Fellows and Academics

From 2020-23, Sarah Gurr’s research interests in crop disease, with particular emphasis on fungal infestations and in their global movement and control, have led to a series of high impact publications and invitations to speak all over the world. Amongst these recent publications are:-

• Stukenbrock, E and Gurr, SJ (2023) Address the growing urgency of fungal disease in crops. Nature 617 31-34
• Johns, LE, Bebber, B, Gurr, SJ and Brown, NA (2022) Health threat and cost of Fusarium mycotoxins in European wheat. Nature Food 3 1014–1019
• Cannon, S, Kay, W, Kilaru, S, Schuster, M, Gurr SJ and Steinberg, G (2022) Multi-site fungicides suppress banana Panama disease, caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense Tropical Race 4. PLoS Pathogens https://doi.org/10.1371/ journal. ppat.1010860 (SG and GS as CAs)
• Kilaru, S, Fantozzi, E, Cannon, S, Schuster, M, Chaloner, T, Aragones, CA, Gurr, SJ and Steinberg,G (2022) Zymoseptoria tritici white-collar complex integrates light, temperature and plant cues to initiate dimorphism and pathogenesis.  Nature Communications 13, Article number: 5625
• Fisher, M et al (2022) Tackling the emerging threat of antifungal resistance to human health. Nature Microbiology Reviews https://doi.org/10.1038/s41579-022-00720-1
• Chaloner, T, Gurr, SJ Bebber, DP (2021) The global burden of plant disease tracks yield under climate change Nature Climate Change https://www.nature.com/art/s41558-021-01104-8
• Fones, H, Bebber, D, Chaloner, T, Kay, William T, Steinberg, G, Gurr, SJ (2020) Threats to global food security from emerging fungal and oomycete crop pathogens. Nature Food doi: 10.1038/s43016-020-0075.
• Chaloner, T, Gurr, SJ, Bebber, D (2020) Geometry and evolution of the ecological niche in plant-associated microbes. Nature Communications doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-16778-5.
• Steinberg, G, Schuster, M, Gurr, SJ, Schrader, M, Wood, M, Kilaru, S (2020) A lipophilic cation protects crops against fungal pathogens by multiple modes of action Nature Communications https://doi.org/ 10.1038/s4146-020-14949-y.
• Patents –  Antifungal compositions WO2020201698A1 and GB2202216.4

There have been 5 press releases associated with these papers and some of this work featured in articles in The Guardian; The New York Times (Children’s board game “monkey puzzle” Christmas Day 2022); The Toronto Star; The Daily Mail; The Independent; as well as on BBC World News, Live Science News Hour and various other media channels.

Over the past 2 years Sarah has been appointed to The International Advisory Board at SLU University, Uppsala, as Advisor to The Scottish Government on Plant Health (RESAS) and as a member of Plant Heath Scotland (James Hutton Institute). She has also been elected to Board of Trustees of The Rank Foundation, the East Malling Research Trust and The Wolfson Science and Medicine committee.

She holds a Visiting Professorship at Utrecht University, is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), Fellow of American Academy of Microbiology, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by SLU Uppsala. Her work with UK and Scottish Government has guided to a policy paper and a Parliamentary Bill (Plant Health and Biosecurity, and Crops and Gene Editing, 2022 and 2023).

Lisa Gygax (1987, PPE) has been Liz Cooke’s ‘apprentice’ since 2014. In her role as joint Secretary to the Alumni Association she shares Liz’s keen interest in the myriad of pursuits that Somervillians get up to after leaving Oxford. Her role extends to stewarding our various alumni networks.

Dr Yadong Han is a Fulford Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College and a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford.

His research focuses on the flow dynamics of tidal-stream turbines and, more broadly, offshore renewable energy. In particular, he studies how realistic and unsteady environmental conditions — including waves, turbulence, flow misalignment and platform motion — affect turbine performance, blade loading, and wake development. His work combines large-scale experiments and advanced flow diagnostics to understand the physical mechanisms governing turbine response in complex flows. A central aim of his research is to bridge fundamental fluid dynamics and renewable-energy engineering: developing physical understanding and predictive approaches that can improve turbine reliability, reduce lifetime costs and support the deployment of tidal energy at larger scales. His work in tidal energy has received recognition through Supergen early-career research funding and research presentation awards.

