People

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 Sleepio^TM 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).

I 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).

Safa 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.

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.

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.

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 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. 

My 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.

Lisa 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.