Support Staff

Hi, 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. 

I 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.

Dame 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.

I’m Millie Kennedy (she/her), a second-year PPE student, and I’m really excited to be the JCR’s W*men’s Officer this year. As w*men’s officer, my role is to promote the wellbeing of w*men in college — whether that be academic, social, or personal wellbeing — and also organising events that help build a welcoming and inclusive environment. My goal is to foster a supportive network that reflects the values of Somerville, ensuring that w*men feel empowered and connected. 

Somerville has such a great tradition of celebrating and championing w*men, and I’m particularly enthusiastic about continuing Somerville’s legacy, building upon a strong (and fun) community, keeping w*men at the heart of Somerville. 

If you have any ideas, questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at millie.kennedy@some.ox.ac.uk. 

Margaret 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.

Dr 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

I am Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow, Principal Investigator (PI), Junior Research Fellow (JRF) at Wolfson College, and NHS doctor.

I completed a BSc degree in Biochemistry from Imperial College London and my medical degrees (BMBS, BMedSci and MRes) from the University of Nottingham. I then spent few years working in junior doctor posts before coming to Oxford to start a DPhil in Clinical Medicine. My DPhil studies focused on vaccine development against arthropod-borne viruses supported by Innovate UK funding. I was awarded highly prestigious NDM Graduate Student Prize 2020 (Overall Prize Winner) for my overall performance during my DPhil at the Nuffield Department of Medicine (NDM) and a NIHR Oxford BRC Grant to support my research as a Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2022, I was awarded the Sir Henry Wellcome Fellowship to start my independent research on vaccine development against emerging arboviruses. In 2022-2023, I have been awarded MRC HIC-VAC and MRC IAA grants to develop serological assays against typhoid and paratyphoid fever and the MLSTF grant to develop a vaccine against Chagas disease.

I am currently a Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow, a Principal Investigator (PI) at the Oxford Vaccine Group (OVG), a JRF Fellow at Wolfson College, a Lecturer in Medicine at Somerville College, and a doctor in Acute Internal Medicine in the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

Patricia Kingori is a sociologist whose primary expertise lies in exploring the everyday ethical experiences of frontline workers in global health.

Her research interests intersect the sociology of science and medicine, STS, bioethics and she has extensive experience of undertaking critical examinations of ethics in practice in different countries in Africa and South East Asia. This work has been supported through various funders, including the Wellcome Trust and the Grand Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).

Research

Patricia’s work to date has focused on the views, values and experiences of fieldworkers and other frontline research staff. She has published extensively in journals such as Social Science and Medicine and has guest edited several special issues on topics relating to global health, ethics and frontline workers. Examples of her work include a focus on everyday ethical experiences among:

• Fieldworkers in clinical trials in East and West Africa
• WASH staff in Ebola treatment units in West Africa
• A&E healthcare professionals in contexts of austerity in Greece and the UK
• Ethical preparedness of frontline workers in humanitarian crises (RECAP)
• Frontline healthcare professionals and their concerns about COVID-19 vaccines

In addition, Patricia currently leads a team of researchers exploring concerns around Fakes, Fabrications and Falsehoods in Global Health. This is a four-year Wellcome-funded Senior Investigator award which seeks to understand the people, places and processes involved in contemporary concerns about fakes in global health.

Supervision and Teaching

Patricia is joint module lead on the International Research Ethics, MSc in Global Health Science and Epidemiology, and a DPhil supervisor for Frances Butcher, Kate Enright, Francis Kombe and Scholastica Zakayo. She also mentors early career researchers at Ethox/WEH and undergraduates at Somerville College, Oxford.

Patricia is a member of the Global Health Bioethics Network and leads the qualitative research support for early-career researchers in low-income countries including Malawi, South Africa, Cambodia and Kenya. She is also a member of the core project management team for the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities and also for the Oxford Wellcome Centre-Johns Hopkins Berman Institute Global Infectious Disease Ethics (GLIDE) Collaborative. Patricia plays a central role in the Wellcome Humanities and Social Science Centres Collaboration which brings together Centres in Oxford, Exeter, Durham and Edinburgh.

Service

Patricia is a member of the Central University Research Ethics Committee (CUREC), and serves on various funding committees and review groups, including for Wellcome and UKRI. Patricia is also a trustee of the Medical Research Foundation and sits on the SAGE SPI-B which provides independent, expert behavioural science advice to the UK government in relation to COVID-19.

Patricia is committed to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion issues in academia. She is currently leading several initiatives, at Somerville College and the WEH, including a visiting scholarship for Black academics to the University of Oxford and a student internships scheme aimed at increasing diversity. Patricia also contributed to the Wellcome Trust’s Reimagine Research initiative in 2020.

Patricia was awarded a Merit Award by the University of Oxford. In 2015, Patricia was awarded a place on the prestigious Powerlist in recognition of her position as among <1% of Black British female academics employed by an Oxbridge institution.

Dame Carolyn Emma Kirkby, DBE, is an English soprano and one of the world’s most renowned early music specialists.

