People

Gaurav is undertaking a DPhil research at the intersection of electric mobility and climate policy. His work looks at the political economy of transition to electric mobility in India. The research aim is to understand how various factors and entities related to the wider political economy of urban transport have led to the creation and shaping of various policies in respect of electric vehicles in India in the past 10 years.  

Gaurav is an urban and transport planner with over 8 years of experience of working on urban mobility issues in India in a variety of roles ranging from consulting to research and advocacy. Prior to starting his DPhil, he was leading the programme on sustainable mobility for Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi. He’s earlier also worked with Indian School of Business (ISB) and Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS). 

He holds an undergraduate degree in urban planning from School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi and an MSc in Transport Planning and Environment from Newcastle University, UK, for which he was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship. 

I work on religious and cultural developments in the Roman world through the study of material and literary sources.

In my forthcoming monograph, The Ludi Saeculares and the Saeculum: Time, Festival, and Authority in the Roman World, I examine the development of the Saecular Games and their relationship to Roman conceptions of time from the Republic to late Empire.

My current research project, Humans as Gods in the Roman World, is funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and the Gerda Henkel Stiftung. I am investigating human associations with divinity in Plautus’s comedies, Pompeiian graffiti, and in funerary monuments and inscriptions of the imperial period, and will publish my findings as a monograph. My other research interests include Roman and Greek hymns and Latin epigraphy.

At Toronto, I taught courses in Roman and Greek religion, history, language, myth, and drama.

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I work on historical Slavonic linguistics, especially Old Church Slavonic and the history of Russian.

I am a historical corpus linguist, and ever since I got my PhD I have been committed to building diachronic text corpora (treebanks) for Russian and Church Slavonic, within a wider initiative to build such resources for early attestations of the major Indo-European branches. My research centers on the history of verbal aspect and definiteness marking in East and South Slavic, and I also do contrastive work, especially on Old Church Slavonic and Greek. I also publish on methodological and computational topics related to my practical corpus building work.

I took my PhD in Russian Linguistics at the University of Oslo in 2007. I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oslo from 2008 to 2013, and a Senior Researcher and briefly Associate Professor at UiT The Arctic University of Norway from 2013 to 2017, attached to several projects in the field of historical corpus linguistics. I joined Lady Margaret Hall as Fellow and Tutor in Russian and Linguistics in 2017. I also give tutorials to Somerville students.

I’m Elizabeth Edginton, the College Counsellor at Somerville. As a Somerville student, you can contact me to arrange a 45 minute, one-to-one session to discuss any emotional or mental health issues you might be having, in an impartial, confidential setting, where we can think together about what is happening and understand how best to move forward.

Sessions take place during Weeks 0-9 on Wednesdays, in person, or on Teams, in exceptional circumstances.

I’m a fully qualified and experienced psychotherapist specialising in working with young people, but am happy to see students of all ages. I have worked in the NHS and universities for over 10 years, both clinically and in research, and prior to that, was an academic. I started as the College Counsellor at Somerville in Michaelmas 2023 and also work at the central University Counselling Service.

Whether you’re a fresher adjusting to being at Oxford or a DPhil student working on your thesis, it can be helpful to have a space that is separate from the rest of Oxford life to talk through and think about any issues that you might be having. If you have questions or would like to arrange a session, please email me on college.counsellor@some.ox.ac.uk

If you feel that you are at risk, please ensure that you make an urgent GP appointment, see the College Nurse, call NHS 111, or in case of emergency, go to Accident and Emergency at the hospital or call 999. Please also see the crisis contact numbers at: Emergency contacts | University of Oxford

I am Somerville’s Lecturer in Biochemistry.

I am a virologist and crystallographer based at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchotron. The aim of my research is to shed light on proteins interactions occurring between viruses and their host cells. Viruses use host cell resources to carry through their life cycle, but infection triggers host cell antiviral defense mechanisms that in turn drive viral adaptation. Thus it is crucial to understand not only the biology of the virus but also the biology of the host and the different cell pathways hijacked by the virus. This project will initially focus on unravelling the mechanism of viral membrane fusion.

