People

Lady Fox CMG, QC (Hazel), was formerly Director of the British Institute of
International and Comparative Law and General Editor of the International and Comparative Law Quarterly.

She is a member of the Institut de Droit international; Bencher of Lincoln’ Inn; Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, University of Oxford; member of the International Law Association Committees on State Immunity, Diplomatic Protection, and Reparation for Victims of War Damage; and Barrister at 4-5 Gray’s Inn Square.

Karthik’s research interests include soft chemical routes to Lithium-ion battery cathodes and electrolytes. Previously he has worked on projects based on renewable energy for water treatment at Indian Institute of Science, photocatalytic properties of synthesized solids and has performed studies on Bismuth Oxyhalides.

Biographer, critic, broadcaster and novelist Victoria Glendinning was born in Sheffield, England on 23 April 1937.

She was educated at Somerville College, Oxford, where she read Modern Languages, and worked as a teacher and social worker before becoming an editorial assistant for the Times Literary Supplement in 1974. Victoria Glendinning is an Honorary Vice-President of English PEN and was awarded a CBE in 1998. She is a Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature and holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Southampton, Ulster, Dublin and York. She is also a regular contributor of articles and reviews to various newspapers and magazines.

Her acclaimed biographies include Elizabeth Bowen: Portrait of a Writer, published in 1977; Edith Sitwell: A Unicorn Among Lions (1981), which won both the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for biography) and the Duff Cooper Prize; and Rebecca West: A Life (1987). Both Vita: The Life of V. Sackville-West (1983) andTrollope (1992) won the Whitbread Biography Award. Her latest biography is Raffles and the Golden Opportunity (2012) on the life of Sir Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. 

Victoria Glendinning is the author of three novels: The Grown-Ups (1989), the story of Leo Ulm, author, pundit and academic; Electricity (1995), the story of a Victorian girl embroiled in new experiences and a new technology; and Flight (2002), a novel of passion and betrayal set in the world of international business.

In 2009, Love’s Civil War, the co-edited letters and diaries of Elizabeth Bowen and Charles Ritchie, was published.

Jenny Pickworth is a protein crystallographer who worked in Dorothy Hodgkin’s lab, where her work on the hexacarboxylic acid derivative of vitamin B12 revealed the structure of the corrin ring. 

At the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia where she was first a member of Lindo Patterson’s lab and later a principal investigator, she continued her interest in B12 structures.  Her research focus has included small-molecule structures related to cancer; the structural aspects of the Krebs cycle and citrates; metal-ion coordination in proteins; the interaction of ligands with metal ions; and the enzymes aconitase and xylose isomerase.  She is the recipient of many awards, notably the Fankuchen Award of the ACA and the Garvan Medal of the American Chemical Society.  Her many professional contributions include serving as President of the ACA in 1979 and as editor of Acta Crystallographica D (macromolecules).

One of Dr. Glusker’s major interests is crystallography education; the 3rd edition of the popular textbook Crystal Structure Analysis: A Primer by Glusker & Trueblood appeared in 2010.  She is the co-author or co-editor of a number of books on crystallography and the history of crystallography.

Trisha’s doctoral research focuses on the climate mitigation potential of reforestation strategy in India.

Her proposal includes spatial analyses of where reforestation could be done without compromising India’s endemic open ecosystems (grasslands and semi-arid savannahs), shed light on the socio-political challenges of implementation of reforestation activities and determine the trade-offs and synergies between climate change mitigation, biodiversity and water services on doing reforestation activities. Trisha primarily uses geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensed imagery and statistical analyses in her research using a variety of open source softwares. She is completing her research as an Oxford Indira Gandhi 2019 Scholar at the Oxford India Center for Sustainable Development, Somerville College.

Before starting her doctorate studies at the School of Geography and Environment, Trisha worked as an applied scientist in the global climate change program at an international environment non-profit called The Nature Conservancy in Washington D.C, quantifying the potential of forest systems and other “Natural Climate Solutions” to mitigate climate change. Specifically, her work identified opportunities for reforestation and “climate smart” logging practices, globally and in key countries in the tropics. Her scientific work at the Conservancy informed international and country specific climate related policies and on-the-ground conservation efforts.

Trisha holds a Masters in Environmental Management, with a focus on Ecosystem Science and Conservation from the Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University. She is certified in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and primarily uses GIS, remote sensed imagery and statistical methods in her research. For her Master’s research, she quantified the composition, diversity and structure of tropical forests under pressures of bushmeat hunting and selective logging in Central Africa (Gabon and the Republic of Congo). With a Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, she found her calling while doing field work in the Western Ghats of India, that included frog diversity in coffee plantations and traditional ecological knowledge of the indigenous tribes of the Nilgiris.