Before joining Oxford, Dr Han completed his PhD at Tsinghua University in 2024. His doctoral research focused on unsteady flows in hydromachinery used in hydropower systems, particularly vortex dynamics, flow instability and cavitation. This work established his broader interest in complex unsteady flows in energy-conversion devices and laid the foundation for his current research on tidal turbines. His PhD research resulted in two ESI Highly Cited Papers and several academic awards, including the NSK Sino-Japan Friendship Outstanding Paper Award in 2022.

Dr Oliver Härmson is a clinician-scientist whose research focuses on the fundamental neural mechanisms underlying motivation and decision-making, with a particular interest in translating mechanistic insights into clinically relevant approaches to disorders of motivated behaviour. He teaches neuroscience, neurology and clinical medicine at Somerville College.

Oliver graduated in Medicine from the University of Tartu, Estonia, in 2018 before undertaking a DPhil at the University of Oxford as a member of Somerville College from 2018 to 2022. His doctoral research investigated how the brain represents and integrates reward, effort and choice during motivated behaviour, with a focus on the neural circuits underlying cost-benefit decision-making. His research has brought him into close collaboration with cognitive neurology researchers in Oxford, including Professors Mark Walton, Sanjay Manohar and Masud Husain, as well as neuromodulation researchers including Professor Andrew Sharott. These collaborations provide a framework for translating mechanistic insights into motivation and decision-making towards clinical applications. He intends to continue this research alongside the next stage of his clinical training in neurology.

Oliver has been a medical tutor at Somerville since 2019 and holds a SEDA Certificate in Teaching in higher education settings from the University of Oxford. He leads tutorials in neuroscience and neurology and particularly enjoys bedside and clinically oriented teaching. He is interested in using digital technology and visual approaches to enhance learning and to explain complex neurological and neuroscientific concepts. He has also recently joined the PassPACES course in London as a lecturer.

As a former Somerville DPhil student, Oliver particularly cherishes the collegiate environment and the opportunity to support students across both pre-clinical and clinical medicine. He is interested in helping students develop not only a strong understanding of neuroscience and neurology, but also the ability to connect fundamental mechanisms with clinical reasoning and patient care.

Jim Harris is the Teaching Curator at the Ashmolean Museum, and an art historian specialising in late-medieval and early-Renaissance sculpture.

At the Ashmolean, he is responsible for exploring the use of the Museum’s collections in the university curriculum, devising and delivering classes and courses across a wide range of disciplines and training faculty and early-career researchers to deploy objects and images in developing their own teaching practice.

He has been an Academic Visitor at Somerville since 2017 and a member of the Somerville Medieval Research Group, building a number of long-standing teaching partnerships with members of the college.  He has taught the college’s English undergraduates alongside Dr Annie Sutherland every year since 2012.

Jim trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and later, after over a decade in theatre and television, as an art historian at the Courtauld Institute. He wrote his PhD thesis on the polychrome sculpture of Donatello, and held the Courtauld’s Andrew W Mellon Research Forum Postdoctoral Fellowship and the Caroline Villers Research Fellowship in Conservation before coming to Oxford.

“My research has been focused on the materials and techniques of sculpture, and especially in the question of how three-dimensional surfaces are transformed by polychromy, the addition of paint, gold and inlays, and by the subsequent, successive alterations, deliberate or by chance, that they undergo during their lifetimes.

Anna’s first career was in infrastructure and security, where she acted as a freelance project manager for multiple government bodies and FTSE 500 companies. Thirteen years ago, she decided to turn her lifelong passion for gardening into a second career, retraining at Jesus College, Oxford.

Anna has since worked in several large estate gardens, including Dorney Court and Denham Place, as well as offering freelance garden design and consultancy. At Somerville, she looks forward to supporting Head Gardener Alistair Malick in bringing the Somerville gardens into the 21st century, whilst delivering a beautiful and sustainable garden (featuring as many alpine plants and clipped shrubs as possible in order to fulfil her passion for niwaki/bonsai and mountain plants).

Barbara Fitzgerald Harvey CBE FBA FRHistS is a British medieval historian.

