People

Lena is in her second year of the B.Phil. in Philosophy and is interested in metaphysics, metaethics, and the philosophy of law. She loves Somerville and Margery Fry. She likes to cook dinner for people and especially to make cornbread. Please don’t hesitate to write to the Somerville MCR Secretary email!

Hello, I’m Mehtab, and I am the Vice-President of the MCR. I am a final year DPhil student studying ion channel proteins and membrane transport in health and disease using interdisciplinary approaches that means I work in of Biophysics, Chemistry, and Pharmacology.

As MCR Vice-President, my duties are in supporting the president and the running of the executive committee. My other priorities are in advocating for improving transparency and democratisation of the MCR, as well as working to improve physical wellbeing facilities for MCR members. If you have any questions, suggestions, or critiques about the running of the MCR, especially if you feel that your voice isn’t being heard, please reach out to me. Part of maintaining the respectful and diverse MCR environment that we all cherish is making sure nobody is feeling left behind or excluded.

Becky Cotton-Barratt oversees graduate students and academic HR, as well as supporting the college in policy matters.

She graduated from the University of Oxford with a degree in Earth Sciences, and then completed a PhD in Mathematics from the University of Warwick. She previously worked as the Admissions and Outreach Coordinator for the Mathematical Institute, and finds committees oddly enjoyable.

Dr. Natalia Chepiga is a physicist working on quantum many-body phenomena.

She studies quantum phase transitions—processes that occur at zero temperature and describe changes between distinct quantum phases of matter. Her work lies at the intersection of computational and theoretical physics, quantum information, quantum computing, and magnetism; she is an active developer of tensor network algorithms. Before joining the University of Oxford, Dr. Chepiga was an Assistant Professor at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience and Delft University of Technology. Since 2024, she has served as an Associate Editor of Physical Review Research of the American Physical Society.

Shahnaz “Nazee” Batmanghelidj studied PPE at Somerville, followed by a Masters at Princeton University and an MBA at Harvard, leading to her career in finance.

Most recently she has been an advisor at Hoegh Capital Partners. Nazee serves on the boards of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Jefferson Scholars Foundation at the University of Virginia.  She is also an Honorary Board member of the Near East Foundation. She has been a long-serving member of the Board of Americans for Oxford, and in 2016 was made a Distinguished Friend of Oxford by Vice-Chancellor Louise Richardson for her involvement in AFO and other institutions across the University.

Radford “Roddy” Klotz is an alumnus of the University of Virginia, where he continues his involvement as a member of the board of the College Foundation of the University of Virginia. He is a partner in the private financial services firm of Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH) where he started his career in 1977 in the firm’s Treasury Department.

Susan Thomas is Head of Archives and Modern Manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries.

Caroline is the Chief Operating Officer of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, where she provides leadership on strategy development and oversight of the School’s activities.

Caroline brings with her over 20 years’ experience in the infrastructure and energy project finance market, working on some of the largest energy transactions ever undertaken in both the conventional and renewables spaces and advising some of the largest energy companies in the world. Since 2021, she has been consistently recognised in the market for her work in the wind and energy transition sectors (Energy Transition Power List 2024, Wind Power List 2023, European Power List 2022, Women’s Power List 2021)

From 2023 until her move to Oxford, Caroline focussed on energy transition and sustainable finance, leading teams operating across the capital markets and in the ESG advisory space, as well as significant internal policy and process development. Her activities covered areas including financed emissions, transition finance, customer engagement and nature finance.

Caroline has served on the board of the International Project Finance Association (IPFA) since 2017, with notable contributions to their learning activities as well as DE&I, and on Pexapark’s Advisory Council since 2023. She is a regular and enthusiastic speaker at events around the City and further afield, including for names such as Inspiratia, Aurora, the Women’s Infrastructure Network, Reuters and FT Live.

