Support Staff

Dr Alice Prochaska is a historian. She was Principal of Somerville from 2010 to 2017 and a Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford from 2015 to 2017.

An alumna of Somerville, she holds both her BA and DPhil in Modern History from the University of Oxford. Her career has spanned museums, archives and libraries, working both in national organisations (the UK National Archives and the British Library) as well as universities on both sides of the Atlantic (University of London, Yale and now Oxford). Dr Prochaska is a Fellow and one-time Vice President of the Royal Historical Society. She has managed large staffs of scholars, librarians and archivists, and has chaired national and international boards and committees dealing with archives and scholarly resources. She is currently chair of the Sir Winston Churchill Archive Trust and the Institute of Historical Research Trust, a commissioner of the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission, member of the General Federation of Trade Unions Education Trust, and an adviser to the OP Jindal Global University and other organisations in India. During her tenure as Principal of Somerville, she was instrumental in establishing the Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development and the Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust, and in securing additions to student accommodation in the College. Her current scholarly interest focuses on the history of cultural restitution, and the relationship between national heritage and national identity, with a special interest in the period of the Second World War.

Find out more about Alice Prochaska here.

Dr Frank Prochaska is an historian of modern Britain and the author of a number of critically acclaimed books.

He was born in America but has lived much of his life in Britain and has dual nationality. He has taught at universities on both sides of the Atlantic and in recent years taught British history at Yale. He moved to Oxford in 2010, where he became a member of Somerville and Wolfson Colleges. He has been a Research Fellow at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, London University, and a Visiting Fellow, All Souls College, Oxford. He lectures and reviews widely and contributes to media programs and the press in Britain on such subjects as contemporary social policy and the monarchy. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, London University, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Senior Research Fellow at Somerville. As a scholar of Victorian social reform and ideas, he helped to establish the programme of work on the John Stuart Mill Library and its rich store of Mill annotations that is currently underway in Somerville.

See more about Frank Prochaska here.

Professor Pulman’s research interests are in computational linguistics: the development of computer programs that behave as if they understood English. He is an Emeritus Professor of Computer Science, and is currently a senior researcher at Apple, working on Siri.

Abi Punt is a foundation doctor working at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

She graduated from Somerville with a BA in Medical Sciences in 2022, and a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (BMBCh) in 2025. Her specialty interests include obstetrics and gynaecology, and paediatrics. She is passionate about medical education, and is committed to creating a supportive learning environment where students can thrive during their time at Somerville.

Susan has worked in Somerville Library for thirty years, and before that was an undergraduate at Somerville.

She deals with most of the day-to-day running of the Library, and with ordering books; she also has a long-term project to catalogue the College’s antiquarian and special collections. She is usually to be found in the main Library office, except when buried in the depths of the stacks. She has a cataloguing blog where you can follow her progress (or lack of it) in cataloguing.

Keeper of our college pet! 

Professor Tessa Rajak is a British Historian and Emeritus Professor of Ancient History at the University of Reading. She is also a Senior Associate of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.

Her research focuses primarily on Judaism in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, and she is an expert on the writings of Josephus.

Tessa Rajak studied at Oxford, submitting her DPhil in 1974. She became Professor of Ancient History at Reading and was the 95/96 Grinfield Lecturer in Oxford. She edited the Journal of Jewish Studies from 2000-03.

Nicola Ralston served as the Head of Global Investment Consulting of Hewitt Associates Inc., from October 2004 to 2006.

Ms. Ralston served as the Head of Global Investment at Schroders. Ms. Ralston oversaw an eight-fold increase in assets under management at Schroders, retired from Schroders in 2001 to spend more time with her family. She remained active in the fund management industry, becoming Chairman of the UK Society of Investment Professionals, the investment management industry’s professional body, from 2002 to 2003. She spent 22 years with Schroders, rising to be Head of investment management in 1999. In the role she had overall responsibility for Schroders’ investment resources worldwide. Ms. Ralston started her financial career in 1977 moving to Schroders in 1979. She has been Chairman of Henderson Eurotrust Plc since March 26, 2014 and also has been its Director since September 1, 2013. She serves as an Executive Director of Liability Solutions. She served as an Executive Manager of Schroders Plc. She serves as a Director of Schroder Emerging Market Debt Opportunity Fund Ltd., and Schroder Japanese Long Short Fund Ltd. She served as a Director of The Edinburgh Investment Trust Plc from September 29, 2003 to July 19, 2013. She served as a Director of Director of Schroder Credit Renaissance Fund Ltd., of Schroder Investment Management North America Inc. Ms. Ralston is a Business Adviser to CSTIM and a director on several hedge funds and a governor of the CFA Institute.

Dame Esther Rantzen DBE CBE is a celebrated broadcaster and campaigner.

Dame Esther has appeared in more than 2,000 TV programmes including documentaries, talk shows, reality shows and quizzes as well as writing columns for The Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail, in addition to 5 books.

In 1986 Dame Esther launched Childline, the free confidential helpline for children and young people, which she chaired for nineteen years. The charity has now helped more than 4 million children and young people, both online and via the telephone. The Childline model has now been successfully copied in 150 countries around the world.