She was the joint winner of the Wolfson History Prize in 1993 for her book Living and Dying in England 1100–1540: The Monastic Experience, which examines the lives of monks at Westminster Abbey, one of England’s greatest medieval monasteries. In 1982 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

Professor Kamila Hawthorne MBE (née Ebrahim, 1978, Medicine) is Chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners. She was elected in 2022, becoming the fifth woman to hold the position.

Professor Hawthorne has been a GP for 37 years, with 30 of them spent working in South Wales. She qualified from Somerville College, Oxford, in 1984, and completed her GP training in Nottingham in 1988. Kamila was Head of the Graduate Entry Medicine Programme at Swansea University and is on the Trustee Boards of the Kings Fund, and Cardiff Women’s Aid. She is also a Bevan Commissioner and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales.

Kamila has a deep interest in medical education, and believes passionately in the importance of training excellent, caring and inclusive GPs for a global society. She is passionate about the role of GPs in patient care and as advocates for patients.

Her research and clinical working interests have been in health inequalities and access to health services, (her MD was based on working with BAME patient groups with Type 2 diabetes in Nottingham, Manchester and Cardiff). With wide experience of general practice and running community projects in diabetes and heart disease, she has been named ‘GP of the Year’ twice and was awarded an MBE in 2017 for services to General Practice.

The RCGP is the UK’s largest medical college, with over 50,000 members. It represents and supports GPs on key issues including licensing, education, training, research and clinical standards. The RCGP has both a President and a Chair, but the former is a mainly ceremonial role. As Chair, Professor Hawthorne sets the college’s policy direction, and leads the RCGP decision making body.

Professor Hawthorne was made an Honorary Fellow of Somerville in June 2025. 

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.

My research interests are in cardiac metabolism and how this can be imaged using advanced cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) techniques. I am interested in understanding how the heart produces and uses energy to pump and how this becomes deranged in heart failure.

My previous work has focused on the metabolic derangement induced by the chemotherapeutic agent doxorubicin in a rodent model of cardiotoxicity, showing early derangements in myocardial energetics which precede overt systolic dysfunction. More recently I have investigated the ability of novel therapeutic agents to alter myocardial metabolism in the setting of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). I have also used advanced CMR to define the novel cardiovascular phenotype of inflammatory conditions such as IgG4 related disease and to assess changes in cardiac remodelling which occur following bariatric surgery. I am project lead on JeFF: Jersey Fighting Failure which seeks to revolutionise heart failure care on Jersey and has been selected as pilot project for the British Society of Heart Failure’s 25 in 25 initiative. 

I also have experience of large-scale clinical trials through my involvement as a research assistant on the ChAdOx-1 COVID-19 vaccine trials. I also have experience working with large databases such as QResearch.

Background

I am an Academic Clinical Fellow in Cardiology at Oxford University Hospitals and an Honorary Research Fellow at Jersey General Hospital. I am also a Stipendiary Lecturer in Medicine at Somerville College, University of Oxford, where I was an undergraduate student. Outside clinical, research and teaching activities I have a keen interest in rugby union, having gained 4 Rugby Blues at Oxford and played in the Universities World Cup in Japan in 2019.

Dame Julia Stretton Higgins, DBE, FRS, FREng is Professor of Polymer Science in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemical Technology at Imperial College London.

Higgins was the former chair (1998–2003) of the Athena Project, which aims for the advancement of women in science, engineering and technology (SET) in Higher Education. She is now the Patron of the Athena Swan Awards Scheme. Between 2003 and 2007, she was chair of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Higgins was president of the Institution of Chemical Engineers 2002–3, and president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 2003–4. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1995 and was its Foreign Secretary 2001–6. She was Chair of the Royal Society’s State of the Nation Report Steering Group. Most recently she chaired Advisory Committee on Mathematics Education (ACME). (2008-2012) She currently Chairs the Royal Society project (funded by BIS) on increasing diversity in the scientific workforce

She is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, Royal Society of Chemistry, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and the City and Guilds of London Institute, of which she is also Vice-President. She is also an honorary Fellow of the Institute of Physics and Somerville College, Oxford. She was awarded a CBE in 1996 before being named a dame in the 2001 Queen’s Birthday Honours list.She holds honorary degrees from a number of UK Universities ans also from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Her scientific work has concentrated on the investigation of polymers with neutron scattering. She co-authored a monograph on that field (Higgins & Benoit 1997). In 1999, she was elected as Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. She is a foreign member of the National Academy of Engineering of the United States. She was named Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 2001. She is a Chevalier de la Legion D’Honneur

Carole Hillenbrand was educated at the Universities of Cambridge, Oxford and Edinburgh. She was appointed Professor of Islamic History in 2000 and served as Head of the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, from 1997-2002 and from 2006-2008.

