Support Staff

Elena joined the Oxford University Biochemistry Department in 2014 as an independent group leader to study the structure and function of cell surface receptors in neural and vascular development.

‘Understanding how cells form tissues is important, because failure leads to developmental diseases and cancers. Specialised proteins are found at the surfaces of cells and direct their movements as tissues grow. My lab uses a range of cutting-edge techniques to understand how this works, especially X-ray crystallography, electron microscopy, cell biology assays, confocal and super resolution microscopy.’

Learn more: http://seiradake.web.ox.ac.uk

Hi! My name is Jisoo, and I am a DPhil student at the Department of Education. I was a teacher before coming to Oxford and now I am studying how spatial reasoning relates to arithmetic word problem solving in young children. In addition to being a Junior Dean at Somerville College, I teach on the PGCE Mathematics Programme, and I am also the president of the Oxford Korean Academic Society. In my free time, I like to travel, browse thrift stores, go to the gym and watch Netflix. My goal for the next two years is to learn Spanish. Feel free to reach out if you think I may support you in any way!

Student Welfare Advisors are available to support students in crisis overnight and at weekends. We provide a listening, support and signposting service. We can listen, provide guidance and support if you’re experiencing difficulties such as personal problems, poor mental health, or other welfare/wellbeing matters.

I have undertaken the following training for my role as Student Welfare Advisor:

• First Aid Training offer by St John’s Ambulance
• Level 3 Award in Mental Health – Workplace First Aid – St John’s Ambulance
• Junior Deans Training offered by the University Counselling Service
• Health and Safety Training – Somerville Lodge Porters
• Fire Evacuation Training – Somerville Lodge Porters
• Welfare Policy and Procedures – Student Welfare Lead
• College Rules and Procedures – Decanal Officer
• Supporting Refugee Students – We Belong

Caroline Series (1969, Mathematics) is a distinguished mathematician working in hyperbolic geometry, Kleinian groups and Dynamical systems.

After studying at Somerville in 1969, Professor Series held posts in Berkeley and Newnham College, Cambridge before arriving at the University of Warwick in 1978. In 1987 she became Reader in Mathematics at Warwick and, in 1992, Professor. In 2017, she became the third woman in its history to serve as president of the London Mathematical Society. In 2023, she was awarded a CBE in the King’s first list of Birthday Honours.

Alison assists the Graduate and Tutorial Officer in the Academic Office.

My work aims to improve psychological treatments for people experiencing severe mental health problems, with a particular focus on: i) distressing voices; and, ii) sleep disruption.

In my research, I have developed a new psychological framework for understanding why voices cause distress: listening to and believing derogatory and threatening voices. The theory was built from patient interviews and tested in 591 NHS patients who hear voices. I aim to develop this into a psychological treatment to help NHS patients who hear voices to feel less emotionally affected by them.

As part of the wider Oxford Cognitive Approaches to Psychosis team I have worked on several studies which have demonstrated that sleep disruption is one contributory cause of mental health problems, including psychotic experiences. I led a pilot trial testing a sleep intervention for psychiatric inpatient wards. The treatment was feasible to deliver. The patients who received it experienced reductions in insomnia, and there were promising reductions in the duration of inpatient admissions. I have a particular interest in nightmares, their causes and the consequences for other mental health problems. Our pilot trial demonstrated that a brief CBT intervention for nightmares showed promising reductions in nightmares, insomnia and paranoia in patients experiencing psychosis.

I am an HCPC registered Clinical Psychologist and hold an honorary clinical contract with Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust. I completed my doctorate in clinical psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, following which I joined the Oxford Cognitive Approaches to Psychosis research group as part of the Wellcome Trust funded Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute. I have since been funded by an NIHR Clinical Doctoral Fellowship and a Development and Skills Enhancement Award.

I am the Departmental Lecturer in Physical & Theoretical Chemistry.

I teach Chemistry at Somerville in addition to two other colleges, Lady Margaret Hall, and St Peter’s. Previously I held Lectureships at Magdalen, Merton and New.

I studied for my MChem degree at Magdalen College (2008-2012) before moving to New College for a DPhil in Physical and Theoretical Chemistry under the supervision of Professor Stuart Mackenzie, which I completed in 2016.

My position involves teaching all aspects of the undergraduate Physical Chemistry course, from Prelims (1^st Year) to Final Honours School (3^rd Year). I hold tutorials for small groups of students where we discuss the lecture course material in more detail. We also meet in larger groups for problems classes to cover the more numerical aspects of each topic, and I offer thematic revision classes to prepare each group of students for their respective exams. In the Chemistry department, I provide synoptic revision lectures to all years and examine the first year Physical Chemistry Prelims paper.

