- ‘Debt and Doorways in Renaissance Comedy’
January 2021
Chapter
Early Modern Debts 1550–1700 - On the knees of the body politic’
October 2020
Journal article
Dylan Heydon-Matterface
JCR IT and Communications OfficerHey! I’m Dylan (he/him) and I’m a second year studying Maths and Computer Science. This year I’m serving as the JCR’s IT & Communications Officer. My role mainly involves managing the JCR website and social media presence, so if you follow the JCR on Instagram (@somervillecollegejcr), chances are you’ll see things that I’m posting!
In my spare time I love tinkering with technology and software so I’m really excited to be serving in this role this year. If you have any suggestions for how we can improve on the IT side of things, please feel free to get in touch with me – I’d love to hear from you!
Judith Heyer
Emeritus FellowProfessor Dame Julia Higgins
Honorary FellowDame Julia Stretton Higgins, DBE, FRS, FREng is Professor of Polymer Science in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemical Technology at Imperial College London.
Higgins was the former chair (1998–2003) of the Athena Project, which aims for the advancement of women in science, engineering and technology (SET) in Higher Education. She is now the Patron of the Athena Swan Awards Scheme. Between 2003 and 2007, she was chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Higgins was president of the Institution of Chemical Engineers 2002–3, and president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 2003–4. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1995 and was its Foreign Secretary 2001–6. She was Chair of the Royal Society’s State of the Nation Report Steering Group. Most recently she chaired Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education (ACME). (2008-2012) She currently Chairs the Royal Society project (funded by BIS) on increasing diversity in the scientific workforce
She is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, Royal Society of Chemistry, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the City and Guilds of London Institute, of which she is also Vice-President. She is also an honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics and Somerville College, Oxford. She was awarded a CBE in 1996 before being named a dame in the 2001 Queen’s Birthday Honours list.She holds honorary degrees from a number of UK Universities ans also from the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Her scientific work has concentrated on the investigation of polymers with neutron scattering. She co-authored a monograph on that field (Higgins & Benoit 1997). In 1999, she was elected as Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. She is a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering of the United States. She was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2001. She is a Chevalier de la Legion D’Honneur
Professor Carole Hillenbrand
Honorary FellowCarole Hillenbrand was educated at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh. She was appointed Professor of Islamic History in 2000 and served as Head of the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, from 1997-2002 and from 2006-2008.
She has been Professor Emerita of Islamic History at Edinburgh since 2008. She was awarded an OBE for services to Higher Education in 2009. She was Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA in 1994 and 2005, at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands in 2002, and Visiting Professor at the University of St Louis, USA, 2011 and 2013.
In 2005 she was awarded the King Faisal Prize for Islamic Studies, 2005 (the first non-Muslim to be awarded this prize). In 2015, she was given the British Society for Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Award for Services to Middle Eastern Studies. In 2016 she was awarded the British Academy/ Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Transcultural Understanding.
She has been Islamic Advisory Editor at Edinburgh University Press since 1983 and Editor of the series entitled “Studies in Persian and Turkish History”, published by Routledge since 1999.
Her research interests include the Crusades, the Seljuqs of Iran and Turkey, and medieval Muslim political thought, especially the work of al-Ghazali.
Ole Hinz
German LektorI completed my PhD in German Studies at Yale University in 2019. Prior to that, I received an MA in German Literature from the University of Hamburg (2013) and a BA in German Studies and Political Science from the University of Münster (2009).
I have taught undergraduate courses on German-speaking literature, philosophy, and culture at Yale, Hamburg, and Goethe University Frankfurt. Currently I teach at several colleges across the university, including Somerville.
My research is situated at the intersection of literature, philosophy, and intellectual history, with an emphasis on 20th-century German literature and critical theory. I’m currently working on my first book, a genealogy of the idea of contemporaneity (“Zeitgenossenschaft”) in modern thought, literature, and the arts from the early 19th century to the present day. Other areas of interest include philosophical theories of literature, Marxism, aesthetics, contemporary literature and visual culture.
Matthew Hosty
Retaining Fee LecturerI studied at St John’s college here in Oxford for my undergraduate degree in Literae Humaniores, and also for my MSt and DPhil in Classics (although my supervisor for the DPhil was Dr Adrian Kelly of Balliol College). I spent three years as a Lecturer, at Jesus College from 2013-15 and at Wadham College from 2015-16, before being elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Merton College from 2016-19.
What inspired me to pursue this subject?
The heartwarming answer, which has the advantage of being partially true, is that my interest in Classics came from a picture-book retelling of the Odyssey I was given as a small child. More practically, though, it was starting Latin at secondary school that really made me think of Classics as an academic field I might enjoy pursuing, rather than just a general area of history I had an interest in; I enjoyed the way that Latin forced me to combine literary study, thinking about poems and stories and how they work, with the formal and technical rigour of verb tables and sentence structure. Twenty years later, I still value Classics for its alliance of precision to imagination. Studying Classics means studying people – how they thought, who they loved, what they ate and wore and wrote – but the vast gulf of time separating us from those people, and the paucity and fragility of the evidence they left behind, can only be bridged via careful, detailed, and empathetic analysis.