In 2012, Dame Esther launched a new confidential helpline for older people, The Silver Line Helpline, which provides information, friendship and advice 24 hours a day, every day of the year. The biggest single problem older people disclose is loneliness. Nationally launched in November 2013, it receives around 10,000 calls a week. Independently evaluated by the Centre for Social Justice in a Report entitled “When I get off the phone I feel like I belong to the human race” (a quote from a caller), and also by Anglia Ruskin University, it was found to target successfully the loneliest older people. Beside the Helpline, trained volunteers, The Silver Line Friends, provide a matched befriending service, and Silver Circles. She is Founder/President, and a Trustee of the charity, which merged with Age UK in December 2019.

After graduating from Somerville with an MA in English, she joined the BBC, first as a sound effects assistant, then a researcher. While training to be a producer/director in 1968, she became a researcher and reporter for Bernard Braden’s consumer programme “Braden’s Week”. When Braden returned to Canada in 1973, she became producer and presenter of its successor, “That’s Life!”. The show ran for 21 years and at its peak drew an audience of 22.5 million. It achieved fame for its talking dogs, Jobsworth Awards and campaigns on behalf of abused children, organ transplants, safe playgrounds, and to provide justice for consumers. Its most viewed episode featured Sir Nicholas Winton being introduced for the first time to the survivors he had saved from the Holocaust including Lord Alfred Dubs. She continues to appear on TV, and regularly contributes to “The One Show”, political and news programmes on many different topics especially those relating to broadcasting, growing old ungracefully, and to the abuse of children and older people.

A creative producer as well as a presenter, she invented the documentary series “The Big Time” which discovered Sheena Easton, created the “Children of Courage” segment of “Children in Need” and invented “Hearts of Gold” which ran for seven years, honouring unsung heroes and heroines.

In addition to being the first woman to receive the Dimbleby Award from BAFTA she has also received the Royal Television Society’s Special Judges Award for Journalism, the Snowdon Award for services to disabled people,  6 honorary doctorates, an honorary Fellowship from Somerville College, Oxford and a Lifetime Achievement Award from Women in Film and Television.

She received an OBE for Services to Broadcasting in 1991, in 2006 a CBE for Services to Children, and became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire  in 2015 for her work for children and older people, through Childline and The Silver Line.

Steve Rayner oversees the College’s academic activities, including admissions and outreach, and supports Fellows and Students in their teaching and learning.

He is responsible for overseeing the work of the College Access and Outreach Team, including Somerville’s regional work as part of the Oxford South-East consortium of colleges (see Oxford for South East | University of Oxford) and is a trustee of Universify Education. As a native of Stoke-on-Trent and a season ticket holder at Stoke City Football club for over twenty years, until that particular mix of joy and suffering was rudely interrupted by the pandemic, he is also particularly interested in access and outreach in Staffordshire, Cheshire and Shropshire. As a result, Somerville is a member of the Uni Connect partnership Higher Horizons+ (see Higher Horizons+ – Part of the Uni Connect Programme).

As Senior Tutor, Steve is responsible for the work of the Academic Office, which supports graduate and undergraduate students, along with tutors and Fellows, in their academic activities. This includes supporting Somerville applicants and selectors through the undergraduate admissions process here at Oxford.

Steve’s background is in Physics, specifically Very High Energy Gamma Ray Astronomy research, but his work at Somerville encompasses all subjects studied by Somervillians.

Owen Rees is a leading researcher and performer of European renaissance vocal music.

Owen Rees’ undergraduate studies in Music were at Cambridge, where he held an Organ Scholarship. After this, he pursued doctoral research in Portugal, and then moved to Oxford as Lecturer at St Peter’s College and St Edmund Hall. After six years teaching at the University of Surrey, he took up my post in Oxford at Queen’s in 1997. As Organist at Queen’s he directs their renowned Chapel Choir.

Owen’s research focuses on sacred music in Spain, Portugal, and England during the Renaissance. He has written about the music of William Byrd, and many of the greatest Spanish and Portuguese composers of the period. He directs the professional vocal consort Contrapunctus (http://www.contrapunctus.org.uk), for which he been nominated for the Gramophone early-music award.

Owen’s teaching covers aspects of music history from the Middle Ages to the end of the Baroque, and techniques of composition. He also supervises postgraduate students and lectures in music history and choral conducting.

Academic Background

I am a chemical engineer by training, completing my undergraduate (integrated Masters) and PhD degrees at the University of Cambridge. For my MEng project, I modelled the patterns formed by blood spots during drying, under the supervision of Prof. Alex Routh. The project is important for developing accurate paper diagnostics using blood spots. I also undertook a number of industrial summer internships, including in R&D at Procter & Gamble. My PhD work examined how a mixture of differently sized particles self assembles in a thin film as it dries. I joined Christ Church as a Junior Research Fellow in October 2022.

Undergraduate Teaching

I enjoy teaching, having 4 years’ experience of small group teaching & demonstrating to Chemical Engineering undergraduates at the University of Cambridge.

Engineering (Thermofluids & Engineering in Society)

Research Interests

I am hosted by the Oxford Colloid group based in the Department of Chemistry. My current research addresses the need to make functional materials more sustainable, by using less of the expensive components, but still delivering the required properties. It does this using the science of colloidal hydrodynamics (the motion of small particles in fluid), deriving novel equations to model how mixtures of particles flow. In my fellowship, I am working on developing a new class of three-phase composite functional materials. The resulting coatings will have highly tuneable properties and I will explore the most promising applications, from reactor materials to tissue engineering. Regarding fundamental science, the required theoretical work will advance our understanding of multiphase colloidal hydrodynamics.