Susan Dunning
Fulford Junior Research Fellow; SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow; Stipendiary Lecturer
Susan Dunning
Fulford Junior Research Fellow; SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow; Stipendiary Lecturer
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.
‘The Republican Ludi Saeculares as a Cult of the Valerian Gens’
Historia (journal article)
2020
‘Jacob A. Latham, Performance, Memory, and Processions in Ancient Rome: The ‘pompa circensis’ from the Late Republic to Late Antiquity’
Bryn Mawr
Classical Review (book review)
2017
‘Saeculum’
Oxford Classical Dictionary
2017
Hanne Eckhoff
College Lecturer
Hanne Eckhoff
College Lecturer
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.
A corpus approach to the history of Russian po delimitatives
Article
Nov 2018
The added value of diachronic treebanks for historical linguistics.
Eckhoff, Hanne & Luraghi, Silvia & Passarotti, Marco.
Diachronica. 35. 297-309. (2018).
Quantifying syntactic influence: Word order, possession and definiteness in Old Church Slavonic and Greek: The Interplay between Internal Development, Language Contact and Metalinguistic Factors
Chapter
2018
Overlaps in spatial encodings: Evidence from the Indo-European translations of the New Testament.
Thomason, Olga & Eckhoff, Hanne.
2017
Aspect and prefixation in Old Church Slavonic.
Eckhoff, Hanne & Haug, Dag. (2015).
Diachronica. 32.
Kamel El Omari
Senior Beamline Scientist at Diamond Light Source; Lecturer in Biochemistry
Kamel El Omari
Senior Beamline Scientist at Diamond Light Source; Lecturer in Biochemistry
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.
El Omari K, Li S, Kotecha A, Walter TS, Bignon EA, Harlos K, Somerharju P, De Haas F, Clare DK, Molin M, Hurtado F, Li M, Grimes JM, Bamford DH, Tischler ND, Huiskonen JT, Stuart DI, Roine E. The structure of a prokaryotic viral envelope protein expands the landscape of membrane fusion proteins. Nat Commun. (2019)
Langan PS, Vandavasi VG, Weiss KL, Afonine PV, El Omari K, Duman R, Wagner A, Coates L. Anomalous X-ray diffraction studies of ion transport in K+ channels. Nat Commun. (2018)
Pryce R, Ng WM, Zeltina A, Watanabe Y, El Omari K, Wagner A, Bowden TA. Structure-Based Classification Defines the Discrete Conformational Classes Adopted by the Arenaviral GP1. J Virol. (2018)
Austin HP, Allen MD, Donohoe BS, Rorrer NA, Kearns FL, Silveira RL, Pollard BC, Dominick G, Duman R, El Omari K, Mykhaylyk V, Wagner A, Michener WE, Amore A, Skaf MS, Crowley MF, Thorne AW, Johnson CW, Woodcock HL, McGeehan JE, Beckham GT. Characterization and engineering of a plastic-degrading aromatic polyesterase. Proc Natl Acad Sci (2018)
Esposito D, Günster RA, Martino L, El Omari K, Wagner A, Thurston TLM, Rittinger K. Structural basis for the glycosyltransferase activity of the Salmonella effector SseK3. J Biol Chem. (2018)
Bountra K, Hagelueken G, Choudhury HG, Corradi V, El Omari K, Wagner A, Mathavan I, Zirah S, Yuan Wahlgren W, Tieleman DP, Schiemann O, Rebuffat S, Beis K. Structural basis for antibacterial peptide self-immunity by the bacterial ABC transporter McjD. EMBO J (2017)
Zhaoyang Sun, Kamel El Omari, Xiaoyu Sun, Serban L Ilca, Abhay Kotecha, David I Stuart, Minna M Poranen, Juha T Huiskonen. Double-stranded RNA virus outer shell assembly by bona fide domain-swapping. Nature Communications (2017).
Colin Espie
Senior Research Fellow (Somerville); Professor of Sleep Medicine (Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences)
Colin Espie
Senior Research Fellow (Somerville); Professor of Sleep Medicine (Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences)
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 SleepioTM 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).