Research Interests
I specialise in the study of ancient literary parody, thinking about what ‘parody’ as a concept meant to the Greeks and Romans and how it manifested in their works as an artistic technique. Modern parody is a broad church, encompassing everything from very specific comic reworkings of popular texts (e.g. Weird Al Yankovic) to literary-theoretical attitudes of subversion and rejuvenation (e.g. Mikhail Bakhtin and the ‘carnivalesque’), and the roots of these ideas reach back into the Classical corpus – for example, did the Greeks and Romans think that parody needed to be funny? My doctoral thesis (since expanded into a monograph) was an edition with commentary of the Batrachomyomachia, one of the only surviving ancient texts to be labelled ‘parodic’ by modern scholars, and I am particularly interested in authors who employ parody as a strategy – e.g. Aristophanes, Lucian, Petronius. I also work on Greek hexameter epic, Hellenistic poetry (especially epigram), and textual criticism.
Teaching
At St John’s I primarily teach the Greek and Latin languages – translation, grammar, and prose composition. In previous jobs I have taught a wide range of literature papers, including Mods Iliad and Aeneid, Texts & Contexts, Greek and Latin Core, EGHP, Hellenistic Poetry, and Tragedy, and I still teach bits and pieces of these where needed. At the Classics Faculty, where I spend half of my time, I teach language classes for beginners.
I believe teaching is the most important responsibility of the academic, and it is also the one I find most satisfying: I love to teach at all levels, and get a real kick out of watching students develop their understanding of a tricky topic, or have a lightbulb moment where two different bits of knowledge suddenly combine to give them a much bigger insight. And, of course, the ideas that my students come up with often end up suggesting new possibilities or sending me down new avenues in my own research!
Batrachomyomachia (Battle of the Frogs and Mice): Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford, forthcoming March 2020) https://global.oup.com/academic/product/batrachomyomachia-battle-of-the-frogs-and-mice-9780198849902?cc=gb&lang=en&
‘“But who art thou?”: Callimachus and the Unsatisfactory Epitaph’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 59 (2019), https://grbs.library.duke.edu/article/view/16202/7213
‘Schrödinger’s Mouse: liminality and the λίμνη in the Batrachomyomachia’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 137 (2017), https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-hellenic-studies/article/schrodingers-mouse-liminality-and-the-in-the-batrachomyomachia/D38BB1AA5BE7E32A84F8834A2BB10948#
‘Anonymous: The Battle of the Frogs and Mice’, The Literary Encyclopedia (first published Aug. 2016) https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35729
‘The Mice of Ithaca: Homeric Models in the Batrachomyomachia’ (Mnemosyne 67, 2014)
Professor Judith Howard CBE FRS
Honorary FellowJudith Howard is a practically minded structural chemist who characterises compounds using pioneering techniques. Judith has built instruments that allow scientists to apply techniques to experimentally prove theories and advance the field of X-ray crystallography.
X-ray crystallography analyses the three-dimensional atomic structure of molecules by firing X-rays at them and examining the diffraction pattern that results. Judith developed low temperature and neutron diffraction methods to more precisely determine electron density, chemical bonding and magnetic properties in molecules.
Prolific in her contributions to science, with over 1,500 publications to her name, Judith actively participates in committees and conferences worldwide. She was the first woman to head a five-star chemistry department (at the University of Durham), and was the President of the British Crystallographic Association. Judith was made a CBE in 1996 and won the Royal Society of Chemistry Structural Chemistry Award in 1999.
Salome Hughes
Human Resources Manager
Salome manages all aspects of HR for academic and support staff including policies, reporting, recruitment, appointments and compliance. Any HR queries can be directed to human.resources@some.ox.ac.uk
HR hours are Monday – Friday 8.00 a.m. – 4.00 p.m. and either Salome or her colleague, Sarah, will be happy to help with any HR questions you have.
Tin Hang (Henry) Hung
Fulford Junior Research Fellow; Lecturer in Biology (Magdalen and St Hilda's)Henry Hung joined Somerville in October 2023 as a Fulford Junior Research Fellow. He is also a Lecturer in Biology at Magdalen and St Hilda’s.
His main research concerns the adaptation and genomics of forest trees. He started his research in tropical forests in Southeast Asia. He is now shifting his focus to temperate forests in Europe and North America. He also conducts research in Wytham and Blenheim in Oxford.
He currently co-chairs the Ecological Genetics Group and serve in the Events Committee of the British Ecological Society. He is named a National Geographic Explorer in 2022 for his research on critically endangered rosewood trees. His research on rosewoods is featured in the University News: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/features/race-save-world-s-most-trafficked-wild-species
He graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, majoring in Biology, triple-minoring in Environmental Science, German, and Music. He then read his doctorate at the University of Oxford.
Tin Hang Hung (洪天恒) is a Cantonese name. First name is ‘Tin Hang’ altogether, surname is ‘Hung’. There is no middle name. ‘Henry’ is the preferred alternative name.
For a complete list of publications, please see https://www.hung.bio/publications.
Hung, T. H., So, T., Thammavong, B., Chamchumroon, V., Theilade, I., Phourin, C., Bouamanivong, S., Hartvig, I., Gaisberger, H., Jalonen, R., Boshier, D. H. & MacKay, J. J. (2023). Range-wide differential adaptation and genomic offset in critically endangered Asian rosewoods. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(33), e2301603120.
Dun, H. F., Hung, T. H., Green, S. & MacKay, J. J. (2022). Comparative transcriptomic responses of European and Japanese larches to infection by Phytophthora ramorum. BMC Plant Biology, 22, 480.
Barstow, M., Boshier, D., Bountithiponh, C., Changtragoon, S., Gaisberger, H., Hartvig, I., Hung, T. H. … Zheng, Y. (2022). Dalbergia cochinchinensis. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022, e.T215342548A2822125.
