Patricia Owens
Fellow & Tutor in International Relations; Professor of International Relations
Patricia Owens
Fellow & Tutor in International Relations; Professor of International Relations
Patricia went to a comprehensive school in London and, as the first in her family to go to university, did not even think to apply to Oxbridge… She particularly welcomes applications to study PPE from students at non-selective state schools.
Her research interests include twentieth-century international history and theory, disciplinary history and the history of international and political thought, and historical and contemporary practices of Anglo-American counterinsurgency and military intervention. She was Principal Investigator of the multi-award winning Leverhulme Research Project on Women and the History of International Thought.
Monographs
Erased: A History of International Thought Without Men (Princeton University Press, 2025)
Economy of Force: Counterinsurgency and the Historical Rise of the Social (Cambridge University Press, 2015) – Winner, BISA’s 2016 Susan Strange Best Book Prize; Winner, International Studies Association Theory Section Best Book Award; Runner up, Francesco Guicciardini Prize for Best Book in Historical IR; Special section, Security Dialogue
Between War and Politics: International Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt (Oxford University Press, 2007) – subject of special section in International Politics; Japanese translation; nominated for PSA W.J.M. Mackenzie Book Prize
Edited Volumes
Women’s International Thought: Towards A New Canon co-editor with S. Dunstan, K. Hutchings, K. Rietzler (Cambridge, forthcoming) – winner of the Susan Strange Prize for Best Book in International Studies and the International Studies Association Theory Section Best Edited Volume Award – subject of forthcoming fora or special sections in International Theory, International Politics Review, Journal of Contemporary Political Theory, H-Diplo, The Journal of the History of Ideas blog, and review essay in International Relations
Women’s International Thought: A New History, co-editor with Katharina Rietzler (Cambridge, 2021) – subject of forthcoming fora or special section in International Theory, International Politics Review, Journal of Contemporary Political Theory, and H-Diplo, and a review essay in International Relations
The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, 8th edition (Oxford, 2020) co-editor with J. Baylis and S. Smith and previous editions in 2008, 2011, 2014, and 2017 – translated into Arabic, French, Korean, Polish, Greek, Turkish, Slovene, Macedonian, Kazakh, and Hungarian
Articles (select)
‘Women Thinkers and the Canon of International Thought: Recovery, Rejection, and Reconstitution’ in American Political Science Review, 2021 first view (with K. Hutchings) – OOIR’s ‘top trending’ of all political science articles in the week following publication; winner of the American Political Science Association Okin-Young Award in Feminist Political Theory for Best Article in English Language in 2021
‘Claudia Jones, International Thinker’ in Modern Intellectual History, 2021 firstview (with S. Dunstan)
‘Women and the History of International Thought’ in International Studies Quarterly, 62(3) 2018: 467-481
‘Decolonizing Civil War’ in CAL: International & Interdisciplinary Law Review, 4(2) 2017: 160-169
‘Racism in the Theory Canon: Hannah Arendt and “the one Great Crime in which America was Never Involved”‘ in Millennium, 45(33) 2017: 403-424
‘The International Origins of Hannah Arendt’s Historical Method’ in Political Power and Social Theory (32) 2017: 37-62
‘The Limits of Military Sociology’ in International Affairs, 96(3) 2017: 460-1462
‘International Historical What?’in International Theory, 8(3) 2016: 448-457
‘On the Conduct of Sociological Warfare: a reply to special section on Economy of Force’ in Security Dialogue, 47(3) 2016: 215-222
‘Introduction to the Forum: Historicizing the Social in International Thought’ in Review of International Studies, 41(4) 2015: 652-653
‘Method or Madness: Sociolatry in International Thought’ in Review of International Studies, 41(4) 2015: 655-674
‘From Bismarck to Petraeus: The Question of the Social and the Social Question in Counterinsurgency’ in ‘, 19(1) 2013: 135-157
