Support Staff

Dr Helen Ashdown is a GP and clinical researcher based in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences.

Helen completed her pre-clinical training at Cambridge, before moving to Oxford for her clinical studies and post-graduate training and DPhil in academic general practice. She is now an NIHR Academic Clinical Lecturer in the Nuffield Department of Primary Care in Oxford. Her principal research interests are in respiratory disease and diagnosis in primary care, particularly the use of medical devices for diagnosis and monitoring. She also has longstanding interests in infection and child health, particularly infant feeding. Her current research uses information from large linked datasets collected from routine primary care consultations, and diagnostic prospective observational studies of novel medical technologies in primary and ambulatory care.

Helen works part-time as a GP at 19 Beaumont Street surgery in Oxford, where she is the Respiratory Lead GP.

At Somerville, Helen is the lead tutor for Clinical Medicine (Undergraduate Years 4-6 and Graduate Entry Years 2-4) and leads the team of tutors delivering clinical medicine tutorials, as well as having responsibility for pastoral care of students during their clinical years. She is passionate about teaching medicine and helping students to thrive during their time at Somerville.

Michael is a barrister at Wilberforce Chambers.

Before going to the Bar, Michael spent six years as Fellow and Tutor in law at Somerville College. His research concerned trustees’ powers and duties and the remedial consequences of breaches of trust, with a particular focus on the so-called “rule in Re Hastings-Bass”, and was cited in the Court of Appeal in Pitt v Holt [2011] EWCA Civ 197. He lectured, examined and gave tutorials on the law of trusts and Roman law. He continues to teach land law to Oxford undergraduates.

As a barrister, he appears regularly in the High Court and County Court, both as sole counsel and as a junior in a larger team.

Michael’s particular interests are in all aspects of litigation and advice relating to trusts law. This encompasses both traditional private client work and pension schemes, together with professional negligence in those fields.

Recent notable instructions include:

• British Airways v Maunder. Acting for British Airways in a long-running claim against the trustees of the Airways Pension Scheme for alleged breaches of trust in the exercise of discretionary powers, culminating in a 7-week trial before Morgan J (with Michael Tennet QC and Sebastian Allen).

• Acting (as sole counsel) for a minor beneficiary in two sets of contested High Court proceedings, first pursuant to Schmidt v Rosewood Trust Ltd to obtain trust accounts and other information to explain the diminution of the trust fund, and secondly to remove and replace the existing trustees.

• Acting (as sole counsel) in High Court proceedings for a beneficiary seeking to establish his entitlement to a half share in a substantial trust fund, and to value and realise that share.

• Acting (as sole counsel) for the claimant firm of solicitors in the County Court trial of their claim to recover unpaid fees from a client for whom they had acted in Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings.

• Advising the defendant administrator on claims under the under the Inheritance (Provision for Family of Dependants) Act 1975 concerning overseas property, the validity of UK and foreign marriages and divorces by both claimant and deceased, and the recognition in England of foreign polygamous marriage.

I teach linguistics to undergraduates at colleges across the University, including Somerville.

I provide supervision and teaching for students doing linguistics as part of a degree in Modern Languages and Linguistics, or Psychology, Philosophy, and Linguistics.

My background is in Classics and linguistics. I read Classics as an undergraduate at New College, Oxford, and then completed a DPhil in linguistics, working on aspects of forms of address in Latin and the Romance languages, including their grammar, meanings, and uses. My main interests are in questions of how languages change in general and in the history of Latin and French in particular. Within this my research has often focused on changes that relate to semantics or pragmatics, such as the lexicography of medieval Latin and the history of T/V distinctions in romance languages.

Since finishing my doctorate, I have taught both Classics and linguistics at a number of colleges across Oxford as well as for the university. From 2004 to 2008, I was a member of the Classics Faculty Language Teaching Team and during that time he and James Morwood published Writing Latin (Bristol Classical Press, 2007), an introduction to prose composition in Latin. In 2008 I joined the faculty research project preparing the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, first as an assistant editor, in which role I was instrumental in developing the project’s use of technology; from 2011-14 I was the Dictionary’s final editor. Since 2014 I have been Lecturer in Classical Languages at University College, in which role I provide language teaching to the college’s classics students.

Bolanle Awe (Yoruba: Bọ́láńlé (Fájẹ́m̄bọ́là) Awẹ́) is a Nigerian and Yoruba history professor and pioneer of feminist history, intersectional thought and decolonisation.