Barstow, M., Boshier, D., Bountithiponh, C., Changtragoon, S., Gaisberger, H., Hartvig, I., Hung, T. H. … Zheng, Y. (2022). Dalbergia oliveri. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2022, e.T215341339A2813403.
Gaisberger, H., So, T., Thammavong, B., Bounithiphonh, C., Hoa, T. T., Zheng, Y. … Hung, T. H. … Jalonen, R. (2022). Range-wide priority setting for the conservation and restoration of Asian rosewoods accounting for multiple threats and ecogeographic diversity. Biological Conservation, 270, 109560.
Hung, T. H., So, T., Sreng, S., Thammavong, B., Boounithiphonh, C., Boshier, D. H. & MacKay, J. J. (2020). Reference transcriptomes and comparative analyses of six species in the threatened rosewood genus Dalbergia. Scientific Reports, 10, 17749.
Hung, T. H., Gooda, R., Rizzuto, G., So, T., Thammavong, B., Tran, H. T., Jalonen, R., Boshier, D. H. & MacKay, J. J. (2020). Physiological responses of rosewoods Dalbergia cochinchinensis and D. oliveri under drought and heat stresses. Ecology and Evolution, 10(19), 10872–10885.
Lorna Hutson
Merton Professor of English Literature; Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies; Honorary FellowProfessor Lorna Hutson (1976, DPhil English) is Merton Professor of English.
Professor Hutson’s work focuses on the interrelations between early modern Enlish literary form and other forms of cultural practice, including economics, law, and national conception. Her monograph The Invention of Suspicion won the Roland Bainton Prize in 2008, and The Oxford Handbook of English Law and Literature, 1500-1700 won the Bainton Reference Prize in 2018. Her current project – England’s Insular Imagining – studies how early modern literature spanning multiple genres contributed to the conception of England as the whole island of Britain. In 2016, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
- Circumstantial Shakespeare
February 2018
- ‘Rhetoric and Law’
November 2017
ChapterOxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies
- ‘Introduction’
August 2017
Chapter
The Oxford Handbook of English Law and Literature
Anastasia Ignatieva
Fellow & Tutor in Statistics; Associate Professor of Statistical GenomicsMy research lies at the intersection of probability, statistics and computation, applied to problems in genetics.
I am interested in what we can learn about evolution by analysing sequenced genomes: for instance, through reconstructing the shared genetic history of a sample of individuals, we can gain insights into past demography, understand how genetic variation arises and how it is shaped by natural selection to produce the patterns we observe in the data.
I studied at Trinity College Dublin and the University of Edinburgh, and did my PhD on the Oxford-Warwick Statistics Programme. I was then a postdoc at the University of Oxford, and then a Lecturer in Statistics at the University of Glasgow.
John Ingram
Senior Research Fellow; Leader of the Environmental Change Institute Food Programme; Associate ProfessorTrained in soil science, Associate Professor John Ingram gained extensive experience in the 1980s working in Africa and Asia in agriculture and forestry research projects.
In 1991 he was recruited by UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to help organise, coordinate and synthesise research on global change and agroecology, part of IGBP’s international global change research programme. In 2001 he was appointed the Executive Officer for the international research project “Global Environmental Change and Food Systems” (GECAFS). On the close of GECAFS in 2011 he was appointed NERC Food Security Leader until assuming his current role of Food Systems Programme Leader at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute in May 2013.
John’s interests are in the conceptual framing of food systems; the interactions among the many actors involved and their varied activities, and the outcomes of their activities for food security, livelihoods and environment; and food system resilience. He has designed and led regional food system research projects in Europe, south Asia, southern Africa and the Caribbean and has conceived, developed and/or led a range of major international research initiatives. He has had substantial interaction with FAO, UNEP and CGIAR and many other international organisations, with national departments and agencies, with NGOs, and with businesses in the food sector, helping to establish research on the links between food security and environment through the analysis of food systems. In addition to leading the food systems research group within ECI, he also leads the multi-university post-graduate Interdisciplinary Food Systems Teaching and Learning programme (IFSTAL), and coordinated the UK Global Food Security programme ‘Resilience of the UK Food System‘. He is an Associate Professor in Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, and Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College.
2020
Hasnain, S., Ingram, J. and Zurek, M. (2020) Mapping the UK Food System – a report for the UKRI Transforming UK Food Systems Programme. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford.
Ingram, J. (2020) Nutrition security is more than food security. Nature Food, 1(2).
Zurek, M., Garbutt, G., Lieb, T., Hess, T. and Ingram, J. (2020) Increasing the resilience of the UK fresh fruit and vegetable system to water-related risks. Sustainability, 12(18). 7519.
2019
Ingram, J., Ajates, R., Arnall, A., Blake, L., Borrelli, R., Collier, R., de Frece, A., Häsler, B., Lang, T., Pope, H., Reed, K., Sykes, R., Wells, R. and White, R. (2019) A future workforce of food-system analysts. Nature Food.
2018
Ingram, J. and Zurek, M. (2018) Food Systems Approaches for the Future. Chapter 16 in, Serraj, R. and Pingali, P. (eds.) Agriculture and Food Systems to 2050: Global Trends, Challenges and Opportunities. . ISBN: 978-981-3278-34-9.
Termeer, C., Drimie, S., Ingram, J., Pereira, L. and Whittingham, M.J. (2018) A diagnostic framework for food system governance arrangements: The case of South Africa. NJAS – Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 84: 85-93.