Trisha is always open to collaborations on a variety of topics, please get in touch with her trisha.gopalakrishna@ouce.ox.ac.uk. She can be followed on Twitter and Linkedin.

Hi! My name is Maddie (she/her) and I’m a second year PPEist, and Somerville’s current JCR President.

My role as President entails leading the JCR, which consists of all the identity officers, welfare and administrative officers who represent and run the JCR. As well as leading the JCR more formally at our fortnightly Open Meetings, and sitting on college committees, I’m also always around to support students, whether they have any questions for college, welfare concerns or just want to chat!

Dr Pelagia Goulimari is the Co-Director of the MSt in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Co-Director of Intersectional Humanities at The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), and a Senior Fellow in Feminist Studies.

Her research interests include fiction and non-fictional prose in English (1790-present); women’s writing; literary theory and criticism; the modern and the postmodern. She teaches on Literature in English from 1740 to present day; Introduction to Literary Studies; women’s writing; literary theory and criticism; and feminist writing and theory.

She is also the founder and General Editor of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, published by Routledge. Established in 1993, Angelaki is an international journal in literary and cultural theory and Continental philosophy published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes four themed and two open, ‘General’, issue per volume. Angelaki is one of the most accessed of Routledge’s 200+ arts and humanities journals (c. 100,000 full-text downloads and c. 2,500 libraries in 2021). Included in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index, it is ranked A* in the literature category in the European Reference Index for Humanities of the European Science Foundation. In 1996, it was awarded ‘Best New Journal’ by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. It has published over 1000 articles, including work by: Alain Badiou, Jean Baudrillard, Andrew Benjamin, Homi K. Bhabha, Leslie Anne Boldt-Irons, Alain Caillé, Barbara Cassin, Howard Caygill, Monique David-Menard, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Costas Douzinas, Alexander García Düttmann, Michèle Le Doeuff, Mike Gane, Lawrence Grossberg, Félix Guattari, Donna Haraway, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Ihab Hassan, Leslie Hill, Peggy Kamuf, John Kinsella, Friedrich Kittler, Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, Douglas Kellner, Jacques Lacan, Ernesto Laclau, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, Jean-Luc Nancy, John O’Neill, Jacques Rancière, Nicholas Rand, Bill Readings, Leonard Rosmarin, Nicholas Royle, Stella Sandford, Michel Serres, Paul Virilio, Robyn Wiegman, Robert Young, Slavoj Žižek.

Manuele Gragnolati is Full Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and Associate Director of the ICI Berlin, as well as Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College, Oxford.

He studied Classical Philology, Medieval Studies, and Italian Literature at the Universities of Pavia (BA and MA), Paris IV-Sorbonne (MA) and Columbia in NYC (PhD).

Before joining the University of Paris-Sorbonne, he taught at Dartmouth College from 1999 to 2003 and from 2003 to 2015 at the University of Oxford, where he was Full Professor of Italian Literature. A significant part of his research, including his first monograph “Experiencing the Afterlife”, focuses on Dante and medieval literature and culture, especially on the significance of corporeality in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century eschatology.

He is also interested in the concept of linguistic subjectivity from Dante’s “Vita Nova” to the present, in modern appropriations of medieval texts, and in feminist and queer theory. He has written a substantial commentary on Dante’s Rime and published essays on medieval and modern authors. His second monograph “Amor che move” offers a ‘diffractive’ exploration of body, language, desire in Dante and authors who have engaged with Dante’s oeuvre in the late twentieth century from a “feminine”/feminist and queer position.

Manuele Gragnolati enjoys studying and teaching literature for its critical potential to challenge normative ways of thinking and is particularly interested in texts that propose different figurations of reality, whether in the past or in the present. He believes in an interdisciplinary approach to culture and in collaborating with colleagues with different intellectual histories and backgrounds. At the ICI Berlin he has run several interdisciplinary projects on Dante, Elsa Morante, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, which have often resulted in collective volumes.

Hello, I’m Tamsin and it is my pleasure to serve as an On-Call Student Welfare Advisor at Somerville College. I’m from Ireland and currently reading for a DPhil in Social Policy and Intervention. I care deeply about improving young people’s mental health, so much so that this is the focus of my research. In my spare time, I row with Wolfson College Boat Club and train with Linacre Ladies that Lift. I also enjoy walks in the countryside and exploring Oxford’s beautiful libraries.

Studying at Oxford can be wonderful but also very challenging. If you have any questions, welfare concerns (big or small) or would simply like a friendly face to chat to, please get in touch. The On-Call Student Welfare Advisors are here to support you throughout your time at Somerville College and I would be delighted to hear from you.