- Espie C. A. (2023). Revisiting the Psychobiological Inhibition Model: a conceptual framework for understanding and treating insomnia using cognitive and behavioural therapeutics (CBTx). Journal of sleep research, e13841. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.13841
- Morin, C. M., Bjorvatn, B., Chung, F., Holzinger, B., Partinen, M., Penzel, T., Ivers, H., Wing, Y. K., Chan, N. Y., Merikanto, I., Mota-Rolim, S., Macêdo, T., De Gennaro, L., Léger, D., Dauvilliers, Y., Plazzi, G., Nadorff, M. R., Bolstad, C. J., Sieminski, M., Benedict, C., … Espie, C. A. (2021). Insomnia, anxiety, and depression during the COVID-19 pandemic: an international collaborative study. Sleep medicine, 87, 38–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2021.07.035
- Espie, C. A., Emsley, R., Kyle, S. D., Gordon, C., Drake, C. L., Siriwardena, A. N., Cape, J., Ong, J. C., Sheaves, B., Foster, R., Freeman, D., Costa-Font, J., Marsden, A., & Luik, A. I. (2019). Effect of Digital Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia on Health, Psychological Well-being, and Sleep-Related Quality of Life: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA psychiatry, 76(1), 21–30. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.2745
- Freeman, D., Sheaves, B., Goodwin, G. M., Yu, L. M., Nickless, A., Harrison, P. J., Emsley, R., Luik, A. I., Foster, R. G., Wadekar, V., Hinds, C., Gumley, A., Jones, R., Lightman, S., Jones, S., Bentall, R., Kinderman, P., Rowse, G., Brugha, T., Blagrove, M., … Espie, C. A. (2017). The effects of improving sleep on mental health (OASIS): a randomised controlled trial with mediation analysis. The Lancet Psychiatry, 4(10), 749–758. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(17)30328-0
Rachel Exley
Stipendiary LecturerI 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).
Hollingshead, S. & Jongerius, Ilse & Exley, R. & Johnson, Steven & Lea, Susan & Tang, C.. (2018). Structure-based design of chimeric antigens for multivalent protein vaccines. Nature Communications. 9. 10.1038/s41467-018-03146-7.
Wörmann, Mirka & Horien, Corey & Johnson, Errin & Liu, Guangyu & Aho, Ellen & Tang, Christoph & Exley, Rachel. (2016). Neisseria cinerea isolates can adhere to human epithelial cells by Type IV pilus-independent mechanisms. Microbiology. 162. 10.1099/mic.0.000248.
Tan, Felicia & Tang, Christoph & Exley, Rachel. (2015). Sugar coating: Bacterial protein glycosylation and host-microbe interactions. Trends in biochemical sciences. 40. 10.1016/j.tibs.2015.03.016.
Professor Sir Marc Feldmann FRS
Senior Research Fellow; Emeritus Professor of Cellular Immunology; Director of Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology
Professor Sir Marc Feldmann FRS
Senior Research Fellow; Emeritus Professor of Cellular Immunology; Director of Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology
Marc Feldmann is an immunologist who has carried out groundbreaking work on the treatment of a number of autoimmune diseases. His particular research interest is in deciphering the role of cell-signalling chemicals known as cytokines in human disease processes.
Together with Sir Ravinder Maini FMedSci FRS, he was the first to show that antibodies that bind to the tumour necrosis factor (TNF) cytokine could block inflammation in the joints of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). He later discovered that by adding an immune suppressant — for example, the chemotherapy drug, methotrexate — the treatment could be made to work better and last longer.
Marc’s findings have had a major impact on the treatment of RA: over 5 million patients have now received anti-TNF drugs, such as the monoclonal antibody infliximab. In addition, his pioneering work with cytokines has led to the successful treatment of other autoimmune diseases, including Crohn’s disease and ankylosing spondylitis — significantly improving the daily lives of millions of people worldwide.
Together with Sir Ravinder Maini, Professor Sir Marc has won many awards including the Crafoord Prize (2000); the Cameron Prize for Therapeutics of the University of Edinburgh (2002); the Alber Lasker Award (2003); the John Curtin Medal (2007); the Dr Paul Janssen Award (2008); the Ernst Schering Prize (2010); the Canada Gairdner International Award (2014); and the Tang Prize (2020).
Feldmann is Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and of the Royal College of Pathologists. He was elected a Fellow of several national Academies, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal Society of London and is a Corresponding Member of Australian Academy of Science, and a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. He was knighted in the 2010 Queen’s Birthday Honours.