Zurek, M., Hebinck, A., Leip, A., Vervoort, J., Kuiper, M., Garrone, M., Havlik, P., Heckelei, T., Hornborg, S., Ingram, J., Kuijsten, A., Shutes, L., Geleijnse, J.M., Terluin, I., Veer, P., Wijnands, J., Zimmermann, A. and Achterbosch, T. (2018) Assessing Sustainable Food and Nutrition Security of the EU Food System—An Integrated Approach. Sustainability, 10(11 (4271)).
2017
Benton, T., Crawford, J., Doherty, B., Fastoso, F., Jimenez, H.G., Ingram, J., Lang, T., Smith, P., Tiffin, R. (2017) British Food: What role should UK producers have in feeding the UK? Morrisons Supermarket.
Bringezu, S., Clarke, C., Fischer-Kowalski, M., Graedel, T., Hajer, M., Hashimoto, S., Hatfield-Dodds, S., Havlik, P., Hertwich, E., Ingram, J., Kruit, K., Milligan, B., Moriguchi, Y., Nasr, N., Newth, D., Obersteiner, M., Ramaswami, A., Schandl, H., Suh, S., Swilling, M., van der Voe, E., West, J. and Henk, W. (2017) Resource Efficiency: Potential and Economic implications. A report of the International Resource Panel, UNEP, Nairobi.. 1-167.
Campbell, B.M., Beare, D.J., Bennett, E.M., Hall-Sencer, J.M., Ingram, J.S.I., Jaramillo, F., Ortiz, R., Ramankutty, N., Sayer, J.A. and Shindell, D. (2017) Agriculture production as a major driver of the Earth system exceeding planetary boundaries. Ecology and Society, 22(4:8).
Ingram, J. (2017) Food system resilience. Food Science and Technology, 31: 21-23.
Ingram, J. (2017) Interdisciplinary food systems training to address global food challenges. Agriculture for Development, 31.
Ingram, J. (2017) Perspective: Look Beyond Production. Nature, 544(17).
Joanna Innes
Senior Research Fellow; Professor Emeritus of Modern HistoryI grew up in Britain and in the US. I studied at Cambridge, and was a tutorial fellow at Somerville for 36 years, 1982-2018. I hold the title of Professor of Modern History from the university, and continue to supervise graduate students.
I am interested in government, society and ideas, in Britain, Europe and the larger European world, between the later seventeenth and mid nineteenth centuries. More specifically, my research and writing has two main strands. One concerns developments in British, especially English social policy during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: my monograph Inferior Politics pulls together some of writings on that topic. In addition, for about twenty years I have been running an international collaborative project about changing attitudes to and practices associated with democracy in Europe and both Americas in the same period. We have published three books arising from that project, and are now at work on a fourth and final volume, which focusses on what we call central and northern Europe: broadly, Germany and lands adjacent. I see the academic study of history as a collaborative exercise, and have been involved in collaborative projects throughout my career. Between 1990 and 2000 I was co-editor of Past and Present, and have recently retired from a position as chair of that journal’s editorial board. I’m also on the boards of several other English and French-language history journals. I have spent several periods teaching or researching abroad: in Australia, Germany, Japan, France and most recently Finland.
Poverty, autonomy and control: Patrick Colquhoun’s Treatise on Indigence (1806)
April 2024
Article in book
Poverty and the enlightenment Re-imagining democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean, 1780-1860
September 2023
c-book
The experience of ‘reform’ in English local governance in the era of the ‘Reform ministry’ (1830-41)
December 2022
Article in book
Civic continuities in an age of revolutionary change Expanding the polis, transforming sovereignty
December 2022
Article in book
Cultural History of Democracy in the Age of Enlightenment Seeing like a surveyor: imagining rural reform in the early nineteenth-century UK
June 2022
Article in book
Reform and its complexities in modern Britain.
Essays inspired by Sir Brian Harrison
The Regulation of Charity and the Rise of the State
August 2021
Article in book
Epilogue 1: Early modern ottomans
March 2020
Journal article
Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association
Polite and Commercial’s Twin: Public Life and the Propertied Englishman 1689-1789
January 2019
Chapter
Revisiting The Polite and Commercial People Essays in Georgian Politics, Society, and Culture in Honour of Professor Paul Langford
Re-imagining democracy in the Mediterranean, 1780-1860
November 2018
c-book
Democracy from book to life: the emergence of the term in active political debate, to 1848
June 2018
Chapter
Democracy in Modern Europe: A Conceptual History
Christopher Ferguson. An Artisan Intellectual: James Carter and the Rise of Modern Britain, 1792–1853.
April 2018
Journal article
The American Historical Review
Popular consent and the European order
January 2018
Chapter
Re-Imagining Democracy in the Mediterranean, 1780-1860
Re-imagining the social order
January 2018
Chapter
Re-Imagining Democracy in the Mediterranean, 1780-1860
Happiness Contested: Happiness and Politics in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth centuries
August 2017
Chapter
Suffering and Happiness in England, 1550-1850 Narratives and Representations
August 2017
c-book
Consensus and the Majoritarian Principle in English Parliamentary Politics during the 18th and 19th Centuries
May 2017
Chapter
Consensus and Representation
Vanshaj Jain
Matric Year: 2019 – Subject: DPhil Law – Scholarship: Indira Gandhi ScholarMy research interests pertain to public international law and climate change. I seek to study the impact of rising sea levels on international maritime boundaries and maritime entitlements, to better understand how the law on this subject may be developed to accommodate such change.
My attraction to the law stems from the pivotal role it plays in shaping society. It is for this reason that I have nurtured a deep interest in public international law. I believe it possesses tremendous potential to change the lives of the most vulnerable, and mold society for the better.