Caroline holds an MPhys (Hons) from Somerville College, Oxford, where she also gained Half Blues in gymnastics and lightweight rowing. She is thrilled to continue her links to Somerville by appointment as a Senior Associate in 2025.

Alexandra Vincent MBE
Chief Operating Officer (Divisional Registrar), Humanities Division
Managing Director, Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
University of Oxford

Alexandra Vincent is Chief Operating Officer for the Humanities Division and Managing Director for Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities at the University of Oxford. Core to Alex’s role is  overseeing the strategy, operation, and governance of the Humanities Division, one of the four academic divisions of the University.  This includes responsibility for setting the strategy and overseeing the operations of the Schwarzman Centre and it’s cultural, schools, and commercial programmes.

Alex was the Division’s representative on the capital building project board for the new Centre and was responsible for moving seven of the ten humanities faculties into the building, and establishing it as an exciting and vibrant hub of academic and cultural activity. 

Prior to moving to the University of Oxford, Alex was Chief Operating Officer at Arts and Humanities Research Council and UKRI International. During her time at AHRC Alex oversaw the establishment of several multi-million pound programmes including COSTAR, investment into a network of labs and facilities for R&D in the Creative Industries, and the Creative Industries Clusters Programme, a multi-million-pound research initiative bringing together academia and business to provide solutions to the challenges facing the sector.

Before joining AHRC, Alex was Associate Director, Policy and Analysis with Research Councils UK.  Alex oversaw the establishment of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund as well as overseeing the development of cross-Council policy and strategy. Alex also contributed to two major reviews of research and innovation funding in Scotland and Wales. 

Alex’s early career was in PR and brand management, starting in the IT industry and then moving into the public sector, eventually leading to her moving to English Heritage to manage the communications and PR for a major Heritage Lottery funded Programme. 

Alex was awarded an MBE for services to research funding in 2024. She is a Fellow of Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and the Royal Society of Arts.

Julie Jack is a philosopher and emeritus fellow of Somerville College.

Julie Jack was elected as fellow in Philosophy of Somerville College in 1969, succeeding Elizabeth Anscombe. A specialist in philosophical logic, Julie taught across a wide range of subjects in philosophy, and made a great mark on her Somerville pupils. After resigning her Fellowship in 1987, she taught for some years in Cambridge.

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), the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and the Gerda Henkel Stiftung. I am a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow with the Faculty of Classics. I am investigating human associations with divinity in Latin and Greek literature, graffiti, and in funerary monuments and inscriptions of the Roman imperial period to be published as a monograph. My other research interests include Roman and Greek hymns and Latin epigraphy.

Websites: <https://susandunning.net/>, <https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9733-9403>.

Dr Theofrida Maginga is a lecturer and a researcher from Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania, and a Schmidt Fellow in AI 2025-26.

Dr Maginga specialises in Embedded Computing Systems, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Geospatial technologies to advance precision agriculture and climate resilience.
In this fellowship, Dr Maginga will work on Predicting Soil Erosion Risk and Sustainable Land Use in Tanzania’s Uluguru Mountains Using AI and Climate Geospatial Data.

Dr Uma Das is an Assistant Professor in Physics at the Indian Institute of Information Technology Kalyani (IIIT) and a Schmidt Fellow in AI 2025-26.

Dr Das received her PhD from Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad in 2009, for her work on rocket-borne studies of atmospheric dynamics. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Central University, Taiwan from 2010 to 2013 and at the University of New Brunswick from 2013 to 2015. She has been working as Assistant Professor (Physics) at the Indian Institute of Information Technology Kalyani (IIIT) since 2016.

Dar Das’ research expertise is in Space and Atmospheric Physics and Dynamics, and her research interests include problems related to atmospheric vertical and lateral coupling and effects of climate change on the terrestrial atmosphere. She has authored 29 publications in peer-reviewed journals on mesospheric turbulence, thermospheric dynamics, equatorial Kelvin waves, tides, and planetary waves. She is currently working on applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence in advancing predictive capabilities in various atmospheric problems including cyclones and fog. She also advocates for inclusivity and increased participation of women in all fields of science, technology and engineering disciplines.

