People

Dame Elan Closs Stephens (1966, English) is a Welsh educator and policy-maker for broadcasting and the arts.

She has served as a Governor of the British Film Institute, commissioner of the Electoral Commission for Wales, and is currently the BBC Board member for Wales. In January 2020, she was appointed Pro Chancellor of Aberystwyth University.

She was honoured with a CBE in 2001 for her services to broadcasting and to the Welsh Language, and made a Dame in 2019 for her services to the Welsh government and to broadcasting. She was elected an Honorary Fellow in 2020.

As Programme Director of the MTST, Claire is responsible for mentoring and supporting the Thatcher Scholars and for publicising and evaluating the Thatcher Scholarship Programme. Claire also devises, adapts and oversees the Development Programme, which is open to all students of Somerville.

Claire read Biochemistry at Somerville before gaining a PhD in Plant Molecular Biology from the University of Cambridge. During her Post-Doc in Cambridge, she was awarded a Media Fellowship, working with Tim Radford at The Guardian and subsequently as a freelance science writer. After deciding to hang up her lab coat in 2001, Claire pioneered a cross-disciplinary Master’s Programme in Bioscience Enterprise at Cambridge in partnership with MIT, aimed at bio-entrepreneurs and future leaders of the life science sector.

In 2005, Claire joined the Babraham Institute – a biomedical research organisation in Cambridge – where she was responsible for corporate communications, media liaison, public engagement and knowledge exchange and undertook PR for the campus, home to over 40 life science companies. She established a successful Science & Society Programme delivering novel science enrichment activities for schools, and summer research opportunities to inspire young people about science and STEM careers. During this time, Claire was a Graduate Tutor at Newnham College, Cambridge providing pastoral support and mentoring for a growing graduate community.

Claire is a trustee of STEM Team East, an educational charity that enriches science in schools, and has received awards for work with schools. She joined the Board of the biomedical charity Understanding Animals in Research in 2016 and is a member of the BioIndustry Associations’ Communications Advisory Committee. After joining the Centre for Personalised Medicine in Oxford during its start-up phase in 2013, Claire now offers consultancy in science communication and public engagement. She is a fellow of the Society of Biology, the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust and in 2012 was selected as a fellow of the British-American Project – a transatlantic leadership network from a broad spectrum of occupations and backgrounds.

Becca plays a leading role in realising Somerville’s fundraising goals, with particular responsibility for major gifts and legacies.

She started adult life as a postgraduate researcher in the philosophy of education at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and then worked in the City as a lobbyist for the financial services industry. She went on to be Major Gifts Officer at Keble College, before leaving to have her children.

If you are thinking about making a major gift, or leaving a legacy, Becca would love to hear from you. You can contact her by email on rebecca.coker@some.ox.ac.uk or phone her at +44 (0) 7890 412404.

Becca is currently on maternity leave. In her absence, please contact katariina.kottonen@some.ox.ac.uk.

Stephanie Dalley is a British scholar of the Ancient Near East and Fellow of the Institute for Ancient and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES), where she taught Akkadian and Sumerian for almost three decades.

She is best known for her investigation into the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and her proposal that it was situated in Nineveh and constructed during the rule of Sennacherib. Her other achievements include her work on the Sealand Dynasty.

Pat Davies (née Owtram) is a WWII codebreaker and recipient of the Legion d’Honneur who smashed glass ceilings as a producer in the world of Sixties television. She describes herself today as the only 100-year-old woman in Chiswick who knows how to use a sten gun. 

Like many women of her generation, Pat was determined to contribute to the war effort during WWII. Quite unlike most other women, however, Pat Davies spent her war years conducting vital secret work at covert listening stations on the South Coast, for which she would later receive the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest order of merit. 

Pat joined the WRNS in 1942, aged just 18, motivated by her father’s capture and internment by the Japanese army. As a German-speaker, she was selected for work manning wireless intercept stations around the coast. Her intercepts of German military communications were translated, with encoded messages sent to Bletchley Park. After the war’s conclusion, Pat was offered a role as a translator in the Nuremburg Trials, but chose to return home to care for her recently liberated father. Unbeknownst to Pat, her younger sister Jean Argles (née Owtram) had also worked as a codebreaker for SOE, decoding messages from agents in the field. The sisters only learned about their shared experiences after the war, leading them to write the popular memoir ‘Code-Breaking Sisters’.

After the war, Pat became a noted television producer, helping to devise several longstanding shows including The Sky At Night, University Challenge and Coronation Street. More recently, Pat won a seven-decade-long battle to restore the authorship rights to her plagiarised BLitt thesis. Somerville played a significant role in this case for restorative justice, which you can read about here.

Pat Owtram arriving at the Dorothy Hodgkin Memorial Lecture 2024 with Principal Jan Royall before receiving applause as news of her Honorary Fellowship was announced.

Now 100 years old, Patricia describes herself as the only centenarian in Chiswick who knows how to use a Sten gun. In 2023, she was named The Oldie magazine’s ‘Oldie Secret Agent of the Year’ by Gyles Brandreth. 

Pat Owtram together with her younger sister Jean Argles (née Owtram, 1925-2023) during and after the war, and in Chiswick wearing her Victory medal and Bletchley badge

Pat Davies was made an Honorary Fellow of Somerville in March 2024, and informed of the decision while attending the annual Dorothy Hodgkin Lecture. Speaking of the news, Pat commented, ‘I certainly never expected to become a Fellow of an Oxford College. However, I feel very privileged to have been considered worthy of this recognition. My family were not terribly supportive of university education for women, so I was only able to attend university because I received a grant in recognition of my wartime service in the WRNS. I must say I found it a wonderful opportunity and stepping stone to an interesting career!’