Fully reduced HMGB1 accelerates the regeneration of multiple tissues by transitioning stem cells to GAlert. Journal article; Lee G. et al, (2018), Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 115
Developments in therapy with monoclonal antibodies and related proteins. Journal article; Shepard HM. et al, (2017), Clin Med (Lond), 17, 220 – 232
Vanessa Ferreira
Clinical Non-Stipendiary Lecturer; British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine; Honorary Consultant Cardiologist; Fellow, Lady Margaret Hall
Vanessa Ferreira
Clinical Non-Stipendiary Lecturer; British Heart Foundation Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine; Honorary Consultant Cardiologist; Fellow, Lady Margaret Hall
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.
Messroghli, D.R., Moon, J.C., Ferreira, V.M. et al. Clinical recommendations for cardiovascular magnetic resonance mapping of T1, T2, T2* and extracellular volume: A consensus statement by the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (SCMR) endorsed by the European Association for Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI). J Cardiovasc Magn Reson 19, 75 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12968-017-0389-8
Piechnik, S.K., Ferreira, V.M., Dall’Armellina, E. et al. Shortened Modified Look-Locker Inversion recovery (ShMOLLI) for clinical myocardial T1-mapping at 1.5 and 3 T within a 9 heartbeat breathhold. J Cardiovasc Magn Reson 12, 69 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1186/1532-429X-12-69
Theodoros D. Karamitsos, Stefan K. Piechnik, Sanjay M. Banypersad, Marianna Fontana, Ntobeko B. Ntusi, Vanessa M. Ferreira, Carol J. Whelan, Saul G. Myerson, Matthew D. Robson, Philip N. Hawkins, Stefan Neubauer, James C. Moon,
Noncontrast T1 Mapping for the Diagnosis of Cardiac Amyloidosis,
JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging,
Volume 6, Issue 4,
2013,
Pages 488-497,
ISSN 1936-878X,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcmg.2012.11.013
Vanessa M. Ferreira, Jeanette Schulz-Menger, Godtfred Holmvang, Christopher M. Kramer, Iacopo Carbone, Udo Sechtem, Ingrid Kindermann, Matthias Gutberlet, Leslie T. Cooper, Peter Liu, Matthias G. Friedrich,
Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance in Nonischemic Myocardial Inflammation: Expert Recommendations,
Journal of the American College of Cardiology,
Volume 72, Issue 24,
2018,
Pages 3158-3176,
ISSN 0735-1097,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2018.09.072.
Ferreira, V.M., Piechnik, S.K., Dall’Armellina, E. et al. Non-contrast T1-mapping detects acute myocardial edema with high diagnostic accuracy: a comparison to T2-weighted cardiovascular magnetic resonance. J Cardiovasc Magn Reson 14, 42 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1186/1532-429X-14-42
Lisa Forsberg
Fulford Junior Research Fellow; Postdoctoral Researcher in LawLisa 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.
Should we delay covid-19 vaccination in children?
Wilkinson, D, Finlay, I, Pollard, AJ, Forsberg, L, Skelton, A
July 2021
Journal article
BMJ (Clinical research ed.)
Anti-libidinal Interventions and Human Rights
Forsberg, L
June 2021
Journal article
Human Rights Law Review
What Should We Agree on about the Repugnant Conclusion?
Zuber, S, Venkatesh, N, Tännsjö, T, Tarsney, C, Stefánsson, HO, Steele, K, Spears, D, Sebo, J, Pivato, M, Ord, T, Ng, YK, Masny, M et al
January 2021
Journal article
Utilitas
Compulsory medical intervention versus external constraint in pandemic control
Douglas, T, Forsberg, L, Pugh, J
August 2020
Journal article
Journal of Medical Ethics
Achievement and Enhancement.
