Fellows and Academics

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 in the world with a particular focus on inequality, religion, the Cold War, and comparative urban history. 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 previous work has appeared in the American Historical Review, Hispanic American Historical Review, and The Americas, among other venues. Dr McDonald’s research featured in the recent Netflix film, Apocalypse in the Tropics (2025), and 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.

My research focuses on developing and integrating advanced NMR and mass spectrometry–based multiomics approaches to characterise metabolic pathways underlying neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

I aim to bridge analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, and data science to identify blood-based biomarkers for early disease detection and progression prediction.

At Oxford, I combine NMR metabolomics with proteomic and imaging biomarkers to develop predictive models for cognitive decline and disease progression, working in close collaboration with groups in Pharmacology and Biochemistry. Alongside my research, I tutor medical students at Somerville College, offering insights into disease from a molecular and analytical chemistry perspective.

I completed my DPhil in Chemistry at the University of Oxford in 2025 and am now an EPSRC-funded postdoctoral fellow in Physical Chemistry.

I’m College Lecturer at Somerville, as well as Departmental Lecturer in Computer Science. I’m teaching a range of courses, most of which about programming languages and theory.

My research revolves around dependent type theory, which is a very powerful logic that can be used both as a programming language and as a formal language for mathematics. I’m interested in understanding better the foundations of type theory and finding new applications for it.

I completed my DPhil in 2024 under the supervision of Samson Abramsky and Sam Staton. Before coming to Oxford, I studied Computer Science, Mathematics and Philosophy at RWTH Aachen, Imperial College London and LMU Munich.

Rasmus is a DPhil student with an interest in the philosophy of mathematics. His main interest lies at the intersection of axiomatic theories of truth and set theory.

With his supervisor, Professor Volker Halbach, he is currently looking at ways of extending the base theory of certain axiomatic theories of truth from arithmetic to set theory. This will allow him to explore the proof-theoretical consequences of adding axiomatic theories of truth to set theory.

Rasmus has an MA (Hons) in Philosophy and Mathematics from the University of Edinburgh and an MSc in Mathematics and Foundations of Computer Science from the University of Oxford.

Dr Christiana Mavroyiakoumou is a Fulford Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College. She is also a Hooke Research Fellow at the Mathematical Institute, affiliated with OCIAM. 

Christiana is an applied mathematician specialising in developing mathematical models and computational methods to tackle complex problems in science and engineering. Her current research focuses on fluid dynamics, particularly fluid–structure interactions. Some of her current research topics include the deformation of extensible membranes, the dynamics of sailing manoeuvres, and the aerodynamics of bird flight formations. She also studies interactions between vortices and free surfaces. These research fields have practical applications in flow energy harvesting and the development of efficient propulsion systems.

Dr Mavroyiakoumou completed her PhD in Applied & Interdisciplinary Mathematics and Scientific Computing at the University of Michigan and then worked as a Courant Instructor/Assistant Professor at the Courant Institute of New York University. Her achievements include the Joseph B. Keller Postdoctoral Fellowship and Peter Smereka Dissertation Award.

A link to her personal website can be found here.

In my research, I look at attitudes towards gender-inclusive language in German from the perspective of second-language speakers of German in the UK. Furthermore, I am interested in the didactics and the implementation of varieties of German in the language classroom.

At Somerville, I am Lektorin for German after having gained valuable teaching experience at the University of St Andrews, Keimyung University in Daegu, South Korea and University of Heidelberg in Germany.

I am currently working towards completing my PhD at the University of Freiburg in Germany, my research profile can be found here.

Dr David Schramm is a Foundation Doctor at Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust and a Somerville alumnus with research interests in interventional radiology, medical innovation, and data-driven approaches to improving patient outcomes.

David matriculated at St Peter’s College, Oxford, to read Biochemistry before completing graduate-entry Medicine at Somerville. His academic work includes developing AI tools for opportunistic vertebral fracture detection and leading multicentre studies on contrast-associated kidney injury and venous thrombosis management. He has also contributed to national collaborative studies through the UK Interventional Radiology Trainee Collaborative (UNITE) committee and evaluated digital health technologies such as wearable ECG devices and virtual operating platforms.

Alongside his clinical training, David maintains an active interest in translational biotechnology and early-stage innovation, contributing to protocol design and patent development.