Our Principal Jan Royall added, ‘It is a privilege to have met Pat and welcomed her as an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College. Her extraordinary life embraces so many historic chapters, through all of which she has evidently moved with the same combination of intellect, integrity and humour that show her to be a quintessential Somervillian.’

Ali helps with the running of the Academic Office. 

Will Dawes(ARAM, PGDip (RAM), BMus (Hons) is Director of Chapel Music of Somerville College, Oxford, Director of Music at the church of St Mary Magdalen, Oxford, and the founding Director of Frideswide Voices (Oxford’s first liturgical choir for 7-14 year-old girls).

He is a graduate of the RAM, where he studied Choral Conducting and Singing, and has directed numerous excellent choral societies and chamber choirs across the UK.

Will is active as a consort singer and is a member of the internationally acclaimed vocal ensemble Stile Antico.  The group performs all over the globe, including concerts in the Wigmore Hall and at the BBC Proms. He is a former Lay Clerk of Christ Church, Oxford, and has sung with Collegium Vocale Gent, The Eric Whitacre Singers, and Polyphony.

As a soloist, Will has sung works such as Carmina Burana (Orff), Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Mahler), and The Wound Dresser (Adams) as well as more canonic works by JS Bach and GF Handel. His one and only operatic role to date is that of Mr Gedge in Albert Herring.

For further information, including forthcoming performances, please visit Will’s personal website. 

My research has two main threads: self-representation and social biases in (multisensory) perception and action; and adolescent wellbeing and mental health. I am currently working on new research at the intersection of these areas. Alongside self-representation, I have interests in anxiety and autistic cognition. I have extensive experience in patient and public involvement and engagement (PPIE) and co-production. I am passionate about public outreach and laying the groundwork for co-developing interventions and applications in wellbeing and mental health.

My research methodologies draw on techniques from cognitive, social, and developmental psychology, social neuroscience, and psychophysics (e.g., mental chronometry, surveys, and previously, EEG, tDCS), and involve both quantitative and qualitative research. I also use multisensory tasks (i.e. using audiovisual stimuli) to investigate social biases impacting both audition and vision.

At Somerville, I teach the undergraduate prelim course in Psychology (subjects including: developmental psychology, sensory processes and perception, social psychology, psychobiology, and cognitive psychology) and on the Psychology for Medicine course.

I completed my DPhil in Experimental Psychology at Oxford in 2022, and went on to join Somerville College as lecturer in Experimental Psychology, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in adolescent mental health (University of Reading). Prior to my DPhil, I worked as a Research Assistant in stroke research at the Cognitive Neuropsychology Centre (CNC), and as a Laboratory Demonstrator in Neuroanatomy and Perception, at the Department of Experimental Psychology. I also have a background in music and sound production, and alongside my academic research have engineered and consulted on sound for departmental academic research projects, as well as co-developed evidence-based music-, art-, and video-based ‘wellbeing tools’ to support adolescent mental health.

My doctoral research is about assessing the impacts of climate change and local land-use land-cover changes on birds of eastern Indian Himalaya, a global biodiversity hotspot. My study site in Arunachal Pradesh is home to Idu-Mishmis, the indigenous people of Dibang Valley.

I completed my masters in Environment Science and Technology with the highest grades from Bharati Vidyapeeth Institute of Environment Education and Research, Pune (India) in 2017 where I studied the effects of urban noise on acoustic communication of Myna species for my dissertation. After my masters, I investigated the effects of land-use change on bird communities in extremely remote community forests and tropical forests in Jaintia Hills of Meghalaya, a state in Northeast India which lies in the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot. I then worked as a junior researcher for a year under the National Mission for Himalayan Studies scheme with the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India, where I intensively documented the utilization and consumption of insects by tribes of three Northeast Indian states- Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

Large-scale deforestation for pro-development projects, diversion of primary forests, hunting, climate change, unsustainable harvesting of forest resources etc. are expected to push many species to extinction, while triggering newer coping mechanisms in some. My research interest broadly revolves around understanding which birds adapt well to such events and which do not. Dibang Valley, in particular, is undergoing massive changes due to ongoing anthropogenic activities which are expected to have negative impacts on birds, most of which remain undiscovered or understudied. While in Dibang Valley, I also intend to document people-bird interactions, their stories and relevance of bird species in Idu-Mishmi culture.

Through an international platform and generous support provided by OICSD, I intend to contribute more to both scientific and social research in Northeast India, a region which remains largely unexplored even today.

Charlotte is a Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College and a Leverhulme Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Faculty of Music.

Her research focuses on the transnational region of Karelia, which is partially in Finland and partially in Russia. Given the region’s tumultuous past and current events, issues of national, regional, and identity and belonging are complicated. Metal music artists on both sides of the border continuously negotiate questions of identity and belonging in their music through referrals to Karelian nature, significant historic events, and adaptation of folklore. The multiple languages in which lyrics are written – Karelian, Finnish, English, and Russian – give further expression to identity negotiations and how these are communicated with the outside world.

Charlotte finished her PhD at University College London (UCL) in 2022. Her thesis analysed the adaptation of Karelian Finnish folk poetry and the epic, the Kalevala, in metal music from Finland and connections to national identity in the lyrics. At UCL, she also worked as a postgraduate teaching assistant teaching various modules in sociology, history, and Finnish culture. She completed her master’s studies in Finnish language and culture at the University of Helsinki (2016) and her undergraduate studies in Finno-Ugric languages and cultures at the University of Groningen (2014).

She has co-organised conferences on multilingualism in metal music and the cultural, literary, and historic significance of cats. The latter conference was in conjunction with an exhibition organised by librarians of Senate House Library, London.

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.