During my undergraduate studies at the National Law School I pursued every opportunity to further my passion for international law. I was fortunate to argue the finals of the ICC moot before sitting judges of the International Criminal Court, at The Hague. I worked extensively on the law of statehood whilst competing at the Jessup Moot. Through my internship with Mr. Soli Sorabjee, I worked on a major international maritime dispute, the Enrica Lexie case.
The Rhodes Scholarship enabled me to read for the Bachelor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford, where I engaged more deeply with the subject through courses such as International Law and Armed Conflict as well as International Law of the Sea. I added breadth to this engagement in my second year at Oxford where I read for an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, gaining a better understanding of the real-world hurdles that reside in the practice of international law.
I hope to nurture this passion further, as an Indira Gandhi Scholar at the Oxford India Centre, whilst reading for my DPhil in Law at Somerville.
Awards and Previous Qualifications
- Oxford – MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (Distinction)
- Oxford – Bachelor of Civil Law (Distinction)
- NLSIU – B.A., LL.B. (H)
- Rhodes Scholar (India & Exeter, 2017)
- Oxford Department of International Development Faculty Prize for Best Thesis in the MSc (RFMS) [2019]
- Volterra Fietta Prize for International Law of the Sea (BCL) [2018]
- Gold Medal for Best Student Advocate [2017]
Sarvatrajit Singh Jajmann
Matric Year: 2021 – Subject: Msc Law and Finance – Scholarship: Ratanshaw Bomanji Zaiwalla ScholarSavy is reading for the MSc in Law and Finance offered jointly by the Faculty of Law and the Saïd Business School. He graduated from the National Law University, Delhi in 2015 and previously worked with an international law firm in London. Savy is admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales and as an advocate in India.
Our world today is increasingly introspecting the role of the corporation. While it remains to be seen whether the shift towards stakeholder capitalism by the 2019 Business Roundtable was just empty rhetoric, socio-economic inequalities continue to widen further. I am keen to explore the economic interests underpinning corporate decision-making, the financial tools used to evaluate corporate success and the balancing of legal relations of the corporation with its stakeholders.
The Oxford India Centre and the Zaiwalla scholarship have given me the incredible opportunity to study while at Somerville College for which I am grateful. I am keen to immerse myself in the programme with the hope that I can meaningfully contribute to the above-mentioned issues which I believe will come to define my generation.
Navya Jannu
Matric Year: 2017 – Subject: DPhil Law – Scholarship: Indira Gandhi Scholar‘I want to develop a greater understanding of the interrelationship between law and the social embeddedness of energy transition in India. By viewing energy transition through the brackets of law we see a powerful story of how it stimulates social justice. Transition creates access to electricity, improves standards of living and stimulates sustainable development’
Navya Jannu is a Doctor of Philosophy candidate at the University of Oxford. She is an Indira Gandhi scholar at the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development at Somerville College and the Convenor of the Environmental Law Discussion Group at the Oxford Law Faculty.
Navya’s research focuses on law, climate change and clean energy infrastructure in India. Through her doctoral research, Navya explores the role of lower courts and tribunals in India’s transition to renewable energy. In particular, she studies the role of the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL) and National Green Tribunal (NGT) in this process. Prior to the DPhil, Navya read for an MPhil in Law in 2018 and completed the Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) with Distinction in 2017 at the University of Oxford as an HSA Advocates Scholar. She holds a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws with First Class Honours from Jindal Global Law School (JGLS), India.
Awards and Previous Qualifications:
- Oxford- MPhil in Law (2018)
- Oxford Law Faculty Scholarship (2017)
- Oxford- Bachelor of Civil Law (Distinction) (2017)
- HSA Advocates Scholarship (2016)
- Archibald Jackson Prize for Distinction on BCL (2017)
- JGLS- B.A., LL.B (Hons) (Distinction) (2016)
- University Gold Medal for Outstanding Academic Performance and All-Round Excellence (JGLS, 2016)
Kassim Javaid
Senior Research Fellow; Professor of Osteoporosis and Adult Rare Bone Diseases; Lecturer in Metabolic Bone Disease, NDORMSDr Kassim Javaid studied medicine at Charing Cross and Westminster Medical School, and did his house jobs in London.
He then finished a three year SHO rotation in medicine at Southampton General Hospital followed by 8 months as a registrar before starting at the MRC Environmental Epidemiology Unit in October 2000.
His research interests are in epidemiology and adult metabolic bone disease, focusing on vitamin D, osteoporosis, secondary fracture prevention and rare bone diseases. He was made a full professor of the university in the 2023 Recognition of Distinction.
Walker-Bone, Karen & Javaid, K & Arden, N & Cooper, C. (2000). Regular review – Medical management of osteoarthritis. BMJ (Clinical research ed.). 321. 936-40. 10.1136/bmj.321.7266.936.
Harvey, Nicholas & Holroyd, Christopher & Ntani, Georgia & Javaid, Kassim & Cooper, Philip & Moon, Rebecca & Cole, Zoe & Tinati, Tannaze & Godfrey, Keith & Dennison, Elaine & Bishop, Nick & Baird, Janis & Cooper, Cyrus. (2014). Vitamin D supplementation in pregnancy: A systematic review. Health technology assessment (Winchester, England). 18. 1-190. 10.3310/hta18450.
Cooper, Cyrus & Westlake, Sarah & Harvey, Nicholas & Javaid, Kassim & Dennison, Elaine & Hanson, Mark. (2006). Review: developmental origins of osteoporotic fracture. Osteoporosis international : a journal established as result of cooperation between the European Foundation for Osteoporosis and the National Osteoporosis Foundation of the USA. 17. 337-47. 10.1007/s00198-005-2039-5.