Another research focus is the single-wavelength anomalous dispersion of S atoms (S-SAD), an elegant phasing method to determine crystal structures that does not require heavy-atom incorporation or selenomethionine derivatization. Nevertheless, this technique has been limited by the paucity of the signal at the usual X-ray wavelengths, requiring very accurate measurement of the anomalous differences. The I23 beam line at the Diamond light source has been designed to provide an optimized environment for difficult S-SAD experiments, by increasing the anomalous signal with minimal noise.

Katherine studies the efficacy of epigenetic inhibitors in exocrine and endocrine pancreatic cancers

Karin Erdmann is a German mathematician specializing in representation theory (especially modular representation theory) and homological algebra (especially Hochschild cohomology).

She is best known for her work in modular representation theory which has been cited over 1500 times according to the Mathematical Reviews. Her nephew Martin Erdmann is professor for experimental particle physics at the RWTH Aachen University.

Professor Espie is founding Director of the Experimental & Clinical Sleep Medicine research programme in the Sleep & Circadian Research Institute (SCNi).

Professor Espie’s expertise is in the clinical and laboratory assessment and treatment of sleep disorders, particularly using Cognitive Behavioural Therapeutics (CBTx), and in studies of sleep’s relationship to mental health. He is also Clinical Director of MSc/PgDip in Sleep Medicine, an online course affiliated to Somerville, that trains clinicians around the world. He co-founded www.bighealth.com and developed Sleepio^TM a digital CBT programme for insomnia.

You can contact Professor Espie via his email (colin.espie@ndcn.ox.ac.uk) or through his PA, Toria Summers (toria.summers@ndcn.ox.ac.uk).

I am a research scientist based at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology (University of Oxford, UK).

I currently supervise a small team and we study the interactions of different Neisseria species and the specific mechanisms by which bacteria colonise the human body. I also teach microbiology to undergraduate medical students and am involved in science outreach activities to inspire and engage local primary school children.

Alongside this, I am also a member of the Microbiology Society’s Communications Committee and a representative on the Microbiology in Schools Advisory Committee (MiSAC).

Hi, I’m Ollie (he/him) and I’m one of your JCR welfare officers this year.

My role as a Welfare Officer includes organising events during term time such as welfare teas, signposting students to resources they may need to access, and making sure students have access to free sexual health and anti-spiking supplies. Welfare is really important here and the whole team pitches in to help make Somerville as safe and welcoming as possible. If you have any questions or concerns about any aspect of life at Somerville while you’re here, feel free to get in contact via email (oliver.eyre@some.ox.ac.uk) or messenger (Oliver Eyre).

Safa Fanaian’s DPhil research focuses on the understanding and mapping governance of water-related risks faced by growing riverine cities in the global south, and specifically those in the intermediate category (<1million population). The case of Guwahati and its rivers are explored, as it is a second tier city in India and an emblem of urbanisation on the Brahmaputra River. Particular focus is given to the risks of inadequate water supply issues, river pollution, and urban floods.

Safa is currently an Oxford-Indira Gandhi Scholar at the Oxford-India Centre for Sustainable Development, Somerville College. She is also the recipient of a National Geographic Explorer grant.

Prior to her DPhil, Safa worked for more than seven years with various development agencies to improve water security in South Asia. She has an MSc in Water Management from IHE-Delft, Institute for Water Education, Netherlands and an MSc in Ecology and Environmental Science from Pondicherry University, India.

Hi, I’m Sophie (she/her). I’m a second-year law student, and the current JCR secretary!

My role mainly involves keeping JCR members updated with emails and notices, collecting motions for biweekly JCR open meetings, creating meeting agendas, and taking and sending minutes. Feel free to reply to my emails or send me a message if there’s anything you need or questions you want answered!

Professor Vanessa Ferreira is a British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, and teaches Somerville students as a Clinical Non-Stipendiary Lecturer.