Human Security and the Rise of the Social’ in Review of International Studies, 38(3) 2012: 547-567. Highly commended by the Article Prize Committee. Subject of a panel at 2018 ISA
‘Not Life but the World is at Stake: Hannah Arendt on Citizenship in the Age of the Social’ in Citizenship Studies, 16(2) 2012: 295-305
‘The Supreme Social Concept: The Un-worldliness of Modern Security’ in New Formations, 71: 2011: 14-29
‘Torture, Sex and Military Orientalism’ in Third World Quarterly, 31(7) 2010: 1147-1162
‘Reclaiming “Bare Life”? Against Agamben on Refugees’ in International Relations, 23(4) 2009: 567-82; reprinted in Betts and Loescher (eds.) Refugees in International Relations (Oxford)
‘Distinctions, Distinctions: “Public” and “Private” Force?’ in International Affairs, 84(5) 2008: 977-90; reprinted in Colás and Mabee (eds.) Mercenaries, Pirates, Bandits and Empires (Columbia)
‘Humanity, Sovereignty and the Camps’ in International Politics, 45(4) 2008: 522-530
‘Beyond Strauss, Lies, and the War in Iraq: Hannah Arendt’s Critique of Neoconservatism’ in Review of International Studies, 33(2) 2007: 265-83; among top ten most cited articles during 2013-15
‘Xenophilia, Gender and Sentimental Humanitarianism’ in Alternatives, 29(3) 2004: 285-304
‘Theorising Military Intervention’ in International Affairs, 80(2) 2004: 355-365
‘Accidents Don’t Just Happen: The Liberal Politics of High-Tech Humanitarian War’ in Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 32(3) 2003: 595-616
Book chapters (select)
‘Introduction: Toward a History of Women’s International Thought’ with Rietzler in Owens and Rietzler (eds.) Women’s International Thought: A New History (Cambridge, 2020)
‘Introduction: From International Politics to World Politics’, with Baylis and Smith in Baylis, Smith and Owens (eds.) The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations (Oxford, 8ed.)
‘How Dangerous it can be to be Innocent’ in M. Goldoni and C. McCorkindale (eds.) Hannah Arendt and the Law (Hart, 2012): 251-270
‘The Return of Realism? War and Changing Concepts of the Political’ in S. Scheipers and H. Strachan (eds.) The Changing Character of War (Oxford, 2011): 484-502
‘The Ethics of War: Critical Alternatives’ in D. Bell (ed.) Ethics and World Politics (Oxford, 2010): 309-323
‘Walking Corpses: Arendt on the Limits and the Possibilities of Cosmopolitan Politics’, in C. Moore and C. Farrands (eds.) International Relations Theory and Philosophy: Interpretive Dialogues (Routledge, 2010): 72-82
‘Hannah Arendt’, in J. Edkins and N. Vaughan-Williams (eds.) Critical Theorists and International Relations (Routledge, 2009): 31-41
‘The Ethic of Reality in Hannah Arendt’, in D. Bell (ed.) Political Thought and International Relations (Oxford, 2008), pp.105-121
‘Hannah Arendt, Violence, and the Inescapable Fact of Humanity’ in A.F. Lang and J. Williams (eds.) Hannah Arendt and International Relations (Palgrave, 2005): 41-65
Other (select)
Women’s Anticolonial International Thought, Blog for Leverhulme Project Website (with S. Dunstan)
Women Thinkers of the World Economy, Blog for Leverhulme Project Website
Sex, Gender and Canon, Blog for Leverhulme Project Website
On the Heirs to Agnes Headlam-Morley, Blog for Leverhulme Project Website
What Happened to Women’s International Thought, Blog for Leverhulme Project Website
A Political Economy of the “Exception”?, Security Dialogue/PRIO blog
Lucy Philip Mair, Early International Relations scholar, LSE History Blog
Susan Strange, Never Meant to be an Academic, LSE History Blog
Critical Dialogue between Jessica A. Stanton, author of Violence and Restraint in Civil War and Patricia Owens, author of Economy of Force, Perspectives on Politics, 15(4) 2017: 1102-1107
Economy of Force: a symposium, The Disorder of Things, opening post and reply to special section on Economy of Force (Cambridge, 2015)
Interview/Profile’, E-International Relations, January 2015
Hannah Pack
Access & Outreach Officer
Hannah Pack
Access & Outreach Officer
An English graduate from ‘the other place’ and previously a Sixth Form teacher, Hannah is Somerville College’s Access and Outreach Officer who manages the Access and Outreach team. She feels strongly that Oxford should be accessible to everyone who has the academic ability, regardless of their background or ethnicity, and is therefore passionate about encouraging and supporting students from different backgrounds to make successful applications.