Professor Awe was born on January 28, 1933, in the town of Ilesa, Nigeria. After taking a Master’s in History from St Andrew’s, she came to Somerville to read for her DPhil in 1958. She returned to Nigeria in 1960, where she became the first woman formally appointed to academic office in a Nigerian university. Following a stint at the University of Lagos, she returned to Ibadan, where she was promoted to Professor of Oral History in 1976.

Awe’s work is ground-breaking on several fronts. Her interest in oral history has made her a pioneer in documenting the pre-colonial histories of Nigeria and the Yoruba people, as well as an early advocate for the decolonisation of African history. She is also pioneering as a feminist historian, where her use of oral history helped restore the narratives of previously overlooked or misrepresented women such as Efunsetan Aniwura.

Awe was one of those pioneering women who began to use the master’s tools of academic knowledge and power to demolish the house built on male hegemony.’

TOYIN FALOLA, HONORARY PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA

Awe was also one of the first people to critique the Western, liberal feminist position which universalises women’s subjugation under patriarchal rule. As an advocate of nuanced intersectional thought, Awe argued that we can better serve women’s causes by understanding the history of oppression from culture to culture. In 1983, Awe was made an Officer of the Order of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. She retired from teaching and government roles in 1998. In 2005 she became the Pro-Chancellor of the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, and in 2018 she received an honorary doctorate from the University of Ibadan on its seventieth anniversary.

Dr Ammar Azzouz is a Research Fellow at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow of Somerville College.

He is the Principal Investigator of ‘Slow Violence and the City’, a research project that examines the impact of violence on the built environment at the time of war and peace. 

Dr Azzouz studied architecture in the city of Homs, Syria, where he was born and raised. Since the start of the Syrian Revolution, over half of the neighbourhoods of Homs have been destroyed. In 2011, he moved to the UK to complete his postgraduate studies and received his PhD from the University of Bath. He has not been able to return to Homs since then.

Dr Azzouz has earned a wide recognition as a researcher, academic, architect and writer. His research on inclusive and diverse cities, queering public space, cultural heritage, architecture and war, reconstruction and forced migration has been featured in different platforms such as the New York Times, The Conversation, The New Statesman, New Lines Magazine, Middle East Eye, and also in academic journals such as Antipode, CITY, Change Over Time, Urban Studies and International Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

Azzouz’s first book, Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria (Bloomsbury, 2023), offers fresh insights into the role of the architects during time of war. It explores how architecture is contested and weaponised during years of conflicts, and how the future reconstruction of cities should mirror the wants and needs of local communities. The book has a foreword, by Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent.

Before moving to academia, Azzouz worked in the private sector, at Arup. There, he established and led several research projects on themes related to forced migration, destruction of cities and cultural heritage. One of his projects included interviews with displaced people impacted by wars, and also academics researching wars and cities at different times in history and in different geographies (e.g. Spain, Poland, Bosnia and Syria).

Rasmus is a DPhil student with an interest in the philosophy of mathematics. His main interest lies at the intersection of axiomatic theories of truth and set theory.

With his supervisor, Professor Volker Halbach, he is currently looking at ways of extending the base theory of certain axiomatic theories of truth from arithmetic to set theory. This will allow him to explore the proof-theoretical consequences of adding axiomatic theories of truth to set theory.

Rasmus has an MA (Hons) in Philosophy and Mathematics from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Mathematics and Foundations of Computer Science from the University of Oxford.

Chris Bamber and the IT team are responsible for maintaining and developing the College IT network infrastructure and systems and for the College computers and printers. They can also give some advice on the purchase of computers.

Chris has been with the College since December 1997 when he took up the new created position of Computing Officer. The role allowed the college to provide professional IT services to staff and students on a full-time basis.

Since then Chris and his team have kept the college’s ICT infrastructure current through one of the fastest technological growths over the last two decades.

Professor Caroline Barron is a medieval historian whose research centres on the late medieval period in Britain.

She served as President of the London and Middlesex Archaelogical Society from 2008-2011 and as President of the British Association for Local History since 2016. She is also a former President of the Somerville Association.

She was appointed OBE in the 2019 Birthday Honours for her services to education.

Alice Barron is a violinist and collaborator based in London.

She enjoys a varied career combining orchestral, chamber and solo performances with improvisatory and multi-disciplinary projects. Specialising in contemporary and intercultural musics, recent performances include projects with Nigel Kennedy, Jean-Luc Ponty, L. Subramaniam and with Sam Lee at WOMAD festival in Australia and New Zealand. Alice’s collaborative work is genre-spanning and draws on her experiences studying South Indian violin techniques.

