallholder farmers in developing economies.

My academic training is shaped by a Masters in Economics, Delhi School of Economics and a Masters in Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley. Keen to work on the intersectionality of sustainable development and finance, I focus on applied econometrics and development economics.

My tenure at Goldman Sachs cultivated my interest in financial markets, and also motivated me to apply my skills to the developing country context where issues of credit constraints, barriers to savings and missing insurance markets are very pertinent.

My experiences led me to appreciate that development policies do not operate in a vacuum but are fundamentally dependent on the social and institutional contexts in which they are devised. I received the Global Development Fellowship from USAID to undertake research on the “Enterprise Development Program” run by SaveAct in South Africa. I have experience as a researcher in the Economics department at U.C. Berkeley, working on randomized control trials in Kenyan maize markets. As a Project Manager at the Center for Effective Global Action, I worked with USAID in Uganda to design sustainable policies for solar waste management.

Academic Publications

Enterprise Development: A Deeper Understanding – Spring edition, 2018 of the Berkeley Public Policy Journal

Winner of the PBPPJ Prize for Outstanding Editorial Collaboration

Medha currently examines the intersections of politics, public policy, governance and finance in the delivery of essential services, such as safe drinking water to every household in rural India. Focusing on inequalities and intersectionality, she is interested in how inclusive and sustainable outcomes can be reached through national, state and individual choices. Gathering extensive and in-depth empirical evidence is a critical component of her work. She grounds her academic research in the lived experiences and narratives of communities, government decision-makers, political leaders and anyone in between. In 2023, she became the first Indian woman to receive the Frederick Soddy Postgraduate Award from the Royal Geographical Society – Institute of British Geographers.

Growing up in India, Medha has been sensitized to the juxtaposition of excess and inadequacy, in both rural and urban settings. Travelling across India’s diverse landscape, particularly the Himalaya, has shaped her perception of the delicate balance that exists between humans and the natural world. Her study of the Ethics and the Classics, as an English Literature undergraduate, has been pivotal in informing her research interests. Her five-year background as a writer in the film industry, especially for documentaries, contributes to her diverse methods which include photo-documentation, semi-structured interviews, surveys, multi-sited ethnography and archival research. She remains a strong advocate of transcending disciplinary boundaries, and is happy to engage in any discussion, academic and beyond, to further inclusivity.

Previous Qualifications

• Master of Science in Water Science, Policy and Management (with Distinction), University of Oxford, UK
• Bachelor of Arts (with First Class Honours) in English Literature, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India

Previous Scholarship

• Felix Scholarship for MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management, University of Oxford, 2020-2021

Grants and Awards

• Travel and Special Project Grant awarded by Somerville College, University of Oxford, 2024
• Scholar Development Award from the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, 2023
• Frederick Soddy Postgraduate Award from the Royal Geographical Society-Institute of British Geographers, 2023
• Catherine Hughes Grant awarded by Somerville College, University of Oxford, 2022

Publications

Peer-Reviewed Research Article

• Mukherjee, M. (2023) Power, paralysis and action: understanding flood risk management in Kerala, India. Environmental Hazards. pp. 1-32.

Working Paper

• Hope, R., McNicholl, D., Mukherjee, M. and Dickinson, N. (2023) Keeping piped water flowing in rural India. Uptime Global and Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford.”

Meghmala graduated from National Law University Odisha, in 2018 with B.B.A., LL.B. (Hons) topping her batch with 7 gold medals. She is reading for the BCL at Somerville College, and hopes to continue her time in Oxford by studying for a DPhil as she intends to frame and simplify the manner in which corporate law is taught in India.

She thanks her alma mater for providing a generous academic scholarship for 4 years which funded her studies, and provided her the impetus to become an advocate and practice in India. Professionally, she has represented both established and start-up clients receiving equity and debt investments over the past 4 years. These few years of practice has also helped her in refine her understanding of corporate law and its evolution.  

She is interested in exploring the convergences of company law across common law jurisdictions and the influence of British colonialism on corporate law in India. Her specific interest lies in investor rights, and the interplay of their rights vis-à-vis the company as an entity, and is keen to explore how the exercise of investor rights may also lead to the downfall of corporations.

She is grateful to the HSA Advocates Scholarship, the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development and Somerville College for having given her the rare opportunity of pursuing her passion and read the BCL. She is looking forward to learn from some of the world’s leading professors and engage with a group of accomplished individuals where she will be able to discuss how local customs and practises are impacting multinational corporations as they enter niche jurisdictions.

My research focuses on syntax and how it interfaces with other aspects of linguistic structure, in particular with intonation and information structure.

I have worked with spoken and written data from languages including Hungarian, Japanese, and Slovenian, as well from different dialects of British English. In my research, I work within the theoretical framework of Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG).

At the undergraduate level, I teach grammar and syntax to Prelims and FHS students in lectures, classes, and tutorials. I am proud to have been shortlisted three times in the category Most Acclaimed Lecturer (Humanities) at the OUSU Teaching Awards, and to have won the award in 2014 when I was a Departmental Lecturer in the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics.

Further information is available on my website.

Narhitya is currently the Programme Administrator with the OICSD. She supports the Centre’s work on scholarships, events, and strategic partnerships, and serves as the administrator of the Schmidt AI in Science Faculty Fellowship Programme.

Narhitya holds a Master’s degree in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Oxford and a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. She also received a special mention in the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) Master’s Dissertation Prize 2024 for her master’s thesis at Oxford.

Narhitya’s work is animated by a deep interest in feminist political philosophy and literature, particularly in how knowledge structures are created, legitimised, and contested. She has previously worked at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) in India where she contributed to research and policy discourse on gender, development, and international relations. She also served as a Research Intern with the United Nations, contributing to a large-scale “Sports for Peace” programme in Central Africa. Additionally, she also interned at Teach for India, where she designed culturally responsive curricula and facilitated English and social-emotional learning sessions.

She is also the co-founder of Adira, a grassroots non-profit initiative based out of Allahabad, India, to support marginalised women through education, capacity-building, and livelihoods training. Her dedication to building inclusive and equitable academic and professional spaces informs her work at OICSD, especially in advancing women’s leadership and socially engaged scholarship.

Dr Ain Neuhaus is a Specialty Registrar (Resident) in Radiology at Oxford University Hospitals and a Stipendiary Lecturer in Medicine at Somerville College.

Ain matriculated at Somerville in 2009 and completed his medical degree in 2019. During this period, he also intercalated a DPhil in Medical Sciences at St John’s College, Oxford, under the supervision of Prof. Alastair Buchan and Prof. Daniel Anthony, investigating blood flow regulation in the brain.

Ain’s ongoing research focuses on imaging in acute stroke, in particular how to use computed tomography for optimal selection of patients for clot retrieval treatment (endovascular thrombectomy) and predicting long-term outcome after stroke. He also has an active interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and how these techniques can be applied to image analysis in radiology.

https://www.ntfcf.org.hk