Hannah works with schools to provide support, information and guidance so that all pupils, regardless of background, feel able to pursue the university education they want.
Hannah’s office hours are 10-4 Mon-Thurs, and she can be found in the Access Office in House.
Antony Palmer
Clinical Non-Stipendiary Lecturer; NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer
Antony Palmer
Clinical Non-Stipendiary Lecturer; NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer
Antony graduated from Oxford University Medical School in 2006 and commenced Higher Surgical Training in Trauma and Orthopaedics in 2010. Having previously completed the Oxford Academic Foundation Programme and an Academic Clinical Fellowship, he is now an Academic Clinical Lecturer.
During his training he spent three years out of programme working towards a DPhil in Musculoskeletal Sciences in Oxford supervised by Professor Glyn-Jones and Professor Carr. His thesis explored how activity levels during adolescence effect hip development and the future risk of osteoarthritis.
Antony currently has three main research interests:
1) Blood Management in Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery. Blood conservation is essential for the care of surgical patients. He is working to optimise each step of the patient pathway and investigating how tranexamic acid is best delivered to reduce intra-operative blood loss. This work is a collaboration with Professor Mike Murphy from the NHS Blood and Transplant Unit.
2) Understanding how activity levels influence joint injury and osteoarthritis. This research compares the joint structure and function of elite athletes with general population cohorts. He is investigating the effect of physical activity and exploring interventions that may prevent injury and osteoarthritis. This research is in collaboration with Southampton Football Club.
3) Musculoskeletal MRI for detecting early osteoarthritis. Novel MRI sequences are able to provide information on the biochemical composition of joint structures. He is working on the clinical translation of these imaging techniques to facilitate development of new treatment strategies for joint disease. This research is in collaboration with Professor Neal Bangerter at Imperial College, London
Hip replacement.
Journal article
Ferguson RJ. et al, (2018), Lancet, 392, 1662 – 1671
Physical activity during adolescence and the development of cam morphology: a cross-sectional cohort study of 210 individuals.
Journal article
Palmer A. et al, (2018), Br j sports med, 52, 601 – 610
Arthroscopic hip surgery compared with physiotherapy and activity modification for the treatment of symptomatic femoroacetabular impingement: multicentre randomised controlled trial.
Journal article
Palmer AJR. et al, (2019), Bmj, 364
Osteoarthritis.
Journal article
Glyn-Jones S. et al, (2015), Lancet, 386, 376 – 387
Preoperative Anemia in Primary Arthroplasty Patients—Prevalence, Influence on Outcome, and the Effect of Treatment
Journal article
Bailey A. et al, (2021), The journal of arthroplasty
Measuring 3DGrowth Plate Shape: Methodology and Applicationto Cam Morphology.
Journal article
Horenstein RE. et al, (2020), J orthop res
Childhood overweight and obesity and back pain risk: a cohort study of 466 997 children.
Journal article
Palmer AJ. et al, (2020), Bmj open, 10
Peri-operative administration of tranexamic acid in lower limb arthroplasty: a multicentre, prospective cohort study.
Journal article
Lloyd TD. et al, (2020), Anaesthesia, 75, 1050 – 1058
The Response of Hip Joint Cartilage to Exercise in Children: An MRI Study Using T2-Mapping.
Journal article
Fernquest S. et al, (2020), Cartilage
Aarthee Parimelalaghan
Access and Outreach Support Officer
Aarthee Parimelalaghan
Access and Outreach Support Officer
Aarthee studied PPE at Somerville and previously acted as the JCR Access and Admissions Officer.