Evie is a recent Music graduate from Hertford College, where her research focused on the societal impacts of musical women, past and present.

She could frequently be found organising events and revelling in admin, alongside singing in choirs and playing the oboe. Singing with Somerville College Choir in her third year was a particular highlight!

As Chapel and Music Administrator, Evie is the first point of contact for all queries to do with the Chapel and Choir. She assists with booking events and concerts in the Chapel, as well as organising piano tunings, looking after PRS reporting, and acting as clerk for the Chapel and Music Committee.

Evie works for Somerville in term time only, usually on Tuesdays and Fridays. She can be reached on chapel.music@some.ox.ac.uk or choir@some.ox.ac.uk

Jan was principal of Somerville College from 2017-25. During this time, she was an unstoppable champion of higher education and of all the students and academics that make up our community. Driven by her belief that “Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not”, Jan led initiatives that drove social mobility across Oxford. She paved the way to Somerville becoming a College of Sanctuary, and supported Somerville in creating scholarships for students from BAME, Working Class and Marginalised backgrounds, with the result that 1 in 5 students of all backgrounds now receive financial support during their time at Oxford.

Alongside social mobility, Jan championed academics’ research and entrepreneurship, working closely with colleagues from all disciplines across initiatives from medical spin-outs to community partnerships tackling child malnutrition. She led on initiatives for decarbonising the college, was an active champion of greater ties between the university and city of Oxford and served as Chair of Conference of Colleges during the most tumultuous period of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Naijing Liu completed her PhD in linguistics at the Australian National University in 2023. Her research interests are phonology, prosody, and anthropological linguistics.

She works on endangered language documentation in the Manaslu region of Nepal and has been working as a research assistant on various anthropological and linguistics research projects in Botswana, Ethiopia, and Australia. She is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics at the University of Oxford.

At Oxford, her research focuses on the typology of prosody in tonal languages and examines prosodic interfaces through a fine-grained analysis of Tsum, an endangered Tibeto-Burman language spoken in Nepal.

ORCID：https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1892-8475

Personal web: https://naijingl.github.io/

Thomas is a senior post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics (DPAG) where his research focuses on the control of metabolism in the developing and failing heart.

Thomas completed his PhD at the Medical Research Council Harwell Institute in 2018 where he worked on models of cardiac disease in the lab of Dr Paul Potter.

Thomas also holds a position at University College as a senior lecturer in metabolic biochemistry.

I conduct experimental research at the Oxford Thermofluids Institute to improve the efficiency and longevity of gas-turbine engines. In modern aircraft engines, air temperature in the hottest regions exceeds the melting point of metal components, requiring active cooling to prevent damage. Modest improvements in this cooling effectiveness can significantly extend engine lifetime and performance.

My research experimentally measures cooling effectiveness to inform new cooling technologies and validate the numerical models used in industry. I am currently redesigning a high-speed, rotating experimental facility (OTRF) that uniquely replicates conditions found in next-generation high-pressure turbines, while co-supervising a DPhil project to improve high-speed infrared thermography.

I completed an experimental PhD on transonic shock wave–boundary-layer interactions, followed by two years in industry. Alongside my current postdoctoral work, I am also developing a new experimental facility for heat-exchanger research. My broader goal is to research experimental topics in fluid dynamic that contribute to net-zero technologies.

Dr McDonald is a historian of modern Latin America and global Catholicism. At Oxford, he is a postdoctoral research fellow for the “Global Pontificate of Pius XII: Catholicism in a Divided World” research project supported by the German Historical Institute in Rome.