My DPhil research was concerned with the photochemical spin dynamics of proteins, suggested to be the basis of the magnetic sense in some animals. It involved the development of a range of highly sensitive optical cavity-enhanced techniques to detect very small changes in reactivity caused by an external magnetic field.

Neeraj manages OICSD’s partnerships, strategic communications, research outreach design and relationship building, and is responsible for the Centre’s operations.

He works with the Research Director on developing the Centre’s research strategy, global presence and impact.

Neeraj’s research interests are in social policy in India with a focus on its social justice approach. He works on issues of accessibility to public services in education and healthcare for marginalised sections of Indian society.

Previously, Neeraj worked as a Research Support Officer at the Oxford Internet Institute where he administered the Visiting Research Fellowship and the internal departmental ethics process. He holds an MSc in Politics of Conflict, Rights and Justice from the School of Oriental-Asian and African Studies (SOAS) University of London.

Clare is the Academic Office Administrator. She assists the Academic Registrar in the running of the Academic Office. Clare also is the lead for Somerville Degree Days. 

Professor Simon is a physicist interested in quantum effects and how they are manifested in phases of matter.

He has recently been studying phases of matter known as “topological phases” that are invariant under smooth deformations of space-time. He is also interested in whether such phases of matter can be used for quantum information processing and quantum computation. Before coming to Oxford, Dr. Simon was a research director at Bell Laboratories, an industrial research laboratory.

Dave Simpson manages all aspects of the College’s Catering and Conference activities.

Nisha Singh is a senior postdoctoral researcher in psychopharmacology at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford.

Prior to this, she worked at King’s College, London where she trained in PET imaging as part of an MRC funded program. Nisha completed her DPhil in Pharmacology at the University of Oxford. Her project involved identifying and developing a repurposed drug, ebselen, for the treatment of bipolar disorder. Ebselen is currently undergoing a clinical trial in Oxford for efficacy in mania. Nisha has a keen interest in drug and biomarker development, especially in the field of psychopharmacology.

Justin is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and Director of the Oxford Masters program in Mathematical & Computational Finance.

Justin’s research lies at the intersection of applied mathematics, machine learning, and high-performance computing and is focused on theory and applications of Deep Learning. Justin develops deep learning models for large financial datasets such as: high-frequency data from limit order books, loans, and options. He is also developing deep learning methods for constructing partial differential equation models from data, which has a variety of applications in science, engineering, and finance.

Justin received his PhD from Stanford University and holds a Bachelors degree from Princeton University. He was a Chapman Fellow at the Department of Mathematics at Imperial College. He was awarded the 2014 SIAM Financial Mathematics and Engineering Conference Paper Prize.

Jacqueline is a Wellcome Trust Early Career Fellow in the Coles/ Dendrou Lab at the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology.

Jacqueline’s research focus is to understand the role of early human B cell response (extrafollicular response) which has a vital role in rapid antibody production. By integrating human challenge models, ex vivo cultures, and single-cell genomics, she aims to address a fundamental immunological question about early human B cells and their impact on long-lived antibodies. Findings may facilitate tailored nextgeneration vaccination and adjuvant strategies to enhance long-term memory responses.

Professor Emma Smith (1988, English) is an internationally renowned Shakespeare scholar and current Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford.

Professor Smith’s work explores the influence of Shakespeare on stage, print, and in wider culture. She has written on Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623) – the first collected edition of his plays – and is interested in how Shakespeare came to be so important.

An associate scholar of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Professor Smith is also a regular speaker in schools, literary festivals, theatres, libraries, and book groups, as well as in universities. She has extensive experience of both print and broadcast media, including on BBC Radio 3 and 4 and BBC News, as well as authoring articles for The New York Times, The Telegraph, The Observer and The Guardian.

Professor Smith’s recent publications showcase her ability to combine forensic close-textual reading with sweeping surveys of the reception given to Shakespeare in performance, print, and criticism. Her 2019 book This Is Shakespeare was a Sunday Times bestseller and her 2022 book Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers was shortlisted for the Wolfson Prize.

Professor Smith has worked with theatre companies including the Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre and Donmar Warehouse. In 2023, she was the Sam Wanamaker Fellow at Shakespeare’s Globe, and she has served as a consultant for TV and film, including Josie Rourke’s Mary Queen of Scots, and the BBC series ‘Shakespeare: Rise of a Genius’ (2023).

Professor Smith’s next full-length work, The First Elizabethans, is a study on Elizabethan artistic culture from architecture to music to gardens to fashion, and will be published by Penguin in 2026.

Professor Smith was made an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College in June 2025.