Andrew Parker
Treasurer and Domestic Bursar
Andrew Parker
Treasurer and Domestic Bursar
As Treasurer and Domestic Bursar, Andrew Parker is responsible for the College’s finances and investments including legacies, building projects and maintenance, and commercial property, as well as Human Resources, health and safety, the College gardens, and the Bursary.
Andrew, who is a qualified accountant, has had an extensive career in Finance and Administration. From 1988-2002 he was Finance Director of Oxford University Press, as well as Group Financial Controller and Interim Managing Director of OUP’s International Division. From 2003 to 2013 he was Director of Finance and Administration at the Royal Shakespeare Company, with responsibility for Finance, HR, IT, Estates and Health & Safety, as part of the senior executive team.
The Honourable Dame Judith Parker
Honorary FellowDame Judith Parker DBE QC is a former High Court judge.
She was called to the Bar in 1973, took Silk in 1991 and was elected a Bencher in 2000. She was appointed an Assistant Recorder in 1998, a Deputy High Court Judge in 1999, a Recorder in 2000 and a Judge of the High Court (Family Division) in 2008. She was a Family Division Liaison Judge from 2011 to 2016 and a Judicial Role Model from 2016 to 2019.
Isabel Parkinson
Stipendiary Lecturer
Isabel Parkinson
Stipendiary Lecturer
My current research examines English translations of a selection of German language novels, from Irmgard Keun’s Das kunstseidene Mädchen and Gilgi to Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s Ausser Sich. I focus on consciousness narratives whose authors have attempted to (and sometimes struggled to) articulate the mind of a gendered subject, and investigate how, and how successfully, these attempts have been translated into English. I am particularly interested in how creative, radical translational decisions seem especially suited to recreating the force and flavour of the original text.
I have a particular interest in teaching translation from German to English, at all levels and in a variety of ways. Recently I held a feminist translation micro-conference with second years, in which students workshopped German extracts together and presented their findings in the form of lightning talks. Other recent classes have focused on the translation of wordplay, children’s books, newspaper reports, and prose poetry. I also teach the core German Literature paper, and offer modules on Psychoanalysis, ‘Postwar Restoration Frenzy’ in Austria, Representing Trauma, as well as Goethe, and the Enlightenment.
I design and deliver outreach sessions for the Medieval and Modern Languages Faculty, to promote progression to languages A-Levels and GCSEs. I am working with schools in the North of England as part of the Faculty’s VOx programme, and have developed and led sessions around tactile translations of German poetry, the bilingual identity, and English-to-English translation classes.
Publications
‘Mind Your Language! Profanity and Promiscuity in Two English Translations of Irmgard Keun’s Das kunstseidene Mädchen (1932)’, Journal of Languages, Texts and Society, 7 (2024) [available from lts-vol.-7-final-i-parkinson.pdf (nottingham.ac.uk)]
Jairus Tristan Patoc
MCR Social Secretary and LGBTQ+ RepI’m Jairus Tristan Patoc, a third-year DPhil student in experimental Particle Physics. I like techno, Common Ground Oat Flat Whites and thrifting.