She has sung on over 100 recordings. Kirkby was a founding member of the Taverner Choir, and in 1973 began her long association with the Consort of Musicke. She took part in the early Decca Florilegium recordings with both the Consort of Musicke and the Academy of Ancient Music, at a time when most college-trained sopranos were not developing a vocal sound appropriate for early music.

She taught for many years at Dartington International Summer School, the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, as well as the Bel Canto Summer School. In 2010 she became President of Dartington Community Choir. In 1994, she was awarded an Honorary Degree (Doctor of Music) from the University of Bath. On 21 January 2011 it was announced that Kirkby had been awarded the Queen’s Medal for Music, an award funded by the Privy Purse and given to an individual who has had a major influence on the musical life of the nation.

I am a planetary physicist and a Tutorial Fellow in Physics at Somerville. My research is focused on theoretical and numerical studies of the atmospheric dynamics and climate of exoplanets. This work covers a broad range of planetary climates, including the extreme atmospheres of close-in extrasolar gas giant (or “hot Jupiter”) planets, atmospheres of temperate Earth-sized rocky planets, and regimes in between. I completed my bachelor’s degrees in Geophysical Sciences and Physics at the University of Chicago and my Ph.D in Planetary Sciences in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. I was previously a 51 Pegasi b postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago and an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland before moving to Oxford in 2024.

Markos joined the University in September 2022 after spending three years leading the people strategy at the House of Commons. Prior to this, he spent over a decade advising on people practice and organisational development at London South Bank University, becoming its Group People Director in 2019. Throughout his career, Markos’ focus has been on improving workplace cultures, leadership capability, staff engagement and inclusion, and capability for digital transformation. Markos has a PhD in Modern European History from Kings College London, and has studied in his native Greece, as well as in Italy and the UK. He is a qualified executive coach, a Freeman of the Guild of HR Professionals, a graduate of the first cohort of McKinsey Senior Leadership Master Class for senior LGBT executives and a Stonewall Leadership programme alumnus.

Philip Kreager is Senior Research Fellow in Human Sciences at Somerville College; Tutor and Lecturer in Demography in the Institute of Human Sciences; and Director, Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group and Research Associate, School of Sociology, Oxford.

He is currently Sanofi Chair, Centre Virchow-Villermé, at the University of Paris-Descartes. He is also a Research Associate of the Department of Sociology in Oxford, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Institute of Ageing, and Honorary Professor, Institute of Ageing, University of Indonesia.

His current research, with Professor Kevin Baird of the Oxford-Eijkman Institute in Jakarta, is Determinants of treatment-seeking behaviour and equality of access to early detection and treatment averting severe and fatal malaria in rural, impoverished settings of Nusa Tenggara Timur, Indonesia, a medical and anthropological demographic study of social structural and other impediments to malarial treatment, under the Wellcome-ISSF funding scheme. From September 2015-2018 he will be co-investigator with Professor Mark Harrison and others on a Wellcome Trust project in the history of medicine, Malaria and the Dilemmas of Development. In 2011-12 he was, with Giang Thanh Long, Sri Moertiningsih Adioetomo, P. Loyd-Sherlock, chief consultant to the National Team for Accelerating Poverty Reduction, Office of the Vice-President, Government of Indonesia (TNP2K). During 1999-2007 he was Director of Ageing in Indonesia, a multi-site longitudinal study of ageing in three communities, supported by the Welcome Trust. 

Apoorva is an ecologist, primarily interested in all aspects of human-animal interactions and applied conservation. Her DPhil research draws from interdisciplinary fields of natural and social sciences to investigate farmer-wildlife conflict and co-existence, crop losses and livelihood interventions in transitional forest landscapes. Her research is based out of the Central Western Ghats of Karnataka, India, alongside the marginal farmers of Indo-African Siddi community, local NGOs and government stakeholders. Her study adopts the UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 Zero Hunger and Goal 15 Life on Land.

She is currently an associate at the Linnean Society of London, an honorary member of the Indigenous Peoples’ and Community Conserved Areas (ICCAs) Consortium and a steering committee member of the IUCN SSC Pigeon and Dove Specialist Group. Her past work includes community-based species conservation, animal movement ecology, bioacoustics studies and documenting traditional ecological knowledge, both in terrestrial as well as marine realms.

Apoorva holds a Masters in Ecology (2013) from Pondicherry University and is the second Indian woman to have received the Global Fellowship in Marine Conservation by Duke University. For her Master’s research, she was funded by the International Otter Survival Fund (IOSF) to study the conflict situation between Smooth-coated otters and fishermen, and associated socio-economics in the Cauvery River, India. After her Masters and stint at Duke, she received a follow-up grant by Oak Foundation to collaborate with Conservation International, Brazil and founded the Marine Conservation without Borders initiative with her colleagues at Bahia, Brazil.