Kerkhof, H.J.M. & Doherty, Michael & Arden, N.K. & Abramson, S.B. & Attur, Mukundan & Bos, Steffan & Cooper, C & Dennison, Elaine & Doherty, S.A. & Evangelou, Evangelos & Hart, D.J. & Hofman, A & Javaid, K & Kerna, Irina & Kisand, Kalle & Kloppenburg, M & Krasnokutsky, Svetlana & Maciewicz, Rose & Meulenbelt, Ingrid & Valdes, Ana. (2010). Large-scale meta-analysis of interleukin-1 beta and interleukin-1 receptor antagonist polymorphisms on risk of radiographic hip and knee osteoarthritis and severity of knee osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis and cartilage / OARS, Osteoarthritis Research Society. 19. 265-71. 10.1016/j.joca.2010.12.003.
Baroness Margaret Jay
Honorary FellowMargaret Ann Jay, Baroness Jay of Paddington PC, is a Labour party peer and former Leader of the House of Lords.
Margaret’s father was former Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan, and she was educated at Blackheath High School and Somerville College, Oxford.
Between 1965 and 1977 she held production posts within the BBC working on current affairs and further education television programmes. She then became a journalist on the BBC’s prestigious Panarama programme, and Thames Television’s This Week. She went on to present the BBC2 series Social History of Medicine, as well as being a contributor to Newsnight, Any Questions, Question Time and other current affairs programmes. She has a strong interest in health issues, notably as a campaigner on HIV and Aids. She was a founder director of the National Aids Trust in 1987. She is also a patron of Help the Aged.
She was appointed a life peer in 1992 with the title of Baroness Jay of Paddington, of Paddington in the City of Westminster, and acted as an opposition Whip in the House of Lords. In association with the shop workers’ union, she led opposition to the liberalisation of Sunday trading hours.
After her party’s election victory in 1997, she became Health Spokesman and Minister for Women in the House of Lords. From 1998 she was Leader of the House of Lords, playing a pivotal role in the major reform that led to the removal of most of its hereditary members. She retired from active politics in 2001.
Among numerous non-executive roles that she has taken on since retiring from politics, she was a non-executive director of BT Group. She is currently co-chair of the cross-party Iraq Commission (along with Tom King and Paddy Ashdown) which was established by the Foreign Policy Centre think-tank and Channel 4.
Helen Johnson
Executive Assistant to the Senior Tutor; Fellows' SecretaryProfessor Dame Carole Jordan
Emeritus FellowCarole Jordan’s career has centred on the use of x-ray and UV spectra as plasma diagnostics.
She was a pioneer of the calculations required to determine the relative number densities of elements in different stages of ionization. As her career progressed she became heavily involved with observations of stellar spectra, especially ones obtained from space platforms such as the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) and the Hubble Space Telescope.
Throughout her career she worked on the interpretation of solar spectra. In both solar and stellar areas, she was the first to identify the atomic or molecular origins of many emission lines, including molecular fluorescence in cool giants that has revealed the inhomogeneous structure of their chromospheres.
Later, she transferred her solar techniques to the analysis of the spectra of cool stars.
The broadening of emission lines in both dwarf and giant stars exceeds that expected from the local kinetic temperature. In dwarf stars she has interpreted this broadening as being associated with the passage of magnetohydrodynamic waves through the outer atmosphere, which go on to heat the corona. Such waves can originate from magnetic field motions, or through magnetic reconnection, at low levels of the outer atmosphere.
To test proposed theories she has developed techniques to determine from spectra the temperature of the plasma as a function of height and has applied these to the Sun and many cool stars. She has an international reputation as an authority on the coronae of the Sun and cool stars.
Throughout her career Carole has been active in the research community. She has been an editor of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Solar Physics, and The Observatory.
She was a member of the Councils of both SERC and PPARC, and under SERC, Chair of the Solar System Committee. She has served twice on the Council of the IOP and was its first Vice-President, Science. She was a Secretary and then the first female President of the Royal Astronomical Society.
She is valued for her hard work and forthright, no-nonsense approach to people and problems, her honesty, and her total commitment to science.
Daniel Jukes
Stipendiary LecturerDaniel is a barrister and currently a Probationary Tenant at Wilberforce Chambers.
Daniel teaches Roman Law at Somerville, having previously taught FHS Contract Law on behalf of the College in 2023. Daniel also teaches FHS Company Law on behalf of the Law Faculty. Alongside his academic and professional commitments, Daniel is a DPhil (part-time) candidate researching the control of discretionary powers and duties in company law, contract law, and insolvency law and is supervised by Professor Christopher Hare.
Publications:
- ‘Case Analysis: Dexia’ (2022) 37 (11) JIBFL 770 – considering the ISDA Master Agreement and conflicts of law.
- ‘Case Analysis: FCA v Papadimitrakopoulos’ (2023) 38 (1) JIBFL 55 – considering the use of information obtained during criminal investigations in market abuse cases brought under FSMA 2000.
- ‘BTI 2014 LLC v Sequana SA and others [2022] UKSC 25’ (2023) 44 (3) The Company Lawyer 87
- ‘Case Analysis: Loreley Financing’ (2023) 38 (2) JIBFL 127 – considering the scope of litigation privilege.
- ‘Case Analysis: Celestial Aviation Services’ (2023) 38 (5) JIBFL 356 – considering the scope of sanctions on letters of credit.