She has been Professor Emerita of Islamic History at Edinburgh since 2008. She was awarded an OBE for services to Higher Education in 2009. She was Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA in 1994 and 2005, at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands in 2002, and Visiting Professor at the University of St Louis, USA, 2011 and 2013.

In 2005 she was awarded the King Faisal Prize for Islamic Studies, 2005 (the first non-Muslim to be awarded this prize). In 2015, she was given the British Society for Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Award for Services to Middle Eastern Studies. In 2016 she was awarded the British Academy/ Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Transcultural Understanding.

She has been Islamic Advisory Editor at Edinburgh University Press since 1983 and Editor of the series entitled “Studies in Persian and Turkish History”, published by Routledge since 1999.

Her research interests include the Crusades, the Seljuqs of Iran and Turkey, and medieval Muslim political thought, especially the work of al-Ghazali.

I completed my PhD in German Studies at Yale University in 2019. Prior to that, I received an MA in German Literature from the University of Hamburg (2013) and a BA in German Studies and Political Science from the University of Münster (2009).

I have taught undergraduate courses on German-speaking literature, philosophy, and culture at Yale, Hamburg, and Goethe University Frankfurt. Currently I teach at several colleges across the university, including Somerville.

My research is situated at the intersection of literature, philosophy, and intellectual history, with an emphasis on 20th-century German literature and critical theory. I’m currently working on my first book, a genealogy of the idea of contemporaneity (“Zeitgenossenschaft”) in modern thought, literature, and the arts from the early 19th century to the present day. Other areas of interest include philosophical theories of literature, Marxism, aesthetics, contemporary literature and visual culture.

Research Interests

Salome manages all aspects of HR for academic and support staff including policies, reporting, recruitment, appointments and compliance. Any HR queries can be directed to human.resources@some.ox.ac.uk

HR hours are Monday – Friday 8.00 a.m. – 4.00 p.m. and either Salome or her colleague, Sarah, will be happy to help with any HR questions you have.

Henry Hung joined Somerville in October 2023 as a Fulford Junior Research Fellow. He is also a Lecturer in Biology at Magdalen and St Hilda’s.

His main research concerns the adaptation and genomics of forest trees. He started his research in tropical forests in Southeast Asia. He is now shifting his focus to temperate forests in Europe and North America. He also conducts research in Wytham and Blenheim in Oxford.

He currently co-chairs the Ecological Genetics Group and serve in the Events Committee of the British Ecological Society. He is named a National Geographic Explorer in 2022 for his research on critically endangered rosewood trees. His research on rosewoods is featured in the University News: https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/features/race-save-world-s-most-trafficked-wild-species

He graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, majoring in Biology, triple-minoring in Environmental Science, German, and Music. He then read his doctorate at the University of Oxford.

Tin Hang Hung (洪天恒) is a Cantonese name. First name is ‘Tin Hang’ altogether, surname is ‘Hung’. There is no middle name. ‘Henry’ is the preferred alternative name.

Professor Lorna Hutson (1976, DPhil English) is Merton Professor of English.

Professor Hutson’s work focuses on the interrelations between early modern Enlish literary form and other forms of cultural practice, including economics, law, and national conception. Her monograph The Invention of Suspicion won the Roland Bainton Prize in 2008, and The Oxford Handbook of English Law and Literature, 1500-1700 won the Bainton Reference Prize in 2018. Her current project – England’s Insular Imagining – studies how early modern literature spanning multiple genres contributed to the conception of England as the whole island of Britain. In 2016, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.

My research lies at the intersection of probability, statistics and computation, applied to problems in genetics.

I am interested in what we can learn about evolution by analysing sequenced genomes: for instance, through reconstructing the shared genetic history of a sample of individuals, we can gain insights into past demography, understand how genetic variation arises and how it is shaped by natural selection to produce the patterns we observe in the data. 