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
• 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

Alonso Gurmendi Dunkelberg is a Departmental Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Oxford, in association with Somerville College, as well as Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Alonso holds a Ph.D. from UCL Laws, where he researched the history of the laws of war in the 19^th and early 20^th century, foregrounding the work of actors in Latin America, South West Africa and East Asia, among others. His book, Conflicto Armado en el Perú: La Época del Terrorismo bajo el Derecho Internacional, published by Universidad del Pacífico Press in 2019, addresses the role of international humanitarian law in Peru’s post-conflict reconciliation process. He is also a contributing editor for the international law blog Opinio Juris. His research focuses on the history of international legal politics, with a particular interest on the regulation of war and political violence, as well as on postcolonial approaches to international politics.

From 2020-23, Sarah Gurr’s research interests in crop disease, with particular emphasis on fungal infestations and in their global movement and control, have led to a series of high impact publications and invitations to speak all over the world. Amongst these recent publications are:-

• Stukenbrock, E and Gurr, SJ (2023) Address the growing urgency of fungal disease in crops. Nature 617 31-34
• Johns, LE, Bebber, B, Gurr, SJ and Brown, NA (2022) Health threat and cost of Fusarium mycotoxins in European wheat. Nature Food 3 1014–1019
• Cannon, S, Kay, W, Kilaru, S, Schuster, M, Gurr SJ and Steinberg, G (2022) Multi-site fungicides suppress banana Panama disease, caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense Tropical Race 4. PLoS Pathogens https://doi.org/10.1371/ journal. ppat.1010860 (SG and GS as CAs)
• Kilaru, S, Fantozzi, E, Cannon, S, Schuster, M, Chaloner, T, Aragones, CA, Gurr, SJ and Steinberg,G (2022) Zymoseptoria tritici white-collar complex integrates light, temperature and plant cues to initiate dimorphism and pathogenesis.  Nature Communications 13, Article number: 5625
• Fisher, M et al (2022) Tackling the emerging threat of antifungal resistance to human health. Nature Microbiology Reviews https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-022-00720-1
• Chaloner, T, Gurr, SJ Bebber, DP (2021) The global burden of plant disease tracks yield under climate change Nature Climate Change https://www.nature.com/art/s41558-021-01104-8
• Fones, H, Bebber, D, Chaloner, T, Kay, William T, Steinberg, G, Gurr, SJ (2020) Threats to global food security from emerging fungal and oomycete crop pathogens. Nature Food doi: 10.1038/s43016-020-0075.
• Chaloner, T, Gurr, SJ, Bebber, D (2020) Geometry and evolution of the ecological niche in plant-associated microbes. Nature Communications doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-16778-5.
• Steinberg, G, Schuster, M, Gurr, SJ, Schrader, M, Wood, M, Kilaru, S (2020) A lipophilic cation protects crops against fungal pathogens by multiple modes of action Nature Communications https://doi.org/ 10.1038/s4146-020-14949-y.
• Patents –  Antifungal compositions WO2020201698A1 and GB2202216.4

There have been 5 press releases associated with these papers and some of this work featured in articles in The Guardian; The New York Times (Children’s board game “monkey puzzle” Christmas Day 2022); The Toronto Star; The Daily Mail; The Independent; as well as on BBC World News, Live Science News Hour and various other media channels.

Over the past 2 years Sarah has been appointed to The International Advisory Board at SLU University, Uppsala, as Advisor to The Scottish Government on Plant Health (RESAS) and as a member of Plant Heath Scotland (James Hutton Institute). She has also been elected to Board of Trustees of The Rank Foundation, the East Malling Research Trust and The Wolfson Science and Medicine committee.

She holds a Visiting Professorship at Utrecht University, is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), Fellow of American Academy of Microbiology, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by SLU Uppsala. Her work with UK and Scottish Government has guided to a policy paper and a Parliamentary Bill (Plant Health and Biosecurity, and Crops and Gene Editing, 2022 and 2023).

Lisa Gygax (1987, PPE) has been Liz Cooke’s ‘apprentice’ since 2014. In her role as joint Secretary to the Alumni Association she shares Liz’s keen interest in the myriad of pursuits that Somervillians get up to after leaving Oxford. Her role extends to stewarding our various alumni networks.

My name is Joost and I am a postgraduate student reading for an MSc in Economic and Social History. As the 23-24 SU representative I am taking care of the connections of the Somerville MCR with the student union and hope to lend voice to all issues arising in Somerville College. In my free time you either find me out on the hockey pitch or in the library reading.