As one of the MCR Social Secretaries, I help curate the MCR’s social scene, with: safe but electric bops, community socials that bring us closer as an MCR, and unforgettable College exchanges which connect you people from the wider University community. By day (and often by night), I’m also your LGBTQ+ Rep, pushing for inclusivity and making sure our voices are heard loud and clear in the MCR and at the College’s Equality and Diversity Working Group with other EDI representatives
Josephine Peach
Emeritus FellowNaomi Petela
Stipendiary Lecturer
Naomi Petela
Stipendiary Lecturer
‘Transport of DNA within cohesin involves clamping on top of engaged heads by Scc2 and entrapment within the ring by Scc3’
James E Collier, Byung-Gil Lee, M. B. Roig, S. Yatskevich, Naomi J. Petela, Jean Metson, Menelaos Voulgaris, Andres Gonzalez Llamazares, J. Löwe, K. Nasmyth
Chemistry, Medicine
eLife
2020
‘Scc2 counteracts a Wapl-independent mechanism that releases cohesin from chromosomes during G1’
M. Srinivasan, Naomi J. Petela, Johanna C. Scheinost, James E Collier, Menelaos Voulgaris, Maurici B Roig, Frédéric Beckouët, Bin Hu, K. Nasmyth
Chemistry, Medicine
eLife
2019
‘Multiple interactions between Scc1 and Scc2 activate cohesin’s DNA dependent ATPase and replace Pds5 during loading’
Naomi J. Petela, Thomas G. Gligoris, Jean Metson, Byung-Gil Lee, Menelaos Voulgaris, B. Hu, S. Kikuchi, Christophe Chapard, Wentao Chen, E. Rajendra, Madhusudhan Srinivisan, H. Yu, J. Löwe, K. Nasmyth
Biology
19 October 2017
Felix Pflücke
Retaining Fee LecturerColin Phillips
Professorial Fellow; Professor of LinguisticsProfessor Phillips holds the Professorship in Linguistics, and he currently is head of department (“Faculty Board Chair”) in the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics, a department whose existence owes a great deal to the efforts of legendary Somervillian Anna Morpurgo Davies, Professor of Comparative Philology from 1971-2004.
Professor Phillips returned to Oxford in 2024 after 33 years based in the United States. As an undergraduate student in Oxford he came to Somerville for tutorials in medieval German. Later, in a career spent mostly at the University of Maryland, where he retains a part-time role, he built an interdisciplinary research programme on the moment-by-moment processes involved in speaking and understanding, drawing on diverse languages and methods from linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, and computational modeling.
Beyond his primary research focus, Professor Phillips is also a passionate evangelist for language science. During more than two decades in Maryland he built a broad community of language scientists that spans 17 departments and centres across the university, from education to engineering, leading to the creation of the Maryland Language Science Center, a unique interdisciplinary hub that he directed from 2013-2023. As part of these efforts he led innovations in postgraduate training that trained 100 PhDs from 10 fields. In Oxford he is working on building connections across language experts across the university.
Outside work, Professor Phillips is enthusiastic about community building through running and walking. He supported the spread of parkrun events in Maryland and across the US, and in Oxford he supports healthy communities through his role in the weekly University Parks parkrun and the Oxford University Cross Country Club.
Chloe Phillips
First Generation and Low Income Student RepHey, I’m Chloe the First Generation and Low Income Student Rep in the MCR.
I am a first year DPhil Student in Primary Healthcare Sciences, exploring Sarcoma and AI using social science research methods, I’m a Sociologist by background. I am also a first-gen student! In the coming year I will be running some events and workshops within the MCR to support the first gen and low income graduate students. Outside of my DPhil I am a powerlifter, coffee lover and reader.
Feel free to contact me with any concerns or queries.
Matt Phipps
Head of Communications
Matt Phipps
Head of Communications
Matt leads Somerville’s Communications team.
Matt manages Somerville’s social media presence and website, as well as working on the team’s regular publications and reporting on College life and research.
Luke Pitcher
Fellow & Tutor in Classics; Associate Professor in Classical Languages and Literature
Luke Pitcher
Fellow & Tutor in Classics; Associate Professor in Classical Languages and Literature
Luke Pitcher teaches ancient Greek and Roman literature.
He is principally interested in the writing of history in antiquity. His recent works include Writing Ancient History: An Introduction to Classical Historiography (London, 2009) and chapters in the Blackwell Companions to Julius Caesar and Greek and Roman historiography. At present he is engaged in a study of the historian Appian.
Review of Ivan Matijašić, Shaping the Canons of Ancient Greek Historiography: Imitation, Classicism, and Literary Criticism (Berlin/Boston, 2018), in Histos 13 (2019), XLVI–L. URL: https://research.ncl.ac.uk/histos/documents/2019RR10PitcheronMatijasic.pdf
“Polybius and Oscar Wilde: Pragmatike Historia in Nineteenth-Century Oxford”, in N. Miltsios and M. Tamiolaki (edd.), Polybius and His Legacy (Berlin, 2018), 417-444.