Trained in soil science, Associate Professor John Ingram gained extensive experience in the 1980s working in Africa and Asia in agriculture and forestry research projects.

In 1991 he was recruited by UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to help organise, coordinate and synthesise research on global change and agroecology, part of IGBP’s international global change research programme. In 2001 he was appointed the Executive Officer for the international research project “Global Environmental Change and Food Systems” (GECAFS). On the close of GECAFS in 2011 he was appointed NERC Food Security Leader until assuming his current role of Food Systems Programme Leader at the University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute in May 2013.

John’s interests are in the conceptual framing of food systems; the interactions among the many actors involved and their varied activities, and the outcomes of their activities for food security, livelihoods and environment; and food system resilience. He has designed and led regional food system research projects in Europe, south Asia, southern Africa and the Caribbean and has conceived, developed and/or led a range of major international research initiatives. He has had substantial interaction with FAO, UNEP and CGIAR and many other international organisations, with national departments and agencies, with NGOs, and with businesses in the food sector, helping to establish research on the links between food security and environment through the analysis of food systems. In addition to leading the food systems research group within ECI, he also leads the multi-university post-graduate Interdisciplinary Food Systems Teaching and Learning programme (IFSTAL), and coordinated the UK Global Food Security programme ‘Resilience of the UK Food System‘. He is an Associate Professor in Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment, and Senior Research Fellow at Somerville College.

I grew up in Britain and in the US. I studied at Cambridge, and was a tutorial fellow at Somerville for 36 years, 1982-2018. I hold the title of Professor of Modern History from the university, and continue to supervise graduate students.

I am interested in government, society and ideas, in Britain, Europe and the larger European world, between the later seventeenth and mid nineteenth centuries. More specifically, my research and writing has two main strands. One concerns developments in British, especially English social policy during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: my monograph Inferior Politics pulls together some of writings on that topic. In addition, for about twenty years I have been running an international collaborative project about changing attitudes to and practices associated with democracy in Europe and both Americas in the same period. We have published three books arising from that project, and are now at work on a fourth and final volume, which focusses on what we call central and northern Europe: broadly, Germany and lands adjacent. I see the academic study of history as a collaborative exercise, and have been involved in collaborative projects throughout my career. Between 1990 and 2000 I was co-editor of Past and Present, and have recently retired from a position as chair of that journal’s editorial board. I’m also on the boards of several other English and French-language history journals. I have spent several periods teaching or researching abroad: in Australia, Germany, Japan, France and most recently Finland.

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.

My research interests pertain to public international law and climate change. I seek to study the impact of rising sea levels on international maritime boundaries and maritime entitlements, to better understand how the law on this subject may be developed to accommodate such change.

My attraction to the law stems from the pivotal role it plays in shaping society. It is for this reason that I have nurtured a deep interest in public international law. I believe it possesses tremendous potential to change the lives of the most vulnerable, and mold society for the better.

During my undergraduate studies at the National Law School I pursued every opportunity to further my passion for international law. I was fortunate to argue the finals of the ICC moot before sitting judges of the International Criminal Court, at The Hague. I worked extensively on the law of statehood whilst competing at the Jessup Moot. Through my internship with Mr. Soli Sorabjee, I worked on a major international maritime dispute, the Enrica Lexie case.

The Rhodes Scholarship enabled me to read for the Bachelor of Civil Law at the University of Oxford, where I engaged more deeply with the subject through courses such as International Law and Armed Conflict as well as International Law of the Sea. I added breadth to this engagement in my second year at Oxford where I read for an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies, gaining a better understanding of the real-world hurdles that reside in the practice of international law.

I hope to nurture this passion further, as an Indira Gandhi Scholar at the Oxford India Centre, whilst reading for my DPhil in Law at Somerville.

Awards and Previous Qualifications

• Oxford – MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (Distinction)
• Oxford – Bachelor of Civil Law (Distinction)
• NLSIU – B.A., LL.B. (H)
• Rhodes Scholar (India & Exeter, 2017)
• Oxford Department of International Development Faculty Prize for Best Thesis in the MSc (RFMS) [2019]
• Volterra Fietta Prize for International Law of the Sea (BCL) [2018]
• Gold Medal for Best Student Advocate [2017]