Professor Vanessa Ferreira has expertise in the study of heart disease using cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR). Her doctorate research in Cardiovascular Medicine at the University of Oxford focused on CMR myocardial tissue characterisation, converging with MR physics technical development towards clinical translation of myocardial T1-mapping. Briefly, each tissue type in the body has a magnetic property called T1 relaxation time, which can be measured (in milliseconds) using MRI scans. The heart has a specific range of normal T1 values, deviation from which may be indicative of disease. T1-mapping generates a pixel-by-pixel T1-map of the heart, which can locate small areas of disease in a numerical manner. Thus, T1-mapping provides a quantitative way to examine the heart, does not require any injection of contrast agents or radiation, and produces coloured MRI images which give additional information compared to traditional MR images.

One of her goals is to advance CMR methods to gain more insight into heart disease in ways not previously possible, in a non-invasive way. Another is to minimise the need for injection of contrast agents for diagnostic images, allowing more patients to benefit from cardiac MRI, eliminating adverse reactions to contrast agents, and savings in time and cost.

Working with MR physicists, engineers, biomedical imaging experts and clinician-scientists from a range of specialties, Vanessa’s research at the OCMR is highly collaborative and interdisciplinary. Vanessa also delivers CMR education, and supervises DPhil, MSc and medical students in CMR research at the OCMR, based at the John Radcliffe Hospital.

Clare manages the day-to-day operations of the Development and Alumni Relations team, orchestrating high-level campaign events and overseeing Somerville’s stewardship programme for donors..

Ruth Finnegan FBA OBE was born in 1933 in the beautiful fraught once-island city of Derry, Northern Ireland, and brought up there, together with several magical years during the war in Donegal.

She had her education at the little Ballymore First School in County Donegal, Londonderry High School, Mount (Quaker) School York, then first class honours in Classics (Literae humaniores) and a doctorate in Anthropology at Oxford. This was followed by fieldwork and university teaching in Africa, principally Sierra Leone and Nigeria. She then joined the pioneering Open University as a founding member of the academic staff, where she spent the rest of her career apart from three years – and more fieldwork – at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, and is now, proudly, an Open University Emeritus Professor. She was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1996, and is also an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College Oxford. She has three daughters and five grandchildren and lives in Old Bletchley, southern England, with her husband of over 50 years. There she runs her small publishing business, Callender Press, founded to publish her parents’ writing, and in great happiness continues her research and writing, including her dream-led venture into novels and filmscripts –   unexpected but somehow informed by her anthropology. Her series Hearing Others’ Voices is published by Balestier Press. 

My name is Jenny. I have been a nurse and a midwife for 30 years and have worked in schools and colleges for the last 15 years .

I have three older children; the youngest has just finished University. I have two gorgeous grandchildren who now live in Thailand as my daughter is teaching there. I live in a tiny village on the outskirts of Oxford and love walking our two mad dogs around the fields and river nearby. I very much enjoy listening to music and playing it myself, with a mixed reviews from my family. One of my favourite hobbies is outdoor swimming in all weathers.

My role as your College Nurse is to support you with minor injuries and minor illness and to help signpost you to the relevant medical and dental services where appropriate. I also work with the welfare team to support anyone who is struggling with mental health or other issues.

I am available from :  10:30-16:30 weekdays during term time and can be contacted at pml.somervillenurse@.nhs.net

Please feel free to pop in during these times for a chat or advice . I look forward to meeting you and hope you will be very happy at Somerville.

Lisa is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Somerville College and in the Faculty of Law, leading the project ‘Changing One’s Mind: Neurointerventions, Autonomy, and the Law on Consent’, which examines the extent to which English law on consent sufficiently protects morally salient patient interests. 

Her main research interests are in normative and practical ethics, and in the philosophy of medical and criminal law. Prior to taking up the British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, Lisa was a Research Associate on the Mental Health and Justice project at the University of York, a Postdoctoral Fellow in Ethics at the Rotman Institute of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, University of Western Ontario and, before that, she worked on the project ‘Neurointerventions in Crime-Prevention: An Ethical Analysis’ in the Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford. Lisa holds a PhD in philosophy and law and an MA in ethics and medical law from King’s College London and a BA in philosophy from Stockholm University. Her doctoral thesis was on the justification for the lawfulness of medical interventions.