- ‘Case Analysis: Banca Intesa Sanpaolo’ (2024) 39 (3) JIBFL 203 – considering the capacity of Italian local authorities to enter into interest rates swaps and the application of unjust enrichment.
- ‘Case Analysis: G4S’ (2024) 39 (3) JIBFL 204 – considering the rule in Sharp v Blank
Tereza Kacerova
Retaining Fee LecturerMy research focuses on developing and integrating advanced NMR and mass spectrometry–based multiomics approaches to characterise metabolic pathways underlying neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis.
I aim to bridge analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, and data science to identify blood-based biomarkers for early disease detection and progression prediction.
At Oxford, I combine NMR metabolomics with proteomic and imaging biomarkers to develop predictive models for cognitive decline and disease progression, working in close collaboration with groups in Pharmacology and Biochemistry. Alongside my research, I tutor medical students at Somerville College, offering insights into disease from a molecular and analytical chemistry perspective.
I completed my DPhil in Chemistry at the University of Oxford in 2025 and am now an EPSRC-funded postdoctoral fellow in Physical Chemistry.
See full list here.
Aparajita Kaul
Women’s RepHi, my name is Aparajita (She/Her), and I am a graduate student reading for the Bachelor of Civil Law.
I am an intersectional feminist and aim to view the world from this lens to be conscious of, and reveal, the various ways in which our policies, infrastructures and values reflect and perpetuate women’s oppression. I enjoy studying both private and public law issues from a feminist perspective, ranging from insolvency law to domestic violence.
As the MCR Women’s Representative, my aim is to ensure that Somerville is and remains an inclusive space that champions women from all walks of life. This ranges from organising events that celebrate women to ensuring that women feel safe and comfortable on campus.
I am always available for a quick chat, coffee, or if you just need a study partner. 🙂 I am happy to discuss any concerns with full confidentiality and an open mind.
Jasper Theodor Kauth
Graduate Teaching AssistantI am currently working on two related research projects:
First, in my dissertation project, I analyse the relationship of movement control and state building processes. By drawing from ideational critical juncture and institutional order arguments and by comparing political developments in Europe, the British Empire, and the United States, I show that there exist long exclusionary traditions of movement control in today’s Western democracies. I argue that practices of movement control are often underpinned by ideas about colonialism, race, and differential humanity. The monopolisation and institutionalisation of movement control in the late 19th and early 20th centuries is closely entangled with the rise of the modern nation state system.
Secondly, I am interested in the phenomenon of illiberalism in liberal democracies. As outlined in a recent article, I argue that what is commonly referred to as illiberalism should be analytically separated into two concepts: one anti-democratic variant termed disruptive illiberalism and one rooted in the politics of exclusion termed ideological illiberalism. By analysing these two strains individually, I develop a general theory of illiberalism in liberal democracies and try to answer the central question that motivated both of my projects: Why do even purportedly liberal democracies regularly and frequently engage in glaringly illiberal acts?
In my research, I combine approaches from history and the social sciences to uncover distal causes of political traditions and the interactions of ideas and institutions. My work employs qualitative, historical, and comparative methods. My primary supervisor is Desmond King. My secondary supervisors are Andrew Thompson (College) and Matthew Gibney (Department).
Before starting the DPhil in Politics at Oxford’s Department of Politics and International Relations and Nuffield College, I completed the MSc in Politics Research (St Hilda’s College, Oxford). I hold a double-major BA in History and Political Science from Heidelberg University, Germany. During my studies at Heidelberg, I spent a year at St Hugh’s College. My Bachelor and Master’s programmes in Heidelberg and Oxford were funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and St Hilda’s College. My doctoral studies have been jointly funded by Nuffield College and the Economic and Social Research Council’s Grand Union DTP (Migration Pathway). I previously acted as the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace Fellow (ARSP) at the Holocaust Center of the Jewish Federation and the August Wilson Center for African American Culture, both Pittsburgh, PA, and as the Allianz Foundation Fellow at ARSP in Philadelphia, PA.
I teach Prelims Politics at Somerville College and offer undergraduate teaching of papers 205: “The Government and Politics of the United States” and 212: “International Relations in the Era of Two World Wars”. I offer postgraduate seminars in Qualitative Methods.
As of 2022, I am an AFHEA.
Selected Publications
Illiberalism, in: European Journal of Sociology, 61 (2020), No 3, pp. 365-405. With Desmond King.
Fremdenrecht und Völkerbund. Das Scheitern der International Conference on the Treatment of Foreigners 1929, in: Archiv des Völkerrechts 56 (2018), No 2, pp. 202-228. English: Alien Law and the League of Nations. The Failure of the International Conference on the Treatment of Foreigners 1929.
“Ein Stück Polizeistaat“. Fremdenrecht und Ausweisungen in der ersten deutschen Demokratie, in: Geflüchtet, unerwünscht, abgeschoben. Osteuropäische Juden in der Republik Baden (1918–1923), ed. by Nils Steffen/Cord Arendes, Heidelberg 2017, pp. 185–214. English: “The Remains of a Police State.” Alien Law and Expulsions in the First German Democracy.
Der Fall Isaak Nouhim – ein bolschewistischer Spion in Baden?, in: Geflüchtet, unerwünscht, abgeschoben. Osteuropäische Juden in der Republik Baden (1918–1923), ed. by Nils Steffen/Cord Arendes, Heidelberg 2017, pp. 237–251. English: The Case Isaak Nouhim – a Bolshevik Spy in Baden?
