Gaurav Dubey
Matric Year: 2019 – Subject: DPhil Geography and the Environment – Scholarship: Indira Gandhi ScholarGaurav 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.
Hanne Eckhoff
College LecturerI 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.
Elizabeth Edginton
College CounsellorI’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 Mondays, 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
Kamel El Omari
Senior Beamline Scientist at Diamond Light Source; Stipendiary LecturerI 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.
For a full list of my publications, please see here.
Mounir El Skafi
MCR Minority & Ethnicity RepresentativeMounir comes from a lovely small city on the east coast of the Mediterranean: Saida, Lebanon. Mounir received his Bachelor of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering – Design, Materials, and Manufacturing track along with a minor degree in Arabic and Near Eastern Languages from the American University of Beirut (AUB). His interest in language goes far to the study of classical texts in the early Arabic Grammar and Lexicography.
Mounir has worked with the Insight Club AUB to construct a supportive community to university students by balancing between physical intellectual and spiritual needs. Mounir is interested in the field of solid mechanics and mechanics of composite materials has published in reputable journals and received faculty awards.
Mounir aims to apply his experience to Metal Organic Framework Materials (MOFs) in studying their mechanical properties and their composites in polymer matrices and different geometries. This includes exploring the time dependent properties of MOFs and composites at different length scales. In addition, the fracture of MOFs and their toughness is of interest for designing damage-tolerant structures for energy absorption applications.
Beyond engineering, Mounir is interested in walking and in reading classical and folk literature.
Betsy, Esme, Jack and Sonny
JCR Entz TeamKatherine English
Clinical Non-Stipendiary Lecturer; CRUK Clinical Research Training FellowKatherine studies the efficacy of epigenetic inhibitors in exocrine and endocrine pancreatic cancers
Karin Erdmann
Emeritus FellowKarin 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.
The representation dimension of Hecke algebras and symmetric groups
Bergh, P; Erdmann, K
ADVANCES IN MATHEMATICS issue 4 volume 228 page 2503-2521 (10 November 2011)
Radical cube zero selfinjective algebras of finite complexity
Erdmann, K; Solberg, O
JOURNAL OF PURE AND APPLIED ALGEBRA issue 7 volume 215 page 1747-1768 (July 2011)
The non-projective part of the Lie module for the symmetric group
Erdmann, K; Tan, K
ARCHIV DER MATHEMATIK issue 6 volume 96 page 513-518 (June 2011)
Delta-filtered modules and nilpotent orbits of a parabolic subgroup in O-N
Baur, K; Erdmann, K; Parker, A
JOURNAL OF PURE AND APPLIED ALGEBRA issue 5 volume 215 page 885-901 (May 2011)
The stable Auslander-Reiten quiver of a quantum complete intersection
Bergh, P; Erdmann, K
BULLETIN OF THE LONDON MATHEMATICAL SOCIETY volume 43 page 79-90 (February 2011)
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.
Safa Fanaian
Matric Year: 2017 - Subject: DPhil Geography - Scholarship: Indira Gandhi ScholarSafa 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.
Professor Sir Marc Feldmann FRS
Senior Research Fellow; Emeritus Professor of Cellular Immunology; Director of Kennedy Institute of RheumatologyMarc 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 HallProfessor 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
Clare Finch
Deputy Director of Development (Operations)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
Honorary FellowRuth 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.
Jenny Fitzgerald
College NurseMy 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 : 9:00-15:00 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.