On returning to India, Apoorva worked as a Research Associate at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE) on the India Biodiversity Portal project. She then went on to work as a Research Assistant at the University of Lethbridge, Canada for a year to study the acoustic communication of the endemic Adelaide’s warbler in Puerto Rico. On her return, she found the need to facilitate field research in India, engage local communities and children in field ecology studies, and thus began the Curious Naturalists Initiative in the Western Ghats. She also collaborates as a research affiliate with the Wildlife Information Liaison Development (WILD) Society in India.

Alongside research, Apoorva is also an active participant at policy based global forums such as the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity- Conference of the Parties (UN CBD-COP) and Convention on Migratory Species (CMS) COP representing youth and indigenous communities for wildlife conservation. She is also a trained Natural History Illustrator and sketches the wonders of nature, which inspire her to keep going in the midst of all the socio-ecological crisis.

After finishing an MSc at the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, Oxford University, and an MPhil in Development Studies at the Oxford Department of International Development, both with distinctions, I am now pursuing a DPhil in International Development.

I was awarded Somerville’s 2017 Principal’s Prize for academic excellence. My Masters at Oxford was funded by the Louis Dreyfus-Weidenfeld scholarship, while the MPhil-Dphil is supported by the university’s Indira Gandhi scholarship.

Prior to this, I worked for over 7 years as a journalist with a leading national newspaper The Hindu in Bangalore. I reported on topics ranging from higher education, technology and finance to more specialized focus areas such as the state of labour, work and wages of the vast urban working class in India. My occasional stints with reporting in rural areas got me interested in contemporary development theory. After this academic stint, I intend to return to the field of journalism with grounding and expertise in development studies. As a development expert, with the experience and know-how of mainstream journalism, I hope to be able to make vital interventions. My long-term goal is to be able to lead a team that can steer the agenda on development reporting, both in terms of grassroots reportage and incisive commentary.

My DPhil research focusses on the political economy of social protection programmes in India. It interrogates whether social sector schemes can ‘transform’ the social relations of production in village societies, and probes the determinants of such transformation. My research takes a comparative political economy approach to understanding transformative processes in rural India.

My research focuses on developing accessible mental health interventions for adults with different types of brain injuries, such as a stroke, traumatic brain injury, or brain tumours.

Specifically, my research aims to: 1) identify risk factors for poor mental health unique to brain injury populations; and, 2) develop and experimentally test novel mental health interventions that are accessible to brain injury survivors in light of cognitive impairments. My ultimate aim is to improve treatment options for mental health in neuropsychological populations. To achieve these goals, I use a mixture of advanced quantitative (mixed-effects models, structural equation models, risk prediction modelling) and qualitative (thematic analysis, interpretive description) methods.

After completing my Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Canada, I completed my PhD training at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge with Dr Tom Manly. For my PhD, I developed and evaluated an intervention for depression and low mood in adults with acquired brain injury in a randomised controlled trial.

In the Translational Neuropsychology Group, I work with Prof Nele Demeyere on developing an improved cognitive care pathway for stroke survivors. In this role, I aim to elucidate the relationship between cognitive impairments and emotional outcomes following stroke, with an eye toward leveraging cognitive strategies as a means of improving mood and vice versa.

Afua was appointed Chief Financial Officer, Executive Director of the Bank of England aged 36 in 2019, making her the first black senior executive in the Bank’s 329 year history. Her tenure so far has seen the Bank handle unprecedented challenges, including Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the September 2022 mini-budget, and the ongoing inflation and cost of living crises. Her current responsibilities include developing the Bank’s strategy and the financial governance of the Bank’s c. £1 trillion balance sheet.

Afua also serves as the Bank of England’s co-executive sponsor for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and co-executive sponsor for Climate Change disclosure. In 2021, she won CFO of the Year at the Women in Finance Awards UK, and in October 2022 she was named in the Powerlist, which profiles 100 of Britain’s most influential Britons of African heritage. She was a 2022 listee in the Kindness & Leadership, 50 Leading Lights UK campaign. Afua is a key note speaker and represents the Bank in the Community, with Businesses and at international fora e.g. International Monetary Fund, G20, World Finance Forum & COP.

Afua joined the Bank from Barclays Bank (2012-2019) where she was the Chief Financial Officer Mortgages and played a key role in Barclays’ strategic cost transformation program, TRANSFORM, whilst in the Investment Bank and in Group COO. Previously, during the Global Financial Crisis, she was an Investment Banker at UBS (2007-2012) in the Financial Institutions Group and in Mergers and Acquisitions, Group Strategic Advisory. After university, Afua qualified as a Chartered Accountant (ICAS) with Ernst & Young, London.

Afua matriculated at Oxford University one year early, gaining an undergraduate Master’s in Chemistry (2000-2004). She was awarded a Junior Research Fellowship in Organic Chemistry by Princeton University.

Of her Honorary Fellowship, Afua said, “To be invited to be an Honorary Fellow of Somerville is the greatest honour and took me completely by surprise!”

“I loved my time at Somerville. It played such an instrumental role in my career and I made lifelong friends.”

I have specific research interests in the etiology and management of sleep disturbance and the interaction between sleep disturbance and mental health.