His research explores Latin America in Catholicism’s global Cold War along two axes. The first centers on networks created through the Vatican-led deployment of foreign clergy, missionaries, laypeople, and resources to the region. The second examines how Latin American laypeople shaped Catholic internationalism in the Cold War through transnational Catholic Action movements.

His first book, Peripheral Citizenship: Popular Movements and the Progressive Catholic Church in Urban Brazil, was published by the University of California Press in August 2026. Dr. McDonald’s work has appeared in the American Historical Review, Hispanic American Historical Review, and The Americas, among other journals. Dr McDonald’s research featured in the recent Netflix film, Apocalypse in the Tropics (2025) as well as in public outlets like the Washington Post and Harvard Review of Latin America.

Prior to Oxford, he held fellowships at Harvard University and the University of Rochester. He received his PhD in History from Brown University.

Dr. Tan is a cancer cell biologist in the laboratory of Professor Richard White at Ludwig Cancer Research.

She completed her PhD in the laboratories of Associate Professor Andrew Cox and Professor Mark Dawson at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and University of Melbourne. Her current research focuses on understanding how pigmentation in our skin may influence how skin cells communicate with one another and potentially be involved in tumour initiation.

The White Laboratory have previously shown that skin cells (melanocytes and keratinocytes) communicate through electrical signalling and intriguingly, melanin, the pigment produced by melanocytes has electrical properties. This led Vicky to ask whether melanin may modulate electrical behaviour in skin cancer (melanoma) cells, and play a role in cell-cell communication and melanoma progression. To address this, Vicky will use melanoma cell lines with differing pigmentation levels and develop a new unique model to study calcium activity in melanocytes as a readout for electrical activity. With new models to assess electrophysiology, Vicky aims to understand whether pigmentation is involved in initiating melanoma, which could ultimately inform new therapeutic strategies targeting cancer.

Sue is responsible for the purchase ledger, mainly dealing with supplier invoices, enquires regarding payments, and expense payments. She works Monday-Thursday.

To contact Sue, please email invoicing@some.ox.ac.uk 

Dr Younger’s research focuses on improving maternal healthcare delivery and addressing inequalities in access and quality of care.

She examines how biases in medical technologies and healthcare systems affect access to antenatal care, particularly for ethnic minority and socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. By engaging diverse stakeholders including patients, clinicians, engineers and regulators, her work seeks to redesign and implement inclusive maternal health solutions.

Based at the Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health, University of Oxford, Dr Younger also leads Patient and Public Involvement initiatives to incorporate user perspectives into person-centred implementation of maternal health services.

Her background includes clinical experience as a nurse practitioner and global health work on midwife led health promotion projects in low- and middle-income countries. She holds a PhD from the University of California, San Francisco, where she studied environmental factors impacting maternal health.

Martin’s research focuses on developing drugs that manipulate the activity of immune cells in our body, with a particular emphasis on finding new ways to activate immune cells to fight cancer. His work bridges fundamental immunology and protein engineering.

Martin pursues two complementary approaches. First, he studies how T-cell receptors – the immune system’s ‘detectors’ – recognise cancer-specific molecular patterns, to inform the design of more specific and effective therapies. Second, Martin engineers proteins to block tumour ‘stop signals’ (inhibitory ligands) that suppress immune responses, aiming to restore and amplify anti-cancer activity.

Martin completed his PhD in 2023 at the University of Oxford in the group of Prof Simon Davis and is now a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Dr Ricardo A. Fernandes.

Dr Smith is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the group of Prof. Christopher J. Schofield, FRS, jointly based in the Department of Chemistry and Ineos Oxford Institute.

Her research centres on the discovery and development of novel antibiotics to combat multidrug-resistant bacterial infections. In particular, she is pioneering innovative methodologies to elucidate the interactions between antibiotic candidates and their bacterial targets.

Beyond her scientific work, Dr Smith is actively engaged in outreach and public engagement initiatives aimed at raising awareness of antibiotic resistance and inspiring the next generation of scientists to pursue careers in research.