“Death on the Nile: The Myth of Osiris and the Utility of History in Diodorus”, in L. Audley-Miller and B. Dignas (edd.), Wandering Myths: Transcultural Uses of Myth in the Ancient World (Berlin, 2018), 309-26.
“Appian”, in K. De Temmerman and E. van Emde Boas (edd.), Characterization in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden, 2018), 207-220.
“Cassius Dio”, in K. De Temmerman and E. van Emde Boas (edd.), Characterization in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden, 2018), 221-235 .
“Herodian”, in K. De Temmerman and E. van Emde Boas (edd.), Characterization in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden, 2018), 236-250.
“Polybius”, in K. De Temmerman and E. van Emde Boas (edd.), Characterization in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden, 2018), 191-206.
“The Lexicon Historiographicum Graecum et Latinum: An Interim Review”, in Histos 11 (2017), XLVII-LIX. URL: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/histos/documents/2017RD05PitcheronLexicon.pdf
“Caesar and Greek Historians”, in L. Grillo and C. Krebs (edd.), The Cambridge Companion to the Writings of Julius Caesar (Cambridge, 2017), 237-48.
Frans Plank
Senior Research Fellow in LinguisticsFrans Plank was for many years Professor of Linguistics and English Language at the University of Konstanz, Germany, retiring in 2017. At Oxford, he is associated with the Language and Brain Lab of the Faculty for Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics.
His teaching and research interests include Morphology, Syntax, Prosody, with a focus on the Germanic languages and in a wider typological and historical context; also the history of linguistic ideas.
He was a founder of the Association for Linguistic Typology in 1994, and, for its first 21 years, the editor of its journal, Linguistic Typology. Since 2013 he has been Consulting Editor of the Transactions of the Philological Society.
He is a Member of the Academia Europaea.
Two books, long ago: Morphologische (Ir-)Regularitären (Narr, 1981), Wohl-geschliffener Tugendspiegel des Sprachforschers (Nodus, 1992).
Ergativity (Academic Press, 1979), Paradigms (De Gruyter, 1991), Language and Earth (Benjamins, 1992), Double Case (OUP, 1995), The Maltese Noun Phrase Meets Typology (with Albert Borg, Pacini, 1996), Noun Phrase Structure in the Languages of Europe (De Gruyter, 2003), Phonological Typology (with Larry Hyman, De Gruyter, 2018), and Suppletion in Diachrony (with Nigel Vincent, Wiley, 2019) are edited volumes Frans remembers especially fondly.
A much consulted online resource under his supervision is ‘The Universals Archive and Das grammatische Raritätenkabinett’ at https://typo.uni-konstanz.de/rara/archive-overview/
Some of his own typological work is reprinted in The Unabashed Typologist: A Frans Plank Schubertiade, ed. by Larry M. Hyman, Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm, Aditi Lahiri, & Johanna Nichols, a special issue of Linguistic Typology 21, 2017.
A few recent and forthcoming articles: Prosodic phrasing, in The Oxford History of Phonology (with Aditi Lahiri, OUP, 2022); Morphologisation, in Handbook of Historical Morphology (with Aditi Lahiri, OUP, fc.); Patterns of suppletion in inflection revisited, in Papers from ICHL 25 (Benjamins, fc.).
Lucy Pollock
JCR LGBTQ+ Rep.
Lucy Pollock
JCR LGBTQ+ Rep.
Hey! I’m Lucy, one of two of Somerville’s LGBTQ+ Reps. Our role is to represent and support the queer community at Somerville. This mostly involves running events, but it also includes supporting student welfare and running the Gender Expression Fund (GEF). Our biggest events are the LGBTQ+ Formal, a formal dinner held in Michaelmas; and Pride Week, but there are smaller events on almost every week.
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