Janet Bately is Sir Israel Gollancz Professor Emeritus of English Language and Medieval Literature, King’s College, London.

A student at Somerville College Oxford, she began her academic career at Birkbeck College London, where she was successively Assistant Lecturer, Lecturer and Reader, moving to King’s College, London as Professor of English Language and Literature in 1977. She was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1990 and made CBE in 2000. Still actively engaged in research, her specialisms are in Old English language and literature, and bilingual dictionaries of the 16th and 17th centuries.

After a PhD in Radio Astronomy in Cambridge, Tony Bell worked on radar signal processing with Marconi before moving to the Central Laser Facility as a laser-plasma theorist.

In 1985 he was appointed to a lectureship in the Plasma Group at Imperial College.  In 2007, following two years with the Methodist Church, he moved to a joint appointment between the Clarendon Laboratory and the Central Laser Facility.

His research encompasses laboratory and astrophysical plasmas.  He wrote one of four independent papers proposing the theory of cosmic ray acceleration by shocks.  He showed how strong magnetic field is generated during particle acceleration and how it enables cosmic ray acceleration to high energy.  He initiated the theory of non-local transport for heat flow in Inertial Confinement Fusion, explained the collimation of laser-produced energetic electrons by resistively generated magnetic field, and with John Kirk demonstrated the possibility of electron-positron pair production in ultra-high intensity laser-plasma interactions.

He has been awarded the Hoyle Prize of the Institute of Physics and the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society

After a PhD in Radio Astronomy in Cambridge, Tony Bell worked on radar signal processing with Marconi before moving to the Central Laser Facility as a laser-plasma theorist.  In 1985 he was appointed to a lectureship in the Plasma Group at Imperial College.  In 2007, following two years with the Methodist Church, he moved to a joint appointment between the Clarendon Laboratory and the Central Laser Facility.

His research encompasses laboratory and astrophysical plasmas.  He wrote one of four independent papers proposing the theory of cosmic ray acceleration by shocks.  He showed how strong magnetic field is generated during particle acceleration and how it enables cosmic ray acceleration to high energy.  He initiated the theory of non-local transport for heat flow in Inertial Confinement Fusion, explained the collimation of laser-produced energetic electrons by resistively generated magnetic field, and with John Kirk demonstrated the possibility of electron-positron pair production in ultra-high intensity laser-plasma interactions.

He has been awarded the Hoyle Prize of the Institute of Physics and the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.

For more information, see Professor Bell’s departmental web page.

I am a Wellcome Trust early career fellow in the Department of Biochemistry. My research investigates organisation and biophysical properties of bacterial membranes.

I first started looking at the outer membrane during my PhD in the lab of Bart Hoogenboom at University College London. I then did a postdoc in the lab of Prof Tom Silhavy at Princeton University, where I learnt bacterial genetics.

In Oxford, I am looking at how and why the outer membrane of species like E. coli are kept organised and highly immobile. These are intriguing properties, since cells must be dynamic to survive. They must insert new proteins and lipids to grow, move molecules laterally to migrate, and deform the membrane to divide. I investigate these properties using atomic force microscopy, bacterial genetics and super resolution microscopy.

I am a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford, working across the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics and the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. My research sits at the intersection of linguistics, social science and applied healthcare, focusing on language aspects of clinical interactions.

With a background in sociolinguistics, my earlier work examined language variation and change in multicultural settings. Over more than a decade of teaching English and clinical communication to medical students in Ukraine, I became increasingly interested in how linguistic practices shape clinical encounters and influence the uptake of medical advice.

My research draws on Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis to investigate how clinicians use language to navigate sensitivities of advice-giving, maintain rapport, and support behaviour change—particularly in the context of weight management. In addition to theoretical contributions, I am involved in applied projects that translate linguistic insights into practical communication strategies for healthcare providers.

Beyond academia, I have worked as an interpreter for election observation missions with the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, supporting real-time communication in high-stakes, politically sensitive contexts. This experience has deepened my understanding of language under pressure and the ethical dimensions of communication.

I work across a range of externally funded studies. I previously held a prestigious British Academy fellowship, and I am a co-investigator on a NIHR policy research programme grant.

I am committed to interdisciplinary collaboration, international academic exchange, and public engagement, with a particular focus on improving the policies and practices of healthcare communication through linguistically informed research.

Research Interests

• Clinical Communication
• Conversation Analysis
• Discourse Analysis
• Interactional Linguistics
• Sociolinguistics

Mahek Bhatia is reading for the MSc in Criminology and Criminal Justice in the Faculty of Law. She is interested in the intersections between feminist legal theories and criminal justice, specifically within the context of marital sexual violence.