Forsberg, L, Skelton, A
April 2020
Journal article
Canadian journal of philosophy
Mandating Vaccination
Skelton, A, FORSBERG, L
Edited by: Skelton, A, FORSBERG, L
July 2020
Chapter
The Ethics of Pandemics
Ethical Challenges in the Applications of Motivational Interviewing in HIV Care
Black, I, FORSBERG, L
Edited by: Black, I, FORSBERG, L
November 2019
Chapter
Motivational Interviewing in HIV Care
Childbirth, consent, and information about options and risks
Forsberg, L
January 2019
Chapter
Childbirth, Vulnerability and Law: Exploring Issues of Violence and Control
Crime-preventing neurointerventions and the law: learning from anti-libidinal interventions
FORSBERG, L
Edited by: FORSBERG, L
Chapter
Treatment for Crime. Philosophical Essays on Neurointerventions in Criminal Justice
Mood enhancement and the authenticity of experience: ethical considerations
FORSBERG, L
Edited by: FORSBERG, L
Chapter
New Bodies for a Better Life: Views on the human enhancement debate from anthropology and disability studies
Kezia Gaitskell
Clinical Non-Stipendiary Lecturer; Academic Clinical Lecturer in Histopathology
Kezia Gaitskell
Clinical Non-Stipendiary Lecturer; Academic Clinical Lecturer in Histopathology
Kezia Gaitskell is an Academic Clinical Lecturer in the Nuffield Division of Clinical Laboratory Sciences (NDCLS), where she combines research with clinical training as an honorary registrar in histopathology.
She graduated with distinction from Oxford University Medical School in 2008, and undertook Academic Foundation Training in London, before studying for an MSc in Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (graduating with distinction). She worked as a histopathology trainee in London, and completed a DPhil in Population Health in the Oxford University Cancer Epidemiology Unit (funded by Cancer Research UK), before taking up her current post.
Her main research interest is at the junction of epidemiology and pathology, in collaboration with the Nuffield Department of Population Health. For her DPhil, she explored risk factors for ovarian cancer, and their variation by histological type, supervised by Professor Dame Valerie Beral, and Professor Ahmed A. Ahmed. Her current work continues to investigate factors associated with cancer incidence and survival, and how these associations vary by tumour histotype.
‘Merkel cell carcinoma with divergent differentiation’
Journal article
GAITSKELL K. et al, (2019), Clinical and Experimental Dermatology
‘Merkel cell carcinoma with divergent differentiation: two case reports.’
Conference paper
Gaitskell K. and Ibrahim H., (2019), Clin Exp Dermatol
‘Hematological parameters and prevalence of anemia in white and British Indian vegetarians and nonvegetarians in the UK Biobank.’
Journal article
Tong TYN. et al, (2019), Am J Clin Nutr, 110, 461 – 472
‘Haematological parameters and anaemia in white and British Indian meat-eaters and vegetarians in UK Biobank’
Conference paper
Tong TYN. et al, (2019), PROCEEDINGS OF THE NUTRITION SOCIETY, 78, E23 – E23
‘Pre-diagnostic BMI and ovarian cancer survival in the Million Women Study’
Other
Gaitskell K. et al, (2018), BRITISH JOURNAL OF CANCER, 119, 32 – 33
Giuseppe Gava
Fulford Junior Research Fellow
Giuseppe Gava
Fulford Junior Research Fellow
Giuseppe Pietro Gava joined Professor David Dupret’s Group as a joint D.Phil. student between Imperial College London (ICL) and the MRC Brain Networks Dynamic Unit (BNDU) in October 2016.
The collaboration was conceived under the ICL Neurotechnology CDT Program, and Giuseppe worked under the joint supervision of Dr Simon Schultz (ICL), Dr David Dupret (BNDU) and Prof William Wisden (ICL). Giuseppe was awarded his D.Phil. in 2021.
Giuseppe graduated in Biomedical Engineering at Imperial College London with a thesis on decoding locomotion kinematics from cererebellar neuronal activity, carried out under the supervision of Dr Simon Schultz. During the degree, he also collaborated with Dr Barry Seemungal at Charing Cross and St. Mary’s hospitals, London, to investigate vestibular spatial and temporal integration. During the same collaboration involving a project on the effect of dopamine on perception-motor coupling, Giuseppe was recipient of an award granted by the ‘Nuffield Foundation Royal Academy of Engineering Undergraduate Research Bursaries Programme’.
During the summer of 2015. Giuseppe joined Prof. Micera’s lab at EPFL, Switzerland, to collaborate on a project on the effect of handedness on muscle synergies. Giuseppe obtained and analysed motion tracking, EMG, force and torque data from human subjects. He also joined Team ICL in the Cybathlon Olympics for people with active prosthetics, having developed an eye-controlled wheelchair.
Giuseppe joined the Dupret Group as a Postdocoral Rrsearcher in 2021.
To view a full list of publications, visit https://www.mrcbndu.ox.ac.uk/publications?f%5B0%5D=unit_scientist%3ADr.%20Giuseppe%20Pietro%20Gava
Mick Gielen
Retaining Fee Lecturer
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