Online:
Dame Mary Keegan
Honorary FellowDame Mary Keegan was born in 1953 and educated at Brentwood County High School and Somerville College, Oxford.
She was with Price Waterhouse (later PwC) from 1977 until 2001, occupying a number of senior roles during that time. She was a founder member of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) Interpretations Committee and of the European Financial Reporting Advisory Group Board.
In 1997 she was appointed the UK member of both the council and the executive of FEE (Fédération des Experts Comptables Européens) and she was also a founding member of the International Forum on Accountancy Development. She was also a member of the UK’s Urgent Issues Task Force.
She chaired the UK’s Accounting Standards Board from 2001 until her move to Whitehall in 2004.
In 2007 she was awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her hugely significant and lasting contribution to both HM Treasury itself and to the wider government agenda in financial management, government accounting and public spending. In 2014, she was given the accountancy profession’s most prestigious award – the ‘Award for Outstanding Achievement’ from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).
She has been a keen rower, sailor, gardener and musician, and has since 2008 been involved in a non-executive capacity in the National Audit Office, the Royal Horticultural Society, Falmouth University and the Business School at Exeter University.
Mrs Margaret Kenyon
Honorary FellowMargaret read modern languages at Somerville College, Oxford, then took up a teaching post at Cheadle Hulme School. After nine years at CHS, Margaret moved to Withington Girls’ School, where she became Headmistress in 1986.
Margaret was appointed North West Chairman of the Girls’ Schools Association for three years, and National President in 1994, when the annual conference was for the first time, at her insistence, held in Manchester.
Margaret was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Greater Manchester in 1998. Her other local appointments have included membership of the Granada Foundation since 1986, the Court of the University of Manchester from 1991 to 2004, and Trusteeship of the Museum of Science and Industry from 1998 to 2004.
In retirement, she has been a governor of Bolton School and Cheadle Hulme School since 2001, and Chair of the Manchester University Press Board since 2000.
Radhika Khosla
Research Director, Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development; Associate Professor, Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment; Senior Research FellowDr Radhika Khosla is Associate Professor at the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment and Research Director of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development at the University of Oxford. She is the Programme Leader in Zero Carbon Energy Use at Oxford’s ZERO Institute.
Radhika’s research portfolio includes being Principal Investigator of the Oxford Martin School’s interdisciplinary and multi-country programme on the Future of Cooling, which examines rising extreme heat and the unprecedented increase in cooling energy demand in relation to the sustainable development goals. She is the Co-Investigator of Oxford Net Zero, an interdisciplinary research programme aimed at informing effective, equitable, and ambitious climate action, where she co-leads the workstream on inclusive and just net zero transitions.
Radhika works closely at the interface of research and policy. She is Editor-in-Chief of the high-impact peer reviewed journal, Environmental Research Letters. She has been Special Scientific Advisor to the UK’s House of Commons Environment Audit Committee for the inquiry on heat resilience and sustainable cooling (2023-24). She serves on the UK Government’s Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office UK-India Advisory Board.
She has supported authorship of a number of international scientific reports and is lead author of the UNEP’s spotlight report on the first Global Cooling Watch (2023). She has also been an author of the UNEP Emissions Gap Report (2020) and the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (2022).
An urban climatologist by training, her work seeks to advance understanding of one of the most fundamental questions of our time: how can societies improve human well-being while preserving and enhancing the natural environment? Her interdisciplinary research examines the productive tensions between energy consumption trajectories, urban transitions, and climate change governance – in the context of development – that lie at the heart of this global challenge.
Radhika has led research agendas and international knowledge networks on cooling, urban energy demand, sustainable development, and climate change policy. Using socio-technical systems analysis she examines these themes across levels of governance. Her research priorities include interrogating how, when, and why does energy use change as households urbanize and lifestyles change? What forms of governance and political rationalities characterize the varied urban responses to climate change, given their (often competing) objectives to provide urban services? Whether, and how, can emerging economies accelerate energy demand transitions? And how can we understand and equitably shape the future of global cooling demand in response to unprecedented extreme heat?
In 2023, she received an Honourable Mention for the Bina Agarwal Prize in Ecological Economics for her work on energy consumption pathways. As Research Director of the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development, she helps bridge research and networks on India at Oxford and international and was recognized as one of the ‘most influential people’ in UK-India relations (2019).
Radhika’s research has been covered widely in over 2,700 articles across 53 countries since 2021, including by The New York Times, The Times, The Independent, Reuters, the FT, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, CNN, Time Magazine, Times of India, The Conversation and Carbon Brief. She has appeared on podcasts and broadcast television including the Sky News Daily Climate Show, Channel 5 News (1 million+ live viewers) and DW News (47,000 views).
Radhika’s other current academic affiliation is at the University of Pennsylvania (USA). She is on the boards of various organizations, journals and book presses; and holds a range of advisory roles within and beyond Oxford. Previously, she has been a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research (India), and Staff Scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council (USA). Radhika holds a PhD in the Geophysical Sciences from the University of Chicago and an undergraduate and master’s degrees in Physics from the University of Oxford.
Teaching
Spaces, Infrastructure and Technology for Net Zero, Sustainable Development, for the MSc in Enterprise and the Environment
Governance, Policy and Politics for the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance, School of Geography and the Environment
Environmental Governance and Development for the MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance, School of Geography and the Environment
Climate Change Negotiations: Policy Challenge for the Master’s in Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government
Global Opportunities and Threats: Oxford Program for MBA students, Saïd Business School
Climate Change School, Oxford Climate Society, University of Oxford