Previously, she served as an Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Officer at Warwick Law School during her LLB, where she actively engaged with various departments and committees to represent student concerns.

As your Disabled Students’ Representative, she is interested in making available resources more accessible to students, and building a community and forum for students to voice their disability-related concerns. Please feel free to reach out to her to voice any issues you may be facing, or if you just want to chat.

Elaine and the Treasury team are responsible for the College accounts, banking and finances, for student fees and battels, for payments to suppliers, for invoicing, for loans and grants to students including vacation and hardship grants, and for general advice on financial matters, particularly in cases of financial difficulty.

Doreen Boyce (1953, PPE) is an Honorary Fellow of Somerville and former Provost and Dean of Faculty at Chatham College (1974-1980).

An influential campaigner for equal opportunities in the workplace, she was President of the Buhl Foundation (1982-2007) and founded the Executive Women’s Council to provide a source of collective support and influence for professional women.

I’m Alfie (he/him) and I’m super excited to work be one of your welfare officers this year!

I am a big music fan, playing, writing, streaming, singing, going to gigs or whatever else, (did someone say top 0.5% Taylor Swift fan on Spotify?). I also love baking, so if you have cooked up any cool creations please send me pics and I will be very jealous of you for getting to eat them!

Our role as welfare officers is to make sure Somerville is a place where people can feel comfortable, welcome, and able to talk freely about any mental health issues they may be facing. Despite restrictions in England having been almost completely eased, coronavirus is still likely to impact student experience this year, so we want to make sure that you can access all support available to you. We’re here to provide non-judgmental support for any concern you might have. I have completed 24 hours of peer support training to develop the necessary skills to support students. Katie will do the peer support training in Oxford as soon as they can.

We’ll also be hosting fortnightly welfare teas where you and your peers can come and enjoy all the (free!) snacks and take some time out of your hectic Oxford life to relax. Members of the welfare team will also be there, but there’s no obligation to talk to them if you’re just in it for the free food and chill. In 5^th week (aka welfare week) we’ll be hosting tons of events to help fight off those pesky 5^th week blues (activities normally include a bouncy castle and having alpacas visit on the quad, a cookie fairy and much more!!).

I have held several lectureships at different colleges. I have taught modernism and literary theory to 1st years at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford (Stipendiary Lectureship: 2022), modernism to 1st years at Somerville, Oxford (Retainer Fee Lecturer: 2023) and will be teaching part of a literary theory course as well as the modernism course again to Somerville first years in 2024 (Retainer Fee Lectureship). I have also taught 3rd year exchange students from the U.S. and am supervising several 3rd year dissertations (on Ocean Vuong, Irish Literature, the Harlem Renaissance and 20th century Utopian fiction). 

My research focuses on 20th Century Literary Theory; Modernism (from Woolf, Joyce, Beckett to the Harlem Renaissance); 18th-19th century German Thought (Kant, Hegel, Marx and the German Romantics); Structuralism and Poststructuralism (from de Saussure to Derrida and Giorgio Agamben); Economy and Economic Theory, in particular the intersections between literature and economy (as found, for instance, in the novels of Daniel Defoe and Dickens, the poetry Baudelaire and Ezra Pound, and the philosophy of Jean Joseph-Goux); Theory of the Novel (particularly Lukacs and Benjamin); J.M. Coetzee and South African fiction. 

I work primarily on the intersection of literature and economics (in the ‘Economic Humanities’), and have published works on modernism, economics, critical theory and the philosophy of language. 

As a Rhodes Scholar, I received my DPhil (PhD) in English from Hertford College, Oxford, in 2024. I am currently working on turning my dissertation on Walter Benjamin into a book. This project not only tries to demonstrate how Benjamin’s philosophy allows us to think traditional approaches to economics anew, it also helps us see how, in Benjamin’s words, we might begin to work ourselves free of “the net in which we are caught.”

I have an edited collection with Palgrave Macmillan due to be published at the beginning of next year, entitled Inflationary Modernities: Literature, Culture and Economy. 

Lesley Brown is Centenary Fellow in Philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford. She has published articles on ancient philosophy, contributed introductory material to Plato, Selected Myths (OWC, 2004) and introduced Plato’s Protagoras and Meno for Penguin Classics.

Paula Pimlott Brownlee is an American higher education consultant, and an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College.

After studying for a DPhil in Organic Chemistry at Oxford, she became a research chemist and then an academic, holding professorships at several American universities. In 1990